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Conjectures are made on the origins of linking consonants in Mongolicintensive adjectives. It is argued that Dagur čim čigaan ‘snow-white’ andKhalkha bas bat ‘very firm,’ previously claimed to possess linking /m/ and /s/,are not really intensive adjectives but adjectives modified by intensifyingadverbials čim and bas, which happen to resemble the emphatic prefixesformed by CV-reduplication and addition of linking /m/ or /s/. Two evidencesin support of this claim are adduced: 1) čim and bas are the only examplesin each language that carry such ‘exotic’ linker among Mongolic languages,which generally use only /b/, e.g. čab čagaan ‘snow-white’; 2) a comparativestudy of Turkic and Mongolic intensifiers suggests that Dagur čim is likely tobe related to Turkmen cım in, e.g. Turkmen cım a:k ‘very white’, while basmay be a doublet of Khalkha maš ‘extremely’. The three-way variation oflinker in Kalmuck bim bitü ~ bis bitü ~ biŋ bitü ‘completely closed’, on theother hand, indicates that: 1) the dissimilative constraint preventing default /b/as a linker in labial-initial bases in Mongolic is being relaxed in Kalmuck; 2)the choice of /m/ and /s/ as an alternative linker to the default /b/ is probablydue to influence from neighboring Turkic languages that have linking /m/ and/s; 3) the use of linking /ŋ/ reflects an effort by the Kalmuck speakers toavoid another labial /m/ in compliance of the dissimilation constraint. It isconcluded that Mongolic generally use only /b/ (or its variant /w/) for itslinking consonant, and other apparent linkers are all alternatively explained. Itis hypothesized on this conclusion that if Mongolic borrowed its intensive formation from Turkic, as is generally agreed, it was during the earlyTurco-Mongolic contact and the rule was transferred from non-Oghuz OldTurkic, which, like Mongolic, had default labial /p/ as the only linkingconsonant.
