Vowel Space of Kheshigten Mongolian

The Kheshigten dialect is an understudied dialect of the Mongolian language and is spoken by only a handful of speakers in the world. Almost all speakers are bilingual in Mandarin Chinese, as the geographic environment requires. Because of this language contact, and perhaps for dialect-specific reasons as well, the phonetics of vowels may differ considerably from other dialects of Mongolian. In the present study, we will explore and investigate the vowel inventory, vowel duration, vowel space, and vowel quality of three native bilingual speakers of Kheshigten Mongolian and Mandarin Chinese using Swadesh list to build a new corpus of Kheshigten Mongolian. The data was analyzed with the previous studies of Khalkha Mongolian and Chakhar Mongolian to compare the differences and similarities. We will look at how the vowel system of this dialect differs from the closest dialect Chakhal in Inner Mongolia and the well-studied variety, the standard dialect Khalkha in Mongolia. We discovered that the Kheshigten Mongolian is a unique dialect of the Mongolian language, which is very different from Khalkha Mongolian based on the previous vowel study on that dialect. Kheshigten Mongolian is also different from Chakhar that belongs to the same group as Kheshigten Mongolian, but Kheshigten Mongolian shares minor similarities with Chakhar Mongolian. We also revealed some unexpected phonological phenomena, such as epenthetic glides for avoiding forming diphthongs, syllabic nasals, height harmony, and the flex long vowel phenomenon that may potentially create new diphthongs by being assimilated by the following consonant.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359019530_Vowel_Space_of_Kheshigten_Mongolian