2. Outline of Switch-Reference in Mongolian

The following outline is entirely based on the works mentioned. I am particularly endebted to Tserenpil-Kullmann and Bayarmaa, which are the source of a good proportion of the example sentences in this post. (Many but not all sentences are so marked.)

The following is a characterisation of SR in Mongolian.

1. SR in Mongolian operates biclausally between a subordinate clause (the marked clause) and a main clause (the reference clause). It serves to identify the subject of the subordinate clause as being the same as or different from that of the main clause. The subordinate clause may be either a daughter clause (core argument of the sentence) or an adsubordinate clause (e.g., adverbial clause).

SR in the sense that Jacobsen defined it (obligatorily indicated by a morpheme) does not operate over cosubordinate constructions (clause chains), although a couple of converbs are related to SR.

2. SR in Mongolian involves two separate grammatical systems.

a) Possessive markers (suffixes / particles) are the most consistently observable markers of SR.

If there is no reflexive suffix, the subject is different from that of the main clause. Non-reflexive possessive particles, which are in a complementary distribution with the reflexive suffix, explicitly indicate 'different subject' but are not always present.

Although the reflexive suffix is the most consistent and visible marker of SR, it is not always available to mark 'same subject', either because it is not applicable grammatically or because it is blocked by a small number of verbs in the main clause.

Differential subject marking in subordinate clauses has two features (Guntsetseg 2016):

i) There is a stronger tendency to differential subject marking when the subject of the subordinate clause is adjacent to the subject of the main clause, thus highlighting the difference between the subject of the main clause (nominative) and that of the subordinate clause (accusative or genitive).

ii) The propensity to Accusative marking follows a 'referentiality scale'. Personal pronouns and proper names adjacent to the subject of the main clause always bear the Accusative; definite noun phrases may take either Nominative or Accusative, and indefinite and very weakly indefinite noun phrases always take the Nominative. Personal pronouns and personal names are most consistently marked for 'different subject'.

While Accusative marking can serve to highlight the difference between the subject of the subordinate clause and that of the main clause, it is not a definitive marker of 'different subject'. Differential subject marking must be interpreted within the grammatical context. For example, the subject of the subordinate clause may be unexpressed, the subordinate clause may contain an ordinary Accusative, or the main clause may have a fronted Accusative.

Leaving aside certain gaps and exceptions, the general operation of SR in Mongolian may be schematically represented as follows:

3. A requirement for 'same subject' or 'different subject' may be associated with certain converbs in both ad-subordinate and co-subordinate clauses, but this must be regarded as a specific grammatical property of the converbs in question.