Abstract:
This thesis explores semantic and grammatical features of eating and drinking expressions in Modern Written Mongolian. Eating and drinking expressions in Mongolian are divided into two types based on their semantic and structural features: (i) free word combinations and (ii) phraseological expressions. A sketch of Mongolian grammar is provided as a guide to discuss the grammatical properties of EAT and DRINK verbs. Free word combinations and phraseology lie at two poles on the continuum of semantic transparency and structural fixedness in a language. I move from the analysis of free word combinations at one pole of the continuum to phraseological expressions at the other pole in my analysis. The data in my analysis chapters mainly come from the Corpus of Modern Written Mongolian. The examples used for the sketch of Mongolian grammar are either taken from the reference books cited or created by myself. In the chapter on free word combinations containing EAT and DRINK verbs, I discuss the following issues in Mongolian: (1) verbs of consumption and their semantic categorization in Mongolian; (2) semantico-grammatical properties of the verbs ide-'eat' and uuγu-'drink'; (3) grammatical means of expressing direct objects of ide-and uuγu-; (4) nominalisation of participial forms of ide-and uuγu-; (5) cleft constructions which include ide-and uuγu-; and (6) topic-focus structures which include ide-and uuγu-. Of these, (4), (5) and (6) are closely interrelated, as nominalisation, topicalisation and cleft constructions which include the two verbs lie at different levels of analysis: the former two are interrelated syntactic (grammatical) processes, and syntactic structures containing cleft constructions are used to express topic-focus structures which function at a pragmatic level. The study of phraseological eating and drinking expressions in Mongolian is grounded in the Eastern European framework of phraseology. The first part of the chapter analyses linguistic features of idioms, proverbs, slogans, routine formulae, similes, exaggeration, riddles and two part allegorical sayings which relate to ide-and uuγu-. The second part of the chapter explains the cognitive mechanisms.