Complex Sentences: гэж, –ийг and the –х Clause

The signal comes last

Take an English sentence with a clause inside it: I didn't know that it had snowed. Two things in it are worth noticing, because Mongolian does neither. The clause comes after the main verb; and it is introduced by that, a word whose whole job is to warn you that a clause is starting. So by the time the clause begins you already know what it is for.

Mongolian does the opposite:

Тэр цас орсныг мэдээгүй.

he snow fall-PAST-ACC know-NEG

"He didn't know that it had snowed."

Word for word: he, snow fallen-that, didn't know. There is no equivalent of that anywhere. What marks the clause is the ending on орсныг, the clause's own verb — and that ending is the accusative, the same case a noun takes when it is a direct object. The clause has been turned into a thing, and the thing is the object of know.

The practical consequence governs everything else on this page: read to the end before you translate. The last verb of the sentence tells you what to do with all the material in front of it, and an inner verb carrying a case ending or followed by гэж tells you where the inner clause stopped. A learner who translates from the left, as English invites, will have built a sentence out of fragments by the time the information arrives.

гэж: the word that is not a conjunction

гэж is what Mongolian uses where English says that after a verb of speaking or thinking — and it is not a conjunction at all. It is a verb form. The stem гэ– means to say, and –ж is the ordinary ending that links one verb to the next, described on the converbs page. So гэж is literally saying, and the structure is: the words, saying, the main verb.

Би эгчид: "Ах ирсэн" гэж хэлсэн. (I told my elder sister that the brother had arrived.)

The course prints the quotation marks in that one, which is a help, because it shows what is really happening. The reported words sit there unaltered, as a quotation, and гэж closes them off.

Now compare the first line with its English translation. English says would come: the reported verb has been shifted back in time to agree with told. Mongolian keeps ирнэ, the plain present-future, the exact form the speaker used — there is no back-shift, because the words are quoted rather than absorbed. That one observation removes most of the difficulty from reported speech.

The same applies to orders and requests, where English has no choice but to rewrite:

• Дэлгүүрээ эрт онгойлго гэж манай дарга надад хэлсэн. (My boss told me to open the shop early.)
• Түүнийг дуулахаа боль гэж бид хэлсэн. (We told him to stop singing.)

In both, the quoted verb is still an imperative — онгойлго, боль — exactly as it was spoken, where English must convert it to to plus a verb. The final verb need not be хэлсэн: the course also uses гуйсан (asked, begged) in the same frame.

Replace the verb of speaking with a verb of thinking and nothing else changes:

• Би таны зөв гэж бодож байна. (I think you are right.)
• Бид нар өнөөдөр хамт ажиллана гэж найдаж байна. (I hope we are working together today.)
• Та одон орон судлалыг юу гэж боддог вэ? (What do you think of astronomy?)

That last one repays a second look. Where English asks what do you think of X, the question word юу occupies the slot where the thought itself would go, and гэж still closes it.

гэдэг: how Mongolian says a name

The same stem, with the habitual ending, gives the ordinary way of stating a name:

Намайг Цэцэг гэдэг.

me-ACC Tsetseg say-HAB

"My name is Tsetseg."

Literally: they call me Tsetseg — or more exactly me, Tsetseg, one habitually says. The person or thing named goes into the accusative, which is why it is намайг and not би. Two more from the course: Миний нэрийг Сарангэрэл гэдэг. (My name is Sarangerel.), with нэрийг (the name) in the accusative, and Хамгийн том хийдийг Гандан гэдэг. (The largest monastery is called Gandan.).

The –даг in гэдэг is the habitual ending, which makes good sense: a name is what people habitually say.

гэж again, for purpose

гэж has a second job, and the two are told apart by the form of the verb in front of it. If that verb is a bare –х participle, гэж expresses intention or purpose — English in order to, or just to.

• Бат талх авах гэж дэлгүүрт очсон. (Bat went to the shop to buy bread.)
• Чи Монголд юу хийх гэж ирсэн бэ? (What did you come to Mongolia to do?)

Followed by байна, the same construction announces what you are about to do, close to English be going to:

• Та аяга тавгаа угаах гэж байна уу? (Are you going to wash your dishes?)
• Хэн энэ захиаг монголоор орчуулах гэж байна вэ? (Who is going to translate this letter into Mongolian?)

So the test is simple. A finished clause in front of гэж — one whose verb carries any mode at all, ирнэ, хэцүү as a predicate, an imperative — means reported speech or thought. A bare –х in front of it means purpose.

The accusative on a clause: –ийг and –ыг

Back to the first example on the page, and to the mechanism it uses. When an embedded clause answers the question what? for the main verb, it is doing the job of a direct object, so it takes the accusative — and the ending goes on the clause's own verb.

The course is explicit about one condition: the mark never attaches to a bare stem. The verb carries a mode suffix first, and the accusative is added on top of it.

Two honest notes about that table. The vowel of –сан or –даг usually drops before the ending — but not always, since the course also prints очдогыг with the vowel kept. And the choice between –ийг and –ыг follows no rule that the material states: it has –ыг in болохыг and захиалсныг, –ийг in ирснийг and явдгийг. Learn these as items. The accusative on ordinary nouns, where there is more of a pattern, is on the accusative page.

The main verb in these sentences is very often мэдэх (to know), negated or questioned:

• Би Доржийг ирснийг мэдээгүй. (I didn't know that Dorj had arrived.)
• Та бидэнд зочид буудлын гурван өрөө захиалсныг мэдсэнгүй. (We didn't know that you had booked us three hotel rooms.)
• Энд маш их жуулчид буддын хийдэд очдогыг чи мэдэх үү? (Do you know that a great many tourists visit the Buddhist monasteries here?)

Look at Доржийг, and at чамайг in the reported-speech sentence further up. In both, the subject of the inner clause is itself in the accusative, although it is nobody's object — which is the most disorienting thing about reading a Mongolian complex sentence. An accusative ending does not guarantee you have found an object.

The same structure covers the indirect question, where English would use which, what or whether rather than that. Mongolian makes no distinction:

Ямар автобус онгоцны буудлаас хот руу явдгийг хэлж өгнө үү?

which bus plane-GEN stop-ABL city towards go-HAB-ACC tell-CONV give-PRES-FUT Q

"Could you tell me which bus goes from the airport into town?"

The template is worth copying intact: what you want to know, ending in a verb that carries the accusative, then the polite request. Та надад хөдөө нэг морь ямар үнэтэй байдгийг хэлнэ үү? (Could you tell me what a horse costs in the countryside?)

Both of those sentences end in үү even though both contain ямар, and that is not a slip. The үү belongs to the polite request, хэлж өгнө үү and хэлнэ үү, and not to ямар, which is shut inside the clause in –ийг: the rule that a question word calls for бэ or вэ holds of the clause the question word stands in, and it is set out on the page on question particles.

–х plus a case: the clause as a noun

Once you have seen a clause take the accusative, the generalisation is easy and it is where this construction really earns its keep. A verb in –х behaves like a noun, so it can take any case ending, and the ending says what the clause is doing in the sentence.

The –хад form is the one to meet first, because English has a conjunction for it and Mongolian has none:

Нүүдэлчгийг ирэхэд чи ажиллаж байсан.

nomad-ACC come-PART-DAT you work-CONV be-PAST

"When the nomad arrived, you were working."

There is no word for when. The clause is ирэхэд, at the coming, and the nomad — again — is in the accusative. A second example of the same shape: Багшийг үүдээр орж ирэхэд сурагчид огт яриагүй байсан. (When the teacher came in through the door, the pupils were not talking at all.)

One point of honesty. The course prints Нүүдэлчгийг, where the regular accusative of нүүдэлчин would be нүүдэлчнийг. I have kept its form rather than correcting it; do not generalise from it, and see the page on choosing a case ending for how nouns in an unstable н really behave.

Where does the clause end?

A method, in three steps, for a sentence that looks impenetrable.

1. Find the last verb. It is the predicate, and it tells you what the sentence is doing — stating, asking, requesting.
2. Work backwards to the nearest verb form carrying a case ending, or followed by гэж. That is where the inner clause ended.
3. Everything up to that verb belongs to the inner clause, including any subject of its own — which may well be in the accusative.

Applied to Та бидэнд зочид буудлын гурван өрөө захиалсныг мэдсэнгүй: the last verb is мэдсэнгүй (did not know), and working back, захиалсныг carries the accusative — so everything before it is the inner clause, that you booked us three hotel rooms.

Three verbs in a row

Mongolian strings verbs together readily, and only the last one is inflected. Хэн миний нохойг олоод өгч чадах вэ? (Who could find my dog for me?) has three: олоод, өгч, then чадах, which alone carries the question. How such chains are built is on the converbs page and the page on sentences with two verbs. The reading consequence belongs here: a run of verbs is not a run of clauses, and nothing is decided until the last of them.

The few real conjunctions

None of the above should leave the impression that Mongolian has no joining words. It has a handful, and they are used where the two clauses are genuinely independent of each other — neither one is inside the other:

• Пагма маргааш Москвагаас ирэх бөгөөд би түүнийг угтана. (Pagma arrives from Moscow tomorrow and I will meet her.)
• Миний найзууд бүгд хотод үлдсэн харин би хөдөө амьдармаар байна. (My friends all stayed in the city, whereas I would like to live in the countryside.)
• Түүний амралт дууссан гэвч тэр энэ ууланд мориор аялахыг хүсэж байна. (Her holiday is over, but she wants to ride in these mountains.)

So бөгөөд (and), харин (but, whereas) and гэвч (but, although) coordinate, and яагаад гэвэл (because) introduces a reason. What the language lacks is the subordinating conjunction — the word that would let a clause keep its ordinary shape and be slotted in after the main verb. That job is done by the endings on this page.

What this page does not cover

Linking two actions by putting the first verb into a converb — –ж, –аад, –вал — is on the converbs page; this page keeps the clauses that become nouns, and reported speech. A participle in front of a noun, as in өчигдөр ирсэн хүн (the man who arrived yesterday), is a third mechanism, on the participles page. The forms of the accusative are on the accusative page, and the rule that the predicate closes the sentence on the word order page.