| Summary: | The paper analyzes the explanation of language sounds in The Lotus
Sutra, a traditional grammatical writing of the Mongolian language, viewed from the
perspectives of the theory of the Five Elements (‘Five Wind Branches’) – and compares
the former with the sound producing ways and positions in modern Mongolian. As
is shown in The Lotus Sutra, the vowel sounds used to be classified into ‘masculine’
<a, o, u>; ‘feminine’ <e, ö, ü>; and ‘neutral’ <i>, however, a strong masculine sound
<i> lost its fundamental phonetic role and turned into a neutral one. Analyzing the ways and positions of sound production properly prescribed in the ancient grammar,
it can be concluded that there were several ways and positions to produce consonant
sounds, for instance, the labial sounds ― ones resulting from lip-to-teeth contact; labiodental sounds ― ones resulting from lip-to-teeth contact; dental sounds – front ones
articulated with the tongue touching the front teeth; and finally, alveolar sounds – ones
made with the tongue touching the alveoles. The comparative study basically concludes
as follows: observing some special features of the sounds <a, ŋ, q, g, g> in Indian and
Sanskrit languages it has properly classified the ways of sound production as those
typical for ‘wind element’. For example, the vowel <e> in Modern Mongolian has
been clustered with velar (guttural) vowels, such as <a, ŋ, q, g, g>. This classification,
in turn, is based on the natural evolution and production of the sound <e>. According
to Sh. Luvsanvandan and U. Mandakh, the sound <e> could have been pronounced as
a mediolingual and post-mediolingual sound. Also, the scholar Phagpa Lama clarified
how the sound was pronounced in his Square Script: as Nicholas N. Poppe defined
clearly, there had existed two different types of the sound <e> – long (open) and short
(narrow) ones.
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