Question regarding sorting order & Visarga
Gérard Huet
Gerard.Huet at INRIA.FR
Wed Apr 11 12:52:47 UTC 2007
The nagging question of the place of visarga in the sorting order of
Sanskrit arises in two subtle problems.
1. Should the visarga assimilated to a sibilant count as this
sibilant in the sorting order ?
This seems logical, and parallel to the ranking of anusvaara as the
homophonic nasal of the following consonant,
in the case of "non-original" anusvara.
Thus in my lexicon, I put <du.h"sala> after <du"sce.s.taa>, not
before, as would be suggested by the rules just given
by Ashok Aklujkar.
Monier-Williams avoids the difficulty, by having an entry du.h-
carrying compounds such as <du.h"sala>.
2. Where should one list <du.hkara>, obtained by sandhi from dus-
kara, whereas its usual spelling is <du.skara>?
Some arbitrary choice has to be made, it seems, since the 2 spellings
are at different places in the sorting order.
Monier-Williams indicates this dilemma at entry du.h- p. 483, where
he signals that du.h-k and du.h-p are to be
looked at du.s- p 487. Thus for him the word <du.h.sama> is listed
(under du.h-) BEFORE <du.hkara> listed as <du.skara>.
But he does not apply the same reasoning to <du.skha>, which he
refers under du.s- as link to <du.hkha> listed
not in du.h- but as an independent entry, which he begins with some
discussion on the etymology of the word.
If we want to standardize this issue, the first question to ask is
whether the position of a string of letters/phonemes
is determined strictly by lexicographic order induced by the standard
collating sequence of the alphabet,
or whether it is the position of some standardized form where
anusvara (and presumably visarga) is to be taken
as the possible homophonic nasal (resp. homophonic sibilant) of the
next consonant. This second choice, the usual one,
is context-sensitive. It is contradictory with Monier-Williams' use
of an entry <du.h-> which is schizophrenic with
respect to ordering.
Then, if we do decide to assimilate say .m to n in <sa.mdhi>, as is
usual, does that mean that the reverse is true,
i.e. is it legal to write say <sasa.mja> instead of <sasa~nja> for
the perfect of root <sa~nj> ? This is debatable,
since here anusvara does NOT come from morphological sandhi, but
merely as an abbreviation for the nasal savar.na with j.
Thus, it is not obvious to me that issues of sorting order are
decided just at the phonemic level, without considering
how the phonemes arise from morphological operations. This issue is
polluted by typographical considerations, since
anusvaara avoids complex ligatures with nasals.
In the same vein, there are many representational issues with hiatus
(eg tita_u pra_uga pra_ucya in morphology,
ka.ta_aaste in syntax), with candrabindu versus anusvaara, and with
the elusive avagraha. All these problems
arise in classical Sanskrit, even if we ignore Vedic difficulties.
Gérard Huet
Le 11 avr. 07 à 00:13, Deshpande, Madhav a écrit :
> Dear Indologists,
>
> Harry Spier asked me the following question: "where does
> visarga come in the sorting order of
> Sanskrit letters?" Is there a standard placement for the Visarga
> in the sorting order that is generally followed these days?
>
> Madhav M. Deshpande
>
>
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