Mongolian Analytical Word Forms: an Effort of Distributive and Statistical Classification

The paper attempts to estimate the frequency of use of Mongolian analytical word forms. A wide approach to analytical structures represented in the so called grammaticalization (grammatization) theory is considered to be most heuristically efficient; but the approach should be supplemented with quantitative methods developed in corpus linguistics. The estimation used materials of the General Corpus of Mongolian (Rus. GKMYa-1a) and served the basis for the investigation of most frequently used analytical word forms. The latter are organized in direct alphabetical order (by structural analytical modules), within the framework synthetical grammatemes (as constituent parts of analytical grammatemes) are represented in inverse order, and inside that order — in the descending order of corresponding frequencies. The article mentions the most frequently used analytical word forms the absolute frequency of which exceeds 10 entries, and the relative one — 9 ipm. Such word forms of GKMYa-1a number 1 818.
One of the major difficulties faced by the researcher was that the very list of properties inherent to analytical forms as such is not clear enough. Evidently, the multitude is of diffusive nature, i.e. its boundaries are vague. Still, those can be investigated with some quite precise methods, given that the methods essentially correlate with their real object, i.e. are basically quantitative. For that purpose specific formal properties of analytical forms should be identified at the initial stage of the study.
The mentioned so-called ‘wide approach’ to analytical forms has been developed in works by V. Vinogradov, S. Katsnelson, V. Zhirmunsky, V. Gak, Yu. Maslov and others. But when it comes identification of analytical word forms the authors ignore quantitative (statistical) methods and examine only semantic and syntactical specifics of analytical structures constituted by such analytical forms; thus, it is necessary to clarify the applicability of the probabilistic-distributive approach to analytical forms identification procedures as such.
The paper aims to provide a primary quantitative systematization of Mongolian language materials resulting from a case study of the General Corpus of Mongolian developed by the author and presented in a number of publications.
Materials shall be more descriptive if presented in a dictionary form.

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