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120-590: The name "Ordos" ( Mongolian : [REDACTED] ) comes from the orda , which originally means "palaces" or "court" in Old Turkic . The seventh largest prefecture of Inner Mongolia , Ordos City , is similarly named due to its location within the Ordos Loop. The Ming Great Wall cuts southwesternly across the center of the Ordos region, roughly separating the sparsely populated north (or "upper Ordos", which

240-776: A literary standard for Mongolian in whose grammar is said to be based on the Standard Mongolian of Inner Mongolia and whose pronunciation is based on the Chakhar dialect as spoken in the Plain Blue Banner . Dialectologically, however, western Mongolian dialects in Inner Mongolia are closer to Khalkha than they are to eastern Mongolian dialects in Inner Mongolia: e.g. Chakhar is closer to Khalkha than to Khorchin. Juha Janhunen (2003: 179) lists

360-638: A confluence at the southeastern corner. The Qin Mountains —including the famous Mount Hua —separate its watershed from that of the Han River , which flows south to a confluence with the Yangtze at Wuhan . Underlying the loess plateau is one of the largest coal beds in China. Rainfall and therefore population decreases rapidly as one moves north. The Wei River valley on the south is densely populated and

480-501: A dam, the river narrows and becomes yellow and the railroad needs many bridges and tunnels all the way to Tianshui . Upstream various tributaries extend in the direction of Lanzhou. Although this rectangular area is obvious on a map, the north and south of the area are so different that the region cannot be said to have a common history. The south and east of the plateau belong historically and culturally to China, for which see Prehistory and History of China . The north and west,

600-542: A higher speed than in any other part of the world. In the short term, this will cause lakes to expand and bring floods and mudflows. In the long run, the glaciers are vital lifelines for Asian rivers, including the Indus and the Ganges . Once they vanish, water supplies in those regions will be in peril. The Tibetan Plateau contains the largest area of low- latitude glaciers and is particularly vulnerable to global warming. Over

720-467: A large irrigated area at Dengkou . At the northwest corner the Lang Shan mountains force the river to turn east near Linhe . Here there is an irrigated area between the mountains and river and desert to the southeast. Near the center of the northern stretch is the large town and irrigated area of Baotou . The main road south runs from Baotou to Xi'an . About 70 miles northeast of the northeast bend

840-592: A masterful knowledge of Upper Palaeolithic technology, producing blades as much as fifteen centimeters long. By about 1000 BC Chinese civilization was centered on the west side of the North China Plain with an extension up the Wei valley and a northern extension up the Fen River . The lower Wei valley is still one of the most densely populated areas in China. Rulers based in the Wei valley had an advantage since

960-590: A much broader "Mongolian language" consisting of a Central dialect (Khalkha, Chakhar, Ordos), an Eastern dialect (Kharchin, Khorchin), a Western dialect (Oirat, Kalmyk), and a Northern dialect (consisting of two Buryat varieties). Additionally, the Language Policy in the People's Republic of China: Theory and Practice Since 1949 , states that Mongolian can be classified into four dialects: the Khalkha dialect in

1080-538: A parameter called ATR ( advanced tongue root ); the groups are −ATR, +ATR, and neutral. This alignment seems to have superseded an alignment according to oral backness. However, some scholars still describe Mongolian as being characterized by a distinction between front vowels and back vowels, and the front vowel spellings 'ö' and 'ü' are still often used in the West to indicate two vowels which were historically front. The Mongolian vowel system also has rounding harmony. Length

1200-535: A postalveolar or palatalized consonant will be followed by an epenthetic [i] , as in [ˈatʃĭɮ] . Stress in Mongolian is nonphonemic (does not distinguish different meanings) and thus is considered to depend entirely on syllable structure. But scholarly opinions on stress placement diverge sharply. Most native linguists, regardless of which dialect they speak, claim that stress falls on the first syllable. Between 1941 and 1975, several Western scholars proposed that

1320-410: A recognized language of Xinjiang and Qinghai . The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5–6 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the ethnic Mongol residents of the Inner Mongolia of China . In Mongolia , Khalkha Mongolian is predominant, and is currently written in both Cyrillic and the traditional Mongolian script . In Inner Mongolia, it

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1440-496: A report on sports composed in Mongolian script on stone, which is most often dated at 1224 or 1225. The Mongolian- Armenian wordlist of 55 words compiled by Kirakos of Gandzak (13th century) is the first written record of Mongolian words. From the 13th to the 15th centuries, Mongolian language texts were written in four scripts (not counting some vocabulary written in Western scripts): Uyghur Mongolian (UM) script (an adaptation of

1560-699: A result of this extremely inhospitable environment, the Changtang region (together with the adjoining Kekexili region) is the least populous region in Asia and the third least populous area in the world after Antarctica and northern Greenland. The geological history of the Tibetan Plateau is closely related to that of the Himalayas. The Himalayas belong to the Alpine Orogeny and are therefore among

1680-426: A short first syllable are stressed on the second syllable. But if their first syllable is long, then the data for different acoustic parameters seems to support conflicting conclusions: intensity data often seems to indicate that the first syllable is stressed, while F0 seems to indicate that it is the second syllable that is stressed. The grammar in this article is also based primarily on Khalkha Mongolian. Unlike

1800-415: A steady wind to blow toward the land, which brings the moist air over the ocean surface with it. Rainfall is then increased by the presence of the moist ocean air. The rainfall is stimulated by a variety of mechanisms, such as low-level air being lifted upwards by mountains, surface heating, convergence at the surface, divergence aloft, or from storm-produced outflows near the surface. When such lifting occurs,

1920-591: A system of vowel harmony : For historical reasons, these have been traditionally labeled as "front" vowels and "back" vowels, as /o/ and /u/ developed from /ø/ and /y/, while /ɔ/ and /ʊ/ developed from /o/ and /u/ in Middle Mongolian. Indeed, in Mongolian romanizations , the vowels /o/ and /u/ are often conventionally rendered as ⟨ö⟩ and ⟨ü⟩ , while the vowels /ɔ/ and /ʊ/ are expressed as ⟨o⟩ and ⟨u⟩ . However, for modern Mongolian phonology, it

2040-635: A term usually referring to the localized, diurnal cycle of circulation near coastlines everywhere, but they are much larger in scale, stronger and seasonal. The seasonal monsoon wind shift and weather associated with the heating and cooling of the Tibetan plateau is the strongest such monsoon on Earth. Today, Tibet is an important heating surface of the atmosphere. However, during the Last Glacial Maximum , an approximately 2,400,000 square kilometres (930,000 sq mi) ice sheet covered

2160-473: A total of 31 burials dated to the 6th to 5th century BC revealing strong north Mongoloid features. These generally decreased towards the south, and skeletal remains of east and north Mongoloid type can be seen from finds in Maoqinggou and Yinniugou dated to around the 7th century BC, amounting to a total of 117 burials. Many bronze weapons of these cultures are similar to those of Chinese style. Depictions of

2280-521: Is Classical Mongolian , which is dated from the 17th to the 19th century. This is a written language with a high degree of standardization in orthography and syntax that sets it quite apart from the subsequent Modern Mongolian. The most notable documents in this language are the Mongolian Kangyur and Tengyur as well as several chronicles. In 1686, the Soyombo alphabet ( Buddhist texts )

2400-542: Is Hohot , the capital of Inner Mongolia. The river turns south, enters the loess plateau and forms a gorge at least 200 feet below the surrounding hills. There are no large towns in this region. There is a dam apparently called Wanjia and another further south and then the Hukou Waterfall of the Yellow River, the second highest in China. The river leaves the gorge near Hancheng , receives the Fen River from

2520-433: Is determined according to phonotactic requirements. The following table lists the consonants of Khalkha Mongolian. The consonants enclosed in parentheses occur only in loanwords. The occurrence of palatalized consonant phonemes, except /tʃ/ /tʃʰ/ /ʃ/ /j/ , is restricted to words with [−ATR] vowels. A rare feature among the world's languages, Mongolian has neither a voiced lateral approximant, such as [l] , nor

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2640-714: Is dialectally more diverse and written in the traditional Mongolian script. However, Mongols in both countries often use the Latin script for convenience on the Internet. In the discussion of grammar to follow, the variety of Mongolian treated is the standard written Khalkha formalized in the writing conventions and in grammar as taught in schools, but much of it is also valid for vernacular (spoken) Khalkha and other Mongolian dialects, especially Chakhar Mongolian . Some classify several other Mongolic languages like Buryat and Oirat as varieties of Mongolian, but this classification

2760-409: Is ellipsis . The rules governing the morphology of Mongolian case endings are intricate, and so the rules given below are only indicative. In many situations, further (more general) rules must also be taken into account in order to produce the correct form: these include the presence of an unstable nasal or unstable velar, as well as the rules governing when a penultimate vowel should be deleted from

2880-466: Is CVVCCC, where the last C is a word-final suffix. A single short vowel rarely appears in syllable-final position . If a word was monosyllabic historically, *CV has become CVV. In native words, the following consonants do not occur word-initially: /w̜/ , /ɮ/ , /r/ , /w̜ʲ/ , /ɮʲ/ , /rʲ/ , /tʰʲ/ , and /tʲ/ . [ŋ] is restricted to codas (else it becomes [n] ), and /p/ and /pʲ/ do not occur in codas for historical reasons. For two-consonant clusters,

3000-438: Is a +ATR vowel, then every vowel of the word must be either /i/ or a +ATR vowel. In the case of suffixes, which must change their vowels to conform to different words, two patterns predominate. Some suffixes contain an archiphoneme /A/ that can be realized as /a, ɔ, e, o/ ; e.g. Other suffixes can occur in /U/ being realized as /ʊ, u/ , in which case all −ATR vowels lead to /ʊ/ and all +ATR vowels lead to /u/ ; e.g. If

3120-637: Is actually lower in elevation than the "lower Ordos" south) — considered the Ordos proper — from the agricultural south (or "lower Ordos", i.e. northern part of the Loess Plateau ). The north Ordos consists mainly of the arid Ordos Desert (subdivided into the Mu Us and Kubuqi deserts), which is administered by Inner Mongolia 's Ordos City , but the floodplains along the banks of Ordos Loop's northern bends are fertile grasslands historically known as

3240-491: Is based primarily on the Khalkha dialect as spoken in Ulaanbaatar , Mongolia's capital. The phonologies of other varieties such as Ordos, Khorchin, and even Chakhar, differ considerably. This section discusses the phonology of Khalkha Mongolian with subsections on Vowels, Consonants, Phonotactics and Stress. The standard language has seven monophthong vowel phonemes. They are aligned into three vowel harmony groups by

3360-409: Is distributed vertically through a "mixed layer" that may be 50 meters deep through the action of wind and buoyancy-generated turbulence , whereas the land surface conducts heat slowly, with the seasonal signal penetrating only a meter or so. Additionally, the specific heat capacity of liquid water is significantly greater than that of most materials that make up land. Together, these factors mean that

3480-566: Is impeded by the fact that existing data for the major varieties is not easily arrangeable according to a common set of linguistic criteria. Such data might account for the historical development of the Mongolian dialect continuum , as well as for its sociolinguistic qualities. Though phonological and lexical studies are comparatively well developed, the basis has yet to be laid for a comparative morphosyntactic study, for example between such highly diverse varieties as Khalkha and Khorchin. In Juha Janhunen's book titled Mongolian , he groups

3600-880: Is located to the north of Himalayas and the Indian subcontinent , and to the south of Tarim Basin and Mongolian Plateau . Geopolitically, it covers most of the Tibet Autonomous Region , most of Qinghai , western half of Sichuan , Southern Gansu provinces in Western China , southern Xinjiang , Bhutan , the Indian regions of Ladakh and Lahaul and Spiti ( Himachal Pradesh ) as well as Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan , northwestern Nepal , eastern Tajikistan and southern Kyrgyzstan . It stretches approximately 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) north to south and 2,500 kilometres (1,600 mi) east to west. It

3720-410: Is more appropriate to instead characterize the two vowel-harmony groups by the dimension of tongue root position. There is also one neutral vowel, /i/ , not belonging to either group. All the vowels in a non compound word, including all its suffixes, must belong to the same group. If the first vowel is −ATR, then every vowel of the word must be either /i/ or a −ATR vowel. Likewise, if the first vowel

Ordos Plateau - Misplaced Pages Continue

3840-427: Is not in line with the current international standard. Mongolian is a language with vowel harmony and a complex syllabic structure compared to other Mongolic languages, allowing clusters of up to three consonants syllable-finally. It is a typical agglutinative language that relies on suffix chains in the verbal and nominal domains. While there is a basic word order, subject–object–verb , ordering among noun phrases

3960-407: Is one of the ancient centers of Chinese civilization. The north is grassland and desert ( Ordos desert ) and is part of Inner Mongolia . Because of its low and variable rainfall the region was once notorious for drought and famine. At the southwest corner near where the Yellow River emerges from the Tibetan Plateau is Lanzhou , the westernmost large city in north China and the capital of Gansu . To

4080-1269: Is phonemic for vowels, and except short [e], which has merged into short [i], at least in Ulaanbaatar dialect, each of the other six phonemes occurs both short and long. Phonetically, short /o/ has become centralised to the central vowel [ɵ] . In the following table, the seven vowel phonemes, with their length variants, are arranged and described phonetically. The vowels in the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet are: Khalkha also has four diphthongs : historically /ui, ʊi, ɔi, ai/ but are pronounced more like [ʉe̯, ʊe̯, ɞe̯, æe̯] ; e.g. ой in нохой ( nohoi ) [nɔ̙ˈχɞe̯] 'dog', ай in далай ( dalai ) [taˈɮæe̯] sea', уй in уйлах ( uilah ) [ˈʊe̯ɮɐχ] 'to cry', үй in үйлдвэр ( üildver ) [ˈʉe̯ɮtw̜ɘr] 'factory', эй in хэрэгтэй ( heregtei ) [çiɾɪxˈtʰe] 'necessary'. There are three additional rising diphthongs /ia/ (иа), /ʊa/ (уа) /ei/ (эй); e.g. иа in амиараа ( amiaraa ) [aˈmʲæɾa] 'individually', уа in хуаран ( huaran ) [ˈχʷaɾɐɴ] 'barracks'. This table below lists vowel allophones (short vowels allophones in non-initial positions are used interchangeably with schwa): Mongolian divides vowels into three groups in

4200-465: Is relatively free, as grammatical roles are indicated by a system of about eight grammatical cases . There are five voices . Verbs are marked for voice, aspect , tense and epistemic modality / evidentiality . In sentence linking, a special role is played by converbs . Modern Mongolian evolved from Middle Mongol , the language spoken in the Mongol Empire of the 13th and 14th centuries. In

4320-753: Is the Qilian Mountains. The line of mountains continues east of the plateau as the Qinling , which separates the Ordos Plateau from Sichuan. North of the mountains runs the Gansu or Hexi Corridor which was the main silk-road route from China proper to the West. The plateau is a high-altitude arid steppe interspersed with mountain ranges and large brackish lakes. Annual precipitation ranges from 100 to 300 millimetres (3.9 to 11.8 in) and falls mainly as hail . The southern and eastern edges of

4440-527: Is the world's highest and largest plateau above sea level, with an area of 2,500,000 square kilometres (970,000 sq mi). With an average elevation exceeding 4,500 metres (14,800 ft) and being surrounded by imposing mountain ranges that harbor the world's two highest summits, Mount Everest and K2 , the Tibetan Plateau is often referred to as "the Roof of the World ". The Tibetan Plateau contains

4560-402: Is word-final, it gets stressed anyway. In cases where there is only one phonemic short word-initial syllable, even this syllable can get the stress: More recently, the most extensive collection of phonetic data so far in Mongolian studies has been applied to a partial account of stress placement in the closely related Chakhar dialect. The conclusion is drawn that di- and trisyllabic words with

4680-592: The Hetao Plains ("river loop" plains), which is subdivided into the "west loop" (within Ningxia ) and "east loop" (within Inner Mongolia, further divided into "front loop" and "back loop") sections. The Inner Mongolian cities of Hohhot ( provincial capital ), Baotou , Bayannur and Wuhai (its third, fourth, eighth and eleventh most populous prefectures respectively), and all of Ningxia 's cities except Guyuan , are all located on these riverside plains along

4800-530: The Altaic language family and contrasted with the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area . However, instead of a common genetic origin, Clauson, Doerfer, and Shcherbak proposed that Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic languages form a language Sprachbund , rather than common origin. Mongolian literature is well attested in written form from the 13th century but has earlier Mongolic precursors in

4920-561: The Changtang , is generally too high and cold to support permanent population. One of the most notable civilizations to have developed on the Tibetan Plateau is the Tibetan Empire from the 7th century to the 9th century AD. Monsoons are caused by the different amplitudes of surface temperature seasonal cycles between land and oceans. This differential warming occurs because heating rates differ between land and water. Ocean heating

Ordos Plateau - Misplaced Pages Continue

5040-538: The Eurasian Plate . About 50 million years ago, this fast-moving Indo-Australian plate had completely closed the Tethys Ocean , the existence of which has been determined by sedimentary rocks settled on the ocean floor, and the volcanoes that fringed its edges. Since these sediments were light, they crumpled into mountain ranges rather than sinking to the floor. During this early stage of its formation in

5160-577: The Grand Canal . The Ordosian culture was followed by the Zhukaigou culture of the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. While the Zhukaigou culture population appears to have been exclusively Mongoloid , as known from their skeletal remains and artifacts, the Ordos culture is thought to have been the most eastern extension of Eurasian nomads , and at least partly of Europoid peoples. Under

5280-509: The Kalmyk variety ) and Buryat, both of which are spoken in Russia, Mongolia, and China; and Ordos , spoken around Inner Mongolia's Ordos City . The influential classification of Sanžeev (1953) proposed a "Mongolian language" consisting of just the three dialects Khalkha, Chakhar, and Ordos, with Buryat and Oirat judged to be independent languages. On the other hand, Luvsanvandan (1959) proposed

5400-971: The Kunlun Mountains separate the plateau from the Tarim Basin. About halfway across the Tarim the bounding range becomes the Altyn-Tagh and the Kunluns, by convention, continue somewhat to the south. In the 'V' formed by this split is the western part of the Qaidam Basin . The Altyn-Tagh ends near the Dangjin pass on the Dunhuang – Golmud road. To the west are short ranges called the Danghe, Yema, Shule, and Tulai Nanshans. The easternmost range

5520-470: The Loess Plateau —whose eroded silt produces the river's yellow color—for the Ordos proper before turning east in Inner Mongolia . It continues this course for about 320 kilometers (199 mi) before Shaanxi 's Lüliang Mountains force it sharply southwards. The eastern side of the loop runs about 600 kilometers (373 mi), re-entering the Loess Plateau before reaching its confluence with

5640-458: The Qin and Han dynasties the area came under at least loose Chinese control. The Zhukaigou culture is one of the neolithic cultures at Ordos, dated between 2200 and 1500 BC. It is associated with about 327 burials, with recent maternal genetic evidence showing that they were related to the remains from Yinniugou, as well as modern populations like Daurs and Evenks . The archaeological finds at

5760-565: The Scythian art of regions much further west, and also Chinese art . Its relationship with the Xiongnu is controversial; for some scholars they are the same, and for others different. Many buried metal artefacts have emerged on the surface of the land as a result of the progressive desertification of the region. According to Iaroslav Lebedynsky , they are thought to be the easternmost people of Scythian affinity to have settled here, just to

5880-615: The Shuluun Huh/Zhènglán Banner , and is written in the traditional Mongolian script . The number of Mongolian speakers in China is still larger than in the state of Mongolia, where the majority of Mongolians in China speak one of the Khorchin dialects , or rather more than two million of them speak the Khorchin dialect itself as their mother tongue, so that the Khorchin dialect group has about as many speakers as

6000-639: The Uyghur alphabet), 'Phags-pa script (Ph) (used in decrees), Chinese (SM) ( The Secret History of the Mongols ), and Arabic (AM) (used in dictionaries). While they are the earliest texts available, these texts have come to be called " Middle Mongol " in scholarly practice. The documents in UM script show some distinct linguistic characteristics and are therefore often distinguished by terming their language "Preclassical Mongolian". The Yuan dynasty referred to

6120-578: The Wei River at Tongguan in Shaanxi and again turning sharply eastward. It then flows through Henan 's Hangu Pass to enter the North China Plain . The Wei River largely forms a southern side of the imperfect rectangle formed by these curves of the Yellow River, flowing about 560 kilometers (348 mi) through the Loess Plateau from a source not far from its southwestern corner to

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6240-408: The Xiongnu bronze culture and show strong Mongoloid features. A similar type of burial at Hulusitai around Bayannur , uncovered in 1979 and dated to between the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, is considered the only Xiongnu site along the northern slope of Yinshan . The site consisted of mainly bronze artifacts and pottery and 27 horse skeletal remains. Further excavation in 1983 at Guoxianyaozi uncovered

6360-465: The Xiongnu . The Ordos Plateau contained the best pasture lands on the Asian steppe . The Ordos are mainly known from their skeletal remains and artifacts. The Ordos culture of about 500 BC to AD 100 is known for its "Ordos bronzes", blade weapons, finials for tent-poles, horse gear, and small plaques and fittings for clothes and horse harness, using animal style decoration with relationships both with

6480-799: The Zhukaigou culture , which was followed by the iron-wielding Ordos culture . The Yellow River flows from its source in the Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve on the Tibetan Plateau in a roughly eastern course before turning northwest after its confluence with the Bai He ("White River") in Maqu County , Gansu . After reversing course back towards the east, it begins the massive Ordos Loop by turning northwards at Zhongning County in Ningxia . It runs northwards about 640 kilometers (398 mi), leaving

6600-577: The headwaters of the drainage basins of most of the streams and rivers in surrounding regions . This includes the three longest rivers in Asia (the Yellow , Yangtze , and Mekong ). Its tens of thousands of glaciers and other geographical and ecological features serve as a " water tower " storing water and maintaining flow . It is sometimes termed the Third Pole because its ice fields contain

6720-553: The syllable 's position in the word. In word-initial syllables, there is a phonemic contrast in vowel length . A long vowel has about 208% the length of a short vowel. In word-medial and word-final syllables, formerly long vowels are now only 127% as long as short vowels in initial syllables, but they are still distinct from initial-syllable short vowels. Short vowels in noninitial syllables differ from short vowels in initial syllables by being only 71% as long and by being centralized in articulation. As they are nonphonemic, their position

6840-696: The thermal low pressure caused by the heating, there was no monsoon over the Indian subcontinent . This lack of monsoon caused extensive rainfall over the Sahara , expansion of the Thar Desert , more dust deposited into the Arabian Sea , and a lowering of the biotic life zones on the Indian subcontinent. Animals responded to this shift in climate, with the Javan rusa migrating into India. In addition,

6960-490: The Chinese lowlands. Ice of the plateau provides a valuable window to the past. In 2015, researchers studying the Plateau reached the top of the Guliya glacier , with ice thickness of 310 m (1,020 ft), and drilled to a depth of 50 m (160 ft) in order to recover ice core samples. Due to the extremely low biomass in those 15,000-year-old samples, it had taken around 5 years of research to extract 33 viruses, of which 28 were new to science. None had survived

7080-411: The Chinese. From there, the Xiongnu conducted numerous devastating raids into Chinese territory (167, 158, 142, 129 BC). The Han dynasty started to fight the Xiongnu in the 2nd century BC under emperor Han Wudi , and colonized the area of the Ordos under Shuofang commandery in 127 BC. Prior to the campaign, there were already commanderies established earlier by Qin and Zhao until they were overrun by

7200-431: The Guanzhong region, Xi'an , is the 10th largest Chinese city and the most populous settlement in the entire Northwest China , and had long served as the capital of China in more than a dozen ancient dynasties . The area is of high archaeological interest. Skeletal remains and artifacts show the Ordosian culture occupied the area in the Upper Paleolithic . The late Neolithic saw the development or introduction of

7320-406: The Hetao region. Throughout Chinese history, the Hetao region was of major strategic importance and therefore hotly contested against various Eurasian nomads such as Di and Rong ( Shang and Zhou dynasties), Xiongnu ( Qin and Han dynasty ), Rouran ( Northern Wei ), Eastern Göktürk ( Sui and Tang dynasty ) and Mongols ( Ming dynasty ). The more populous south Ordos is traversed by

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7440-437: The Inner Mongolia since September, which caused widespread protests among ethnic Mongol communities. These protests were quickly suppressed by the Chinese government. Mandarin has been deemed the only language of instruction for all subjects as of September 2023. Mongolian belongs to the Mongolic languages . The delimitation of the Mongolian language within Mongolic is a much disputed theoretical problem, one whose resolution

7560-413: The Khalkha dialect group in the State of Mongolia. Nevertheless, the Chakhar dialect, which today has only about 100,000 native speakers and belongs to the Khalkha dialect group, is the basis of standard Mongolian in China. The characteristic differences in the pronunciation of the two standard varieties include the umlauts in Inner Mongolia and the palatalized consonants in Mongolia (see below) as well as

7680-707: The Late Palaeogene, Tibet consisted of a deep palaeovalley bounded by multiple mountain ranges rather than the more topographically uniform elevated flatland that it is today. The Tibetan Plateau's mean elevation continued to vary since its initial uplift in the Eocene; isotopic records show the plateau's altitude was around 3,000 metres above sea level around the Oligocene-Miocene boundary and that it fell by 900 metres between 25.5 and 21.6 million years ago, attributable to tectonic unroofing from east–west extension or to erosion from climatic weathering. The plateau subsequently rose by 500 to 1,000 metres between 21.6 and 20.4 million years ago. Palaeobotanical evidence indicates that

7800-427: The Mongolian language in Chinese as "Guoyu" ( Chinese : 國語 ), which means "National language", a term also used by other non-Han dynasties to refer to their languages such as the Manchu language during the Qing dynasty , the Jurchen language during the Jin dynasty (1115–1234) , the Khitan language during the Liao dynasty , and the Xianbei language during the Northern Wei period. The next distinct period

7920-439: The Mongolic language family into four distinct linguistic branches: The Common Mongolic branch is grouped in the following way: There is no disagreement that the Khalkha dialect of the Mongolian state is Mongolian. However, the status of certain varieties in the Common Mongolic group—whether they are languages distinct from Mongolian or just dialects of it—is disputed. There are at least three such varieties: Oirat (including

8040-512: The Nujiang Suture Zone and the Yarlung-Zangpo Suture Zone remained tropical or subtropical lowlands until the latest Oligocene or Early Miocene , enabling biotic interchange across Tibet. The age of east–west grabens in the Lhasa and Himalaya terranes suggests that the plateau's elevation was close to its modern altitude by around 14 to 8 million years ago. Erosion rates in Tibet decreased significantly around 10 million years ago. The Indo-Australian plate continues to be driven horizontally below

8160-400: The Ordos people tend to show straight hair. This is especially true of archaeological finds from Baotou (M63:22, M63:23, M84:5), Etuoke (M1, M6), Xihaokou (M3), lower Woertuhao (M3:1), and Mengjialiang. Horse nomads occupied the area of the Ordos Plateau previously settled by the Zhukaigou culture from the 6th to the 2nd century BC, creating the Ordos culture , before being driven away by

8280-428: The Tibetan Plateau, which forces the plateau to move upwards; the plateau is still rising at a rate of approximately 5 mm (0.2 in) per year (although erosion reduces the actual increase in height). Much of the Tibetan Plateau is of relatively low relief. The cause of this is debated among geologists. Some argue that the Tibetan Plateau is an uplifted peneplain formed at low altitude, while others argue that

8400-425: The Tibetan plateau from around 200,000 to 40,000 years ago, according to a study published in Nature . Nomads on the Tibetan Plateau and in the Himalayas are the remainders of nomadic practices historically once widespread in Asia and Africa. Pastoral nomads constitute about 40% of the ethnic Tibetan population. The presence of nomadic peoples on the plateau is predicated on their adaptation to survival on

8520-415: The Xiongnu in 209 BC. Mongolian language Mongolian is the principal language of the Mongolic language family that originated in the Mongolian Plateau . It is spoken by ethnic Mongols and other closely related Mongolic peoples who are native to modern Mongolia and surrounding parts of East and North Asia . Mongolian is the official language of Mongolia and Inner Mongolia and

8640-426: The accusative, while it must take the nominative if it is indefinite . In addition to case, a number of postpositions exist that usually govern the genitive, dative-locative, comitative and privative cases, including a marked form of the nominative (which can itself then take further case forms). There is also a possible attributive case (when a noun is used attributively ), which is unmarked in most nouns but takes

8760-433: The air cools due to expansion in lower pressure, which in turn produces condensation and precipitation. In winter, the land cools off quickly, but the ocean maintains the heat longer. The hot air over the ocean rises, creating a low-pressure area and a breeze from land to ocean while a large area of drying high pressure is formed over the land, increased by wintertime cooling. Monsoons are similar to sea and land breezes ,

8880-570: The central problem remains the question of how to classify Chakhar, Khalkha, and Khorchin in relation to each other and in relation to Buryat and Oirat. The split of [tʃ] into [tʃ] before *i and [ts] before all other reconstructed vowels, which is found in Mongolia but not in Inner Mongolia, is often cited as a fundamental distinction, for example Proto-Mongolic *tʃil , Khalkha /tʃiɮ/ , Chakhar /tʃil/ 'year' versus Proto-Mongolic *tʃøhelen , Khalkha /tsoːɮəŋ/ , Chakhar /tʃoːləŋ/ 'few'. On

9000-519: The east and the Wei River from the west. At its juncture with the Wei the Yellow River turns east toward the North China Plain. One can go upstream on the Wei with the Qin Mountains with Mount Hua on the south past Weinan to Xi'an , a former capital of China and now a large city. West of Xi'an is Xianyang , the Qin dynasty capital. The river exits the mountains west of Baoji . There is

9120-551: The east of the better-known Yuezhi . Because the people represented in archaeological finds tend to display Europoid features, also earlier noted by Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen , Lededynsky suggests the Ordos to be of Scythian affinity. The weapons, found in tombs throughout the steppes of the Ordos, are very close to those of the Scythians, known on the Asian Steppe as Sakas . The Ordos were in contact and often at war with

9240-737: The east, the Eastern Hu ( 東胡 ; Donghu ), who shared a similar "art of the steppes," but appear to have been Mongoloids. They may also have been related to the Di people of Chinese annals. In Chinese accounts, the Xiongnu first appear at Ordos in the Yizhoushu and Shanhaijing during the Warring States period before it was occupied by Qin and Zhao . It is generally thought to be their homeland, however when exactly they came to occupy

9360-593: The elevation and low precipitation. The Tibetan Plateau hosts the Tibetan wolf , and species of snow leopard , wild yak , wild ass , cranes, vultures, hawks, geese, snakes, and water buffalo . One notable animal is the high-altitude jumping spider , that can live at elevations of over 6,500 metres (21,300 ft). Ecoregions found on the Tibetan Plateau, as defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature , are as follows: Extinct humans ( Denisovans ) lived on

9480-412: The examples given above, the words are phonetically [ˈxɔjɔ̆r] , [ˈatʃĭɮ] , and [ˈsaːrmăɢ] . The phonetic form of the epenthetic vowel follows from vowel harmony triggered by the vowel in the preceding syllable. Usually it is a centralized version of the same sound, with the following exceptions: preceding /u/ produces [e] ; /i/ will be ignored if there is a nonneutral vowel earlier in the word; and

9600-553: The extraction process. Phylogenetic analysis suggests those viruses infected plants or other microorganisms. The Tibetan Plateau contains the world's third-largest store of ice. Qin Dahe, the former head of the China Meteorological Administration , issued the following assessment in 2009: Temperatures are rising four times faster than elsewhere in China, and the Tibetan glaciers are retreating at

9720-572: The following Mongol dialects, most of which are spoken in Inner Mongolia . There are two standard varieties of Mongolian. Standard Mongolian in the state of Mongolia is based on the northern Khalkha Mongolian dialects, which include the dialect of Ulaanbaatar , and is written in the Mongolian Cyrillic script . Standard Mongolian in Inner Mongolia is based on the Chakhar Mongolian of the Khalkha dialect group, spoken in

9840-444: The following restrictions obtain: Clusters that do not conform to these restrictions will be broken up by an epenthetic nonphonemic vowel in a syllabification that takes place from right to left. For instance, hoyor 'two', azhil 'work', and saarmag 'neutral' are, phonemically, /xɔjr/ , /atʃɮ/ , and /saːrmɡ/ respectively. In such cases, an epenthetic vowel is inserted to prevent disallowed consonant clusters. Thus, in

9960-648: The glaciers in Tibet created meltwater lakes in the Qaidam Basin , the Tarim Basin , and the Gobi Desert , despite the strong evaporation caused by the low latitude. Silt and clay from the glaciers accumulated in these lakes; when the lakes dried at the end of the ice age, the silt and clay were blown by the downslope wind off the Plateau. These airborne fine grains produced the enormous amount of loess in

10080-538: The grassland and desert, belongs historically and culturally to nomads. The region had been occupied by humans since at least Upper Paleolithic , when the culture may be known as the Ordosian culture . The Ordosian culture, also sometimes called the Ordos culture, is documented from the Upper Palaeolithic . The points and sides of their tools indicate a "Moustero- Levalloisian " element. They seemed to have

10200-400: The heat capacity of the layer participating in the seasonal cycle is much larger over the oceans than over land, with the consequence that the land warms and cools faster than the ocean. In turn, air over the land warms faster and reaches a higher temperature than does air over the ocean. The warmer air over land tends to rise, creating an area of low pressure . The pressure anomaly then causes

10320-583: The independent words derived using verbal suffixes can roughly be divided into three classes: final verbs , which can only be used sentence-finally, i.e. ‑ na (mainly future or generic statements) or ‑ ö (second person imperative); participles (often called "verbal nouns"), which can be used clause-finally or attributively, i.e. ‑ san ( perfect - past ) or ‑ maar 'want to'; and converbs , which can link clauses or function adverbially , i.e. ‑ zh (qualifies for any adverbial function or neutrally connects two sentences ) or ‑ tal (the action of

10440-413: The language is spoken by roughly half of the country's 5.8 million ethnic Mongols (2005 estimate) However, the exact number of Mongolian speakers in China is unknown, as there is no data available on the language proficiency of that country's citizens. The use of Mongolian in Inner Mongolia has witnessed periods of decline and revival over the last few hundred years. The language experienced a decline during

10560-405: The largest reserve of fresh water outside the polar regions. The impact of climate change on the Tibetan Plateau is of ongoing scientific interest. The Tibetan Plateau is surrounded by the massive mountain ranges of high-mountain Asia . The plateau is bordered to the south by the inner Himalayan range , to the north by the Kunlun Mountains , which separate it from the Tarim Basin , and to

10680-405: The late Qing period, a revival between 1947 and 1965, a second decline between 1966 and 1976, a second revival between 1977 and 1992, and a third decline between 1995 and 2012. However, in spite of the decline of the Mongolian language in some of Inner Mongolia's urban areas and educational spheres, the ethnic identity of the urbanized Chinese-speaking Mongols is most likely going to survive due to

10800-404: The latter, the plateau is affected by distributed deformation resulting from flow within the crust. The Tibetan Plateau supports a variety of ecosystems, most of them classified as montane grasslands. While parts of the plateau feature an alpine tundra -like environment, other areas feature monsoon-influenced shrublands and forests. Species diversity is generally reduced on the plateau due to

10920-418: The leftmost heavy syllable gets the stress. Yet other positions were taken in works published between 1835 and 1915. Walker (1997) proposes that stress falls on the rightmost heavy syllable unless this syllable is word-final: A "heavy syllable" is defined as one that is at least the length of a full vowel; short word-initial syllables are thereby excluded. If a word is bisyllabic and the only heavy syllable

11040-631: The literature of the Khitan and other Xianbei peoples. The Bugut inscription dated to 584 CE and the Inscription of Hüis Tolgoi dated to 604–620 CE appear to be the oldest substantial Mongolic or Para-Mongolic texts discovered. Writers such as Owen Lattimore referred to Mongolian as "the Mongol language". The earliest surviving Mongolian text may be the Stele of Yisüngge  [ ru ] ,

11160-428: The low relief stems from erosion and infill of topographic depressions that occurred at already high elevations. The current tectonics of the plateau are also debated. The best-regarded explanations are provided by the block model and the alternative continuum model. According to the former, the crust of the plateau is formed of several blocks with little internal deformation separated by major strike-slip faults . In

11280-421: The main clause takes place until the action expressed by the suffixed verb begins). Roughly speaking, Mongolian has between seven and nine cases : nominative ( unmarked ), genitive , dative - locative , accusative , ablative , instrumental , comitative , privative and directive , though the final two are not always considered part of the case paradigm. If a direct object is definite , it must take

11400-646: The middle, the Horcin-Haracin dialect in the East, Oriat-Hilimag in the west, and Bargu–Buriyad in the north. Some Western scholars propose that the relatively well researched Ordos variety is an independent language due to its conservative syllable structure and phoneme inventory. While the placement of a variety like Alasha , which is under the cultural influence of Inner Mongolia but historically tied to Oirat, and of other border varieties like Darkhad would very likely remain problematic in any classification,

11520-634: The mountains and enters Ningxia near Zhongwei . It runs east with the Tengger Desert in Inner Mongolia to the north and hills to the south. It turns north through dry country to past the Qingtongxia dam to the irrigated area around Wuzhong City . It continues north past Yinchuan , the capital of Ningxia. To the west are the Helan Mountains . The river leaves the northern tip of Ningxia south of Wuhai , flows through desert and enters

11640-507: The mountains to the east made a natural fortification and war horses were readily available from the northern grasslands. The Zhou dynasty and the Qin dynasty started in the Wei valley. Xi'an on the lower Wei was several times the capital of China. By the Tang dynasty the economic center of China had shifted to the Yangzi valley and the Wei region became partly dependent of food imported up

11760-688: The northeast by the Qilian Mountains , which separate the plateau from the Hexi Corridor and Gobi Desert . To the east and southeast the plateau gives way to the forested gorge and ridge geography of the mountainous headwaters of the Salween , Mekong , and Yangtze rivers in northwest Yunnan and western Sichuan (the Hengduan Mountains ). In the west, the curve of the rugged Karakoram range of northern Kashmir embraces

11880-491: The only vowel in the word stem is /i/ , the suffixes will use the +ATR suffix forms. Mongolian also has rounding harmony, which does not apply to close vowels. If a stem contains /o/ (or /ɔ/ ), a suffix that is specified for an open vowel will have [o] (or [ɔ] , respectively) as well. However, this process is blocked by the presence of /u/ (or /ʊ/ ) and /ei/ ; e.g. /ɔr-ɮɔ/ 'came in', but /ɔr-ʊɮ-ɮa/ 'inserted'. The pronunciation of long and short vowels depends on

12000-618: The other hand, the split between the past tense verbal suffixes - /sŋ/ in the Central varieties v. - /dʒɛː/ in the Eastern varieties is usually seen as a merely stochastic difference. In Inner Mongolia, official language policy divides the Mongolian language into three dialects: Standard Mongolian of Inner Mongolia , Oirat, and Barghu-Buryat. The Standard Mongolian of Inner Mongolia is said to consist of Chakhar, Ordos, Baarin , Khorchin, Kharchin, and Alasha. The authorities have synthesized

12120-448: The phonology, most of what is said about morphology and syntax also holds true for Chakhar, while Khorchin is somewhat more diverse. Modern Mongolian is an agglutinative —almost exclusively suffixing—language, with the only exception being reduplication. Mongolian also does not have gendered nouns, or definite articles like "the". Most of the suffixes consist of a single morpheme . There are many derivational morphemes. For example,

12240-513: The plateau. Due to its great extent, this glaciation in the subtropics was an important element of radiative forcing . With a much lower latitude, the ice in Tibet reflected at least four times more radiation energy per unit area into space than ice at higher latitudes . Thus, while the modern plateau heats the overlying atmosphere, during the Last Ice Age it helped to cool it. This cooling had multiple effects on regional climate. Without

12360-406: The plateau. The Indus River originates in the western Tibetan Plateau in the vicinity of Lake Manasarovar . The Tibetan Plateau is bounded in the north by a broad escarpment where the altitude drops from around 5,000 metres (16,000 ft) to 1,500 metres (4,900 ft) over a horizontal distance of less than 150 kilometres (93 mi). Along the escarpment is a range of mountains. In the west,

12480-666: The pre-Han and Han populations of the period. Their former territory is now located just north of the Great Wall of China, and on the south bank of the northernmost hook of the Yellow River . The western neighbours of Ordos may have been identical with the Yuezhi who, after being vanquished by the Xiongnu , migrated to southern Asia to form the Kushan Empire . They were also culturally related to another nomadic tribe to

12600-610: The preferential policies for minorities in education, healthcare, family planning, school admissions, the hiring and promotion, the financing and taxation of businesses, and regional infrastructural support given to ethnic minorities in China. In 2020, the Chinese government required three subjects—language and literature, politics, and history—to be taught in Mandarin in Mongolian-language primary and secondary schools in

12720-601: The presence of urban ethnic communities. The multilingual situation in Inner Mongolia does not appear to obstruct efforts by ethnic Mongols to preserve their language. Although an unknown number of Mongols in China, such as the Tumets, may have completely or partially lost the ability to speak their language, they are still registered as ethnic Mongols and continue to identify themselves as ethnic Mongols. The children of inter-ethnic Mongol-Chinese marriages also claim to be and are registered as ethnic Mongols so they can benefit from

12840-591: The region is unclear, and it might have been much earlier than traditionally thought, as suggested by archaeological finds. As the Xiongnu expanded southward into Yuezhi territory around 160 BC under their leader Modun , the Yuezhi in turn defeated the Sakas (Scythians) and pushed them away at the Issyk Kul . It is thought the Xiongnu also occupied the Ordos area during the same period, when they came in direct contact with

12960-415: The site are similar to those of the lower Xiajiadian culture . These finds are important as they are associated with the development of snake pattern designs on the decoration of weapon and animal-depicting artifacts which later would become a characteristic style of the Ordos. The skeletal remains at Taohongbala (桃紅巴拉) tomb dated to between the 7th and 6th centuries BC are generally identified as belonging to

13080-610: The splitting of the Middle Mongol affricates * ʧ ( ᠴ č ) and * ʤ ( ᠵ ǰ ) into ʦ ( ц c ) and ʣ ( з z ) versus ʧ ( ч č ) and ʤ ( ж ž ) in Mongolia: Aside from these differences in pronunciation, there are also differences in vocabulary and language use: in the state of Mongolia more loanwords from Russian are being used, while in Inner Mongolia more loanwords from Chinese have been adopted. The following description

13200-421: The stem with certain case endings (e.g. цэрэг  ( tsereg ) → цэргийн  ( tsergiin )). The additional morphological rules specific to loanwords are not covered. Tibetan Plateau The Tibetan Plateau , also known as Qinghai–Tibet Plateau and Qing–Zang Plateau , is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central , South , and East Asia . . Geographically, it

13320-511: The steppe have grasslands that can sustainably support populations of nomadic herdsmen, although frost occurs for six months of the year. Permafrost occurs over extensive parts of the plateau. Proceeding to the north and northwest, the plateau becomes progressively higher, colder, and drier, until reaching the remote Changtang region in the northwestern part of the plateau. Here the average altitude exceeds 5,000 metres (16,000 ft) and winter temperatures can drop to −40 °C (−40 °F). As

13440-430: The suffix ‑ н  (‑ n ) when the stem has an unstable nasal. Nouns can also take a reflexive-possessive suffix , indicating that the marked noun is possessed by the subject of the sentence: bi najz-aa avar-san I friend- reflexive-possessive save- perfect "I saved my friend". However, there are also somewhat noun-like adjectives to which case suffixes seemingly cannot be attached directly unless there

13560-456: The transition, a major shift in the vowel-harmony paradigm occurred, long vowels developed, the case system changed slightly, and the verbal system was restructured. Mongolian is related to the extinct Khitan language . It was believed that Mongolian was related to Turkic , Tungusic , Korean and Japonic languages but this view is now seen as obsolete by a majority of (but not all) comparative linguists. These languages have been grouped under

13680-559: The upper reaches of Wei River 's two largest tributaries , the Jing and Luo Rivers , whose valleys cut through the mountain ranges east of Tianshui and south of Pingliang , Qingyang and Yan'an to drain into the crescentic Guanzhong Plain on the other side. The south Ordos and the Guanzhong Plain together were one of the cradles of Chinese civilization and remains densely populated throughout history. The largest city in

13800-424: The voiceless velar plosive [k] ; instead, it has a voiced alveolar lateral fricative , /ɮ/ , which is often realized as voiceless [ɬ] . In word-final position, /n/ (if not followed by a vowel in historical forms) is realized as [ŋ] . Aspirated consonants are preaspirated in medial and word-final contexts, devoicing preceding consonants and vowels. Devoiced short vowels are often deleted. The maximal syllable

13920-479: The west of Lanzhou is Xining from whence caravans ( and now the railway ) started for Lhasa . North of Xining the Gansu or Hexi Corridor runs along the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau . This corridor and the Wei River valley became the main silk road route from China proper to the Tarim basin and westward. Downriver (north) from Lanzhou is a gorge through Gaolan County and Baiyin . The river emerges from

14040-547: The word baiguullagiinh consists of the root bai 'to be', an epenthetic ‑ g ‑, the causative ‑ uul ‑ (hence 'to found'), the derivative suffix ‑ laga that forms nouns created by the action (like - ation in organisation ) and the complex suffix ‑ iinh denoting something that belongs to the modified word (‑ iin would be genitive ). Nominal compounds are quite frequent. Some derivational verbal suffixes are rather productive , e.g. yarih 'to speak', yarilc 'to speak with each other'. Formally,

14160-400: The world's grassland by raising livestock rather than crops, which are unsuitable to the terrain. Archaeological evidence suggests that the earliest human occupation of the plateau occurred between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago. Since colonization of the Tibetan Plateau, Tibetan culture has adapted and flourished in the western, southern, and eastern regions of the plateau. The northern portion,

14280-605: The younger mountain ranges on the planet, consisting mostly of uplifted sedimentary and metamorphic rock . Their formation is a result of a continental collision or orogeny along the convergent boundary between the Indo-Australian Plate and the Eurasian Plate . The collision began in the Upper Cretaceous period about 70 million years ago, when the north-moving Indo-Australian Plate , moving at about 15 cm (6 in) per year, collided with

14400-417: Was created, giving distinctive evidence on early classical Mongolian phonological peculiarities. Mongolian is the official national language of Mongolia, where it is spoken (but not always written) by nearly 3.6 million people (2014 estimate), and the official provincial language (both spoken and written forms) of Inner Mongolia, where there are at least 4.1 million ethnic Mongols. Across the whole of China,

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