-итай

Mongolian

Etymology

Inherited from Classical Mongolian ᠊ᠲᠠᠢ (-tai, ornative suffix), from Middle Mongol ᠲᠠᠢ (tʾy /⁠tai⁠/), ᠊ᠲᠠᠢ (-lʾy /⁠-tai⁠/, feminine singular ornative suffix).

-и- (-i-) was a stem-final vowel kept pronounced in some agglutinative structures, and could be somehow considered as an anaptyxis.

Pronunciation

• (Khalkh, Mongolia) IPA^(key): [ɪ̆.ʰtæː] (causing umlaut of a preceding non-reduced +RTR vowel)
• Hyphenation: -и‧тай

Suffix

-итай • (-itaj) (to stems ending in -хь (-xʹ), -дь (-dʹ), and -ть (-tʹ), supplanting their silent final -ь (-ʹ))

1. (still productive) Forms the ornative form.

   ‎даахь (daaxʹ, “frizzy hair”) + ‎-итай (-itaj) → ‎даахитай (daaxitaj, “have/has/having frizzy hair”)

   ‎задь (zadʹ, “nutmeg”) + ‎-итай (-itaj) → ‎задитай (zaditaj, “have/has/having a nutmeg/nutmegs”)

2. Forms the comitative case.

   ‎даахь (daaxʹ, “frizzy hair”) + ‎-итай (-itaj) → ‎даахитай (daaxitaj, “with frizzy hair”)

   ‎задь (zadʹ, “nutmeg”) + ‎-итай (-itaj) → ‎задитай (zaditaj, “with a nutmeg”)

Inflection

Vowel harmonic forms of -итай 

	back vowel	front vowel
unrounded	-итай -itaj	-итэй -itej
rounded	-итой -itoj

Alternative forms

• -тай (-taj)