[INDOLOGY] Anusvara plus nasal

[Stefan Baums]

Dear Jacob,

> the use of anusvara before a nasal stop indicates the
> nasalization of the preceeding vowel ... likely due to
> "the influence of the phonology and orthography of the
> vernaculars"

this would seem to include ancient vernaculars, cf. Allen,
Phonetics in Ancient India, p. 40:

   there was a tendency, censured by the R[k]P[rātiśākhya]
   but general in the modern Indo‐Aryan languages, for
   vowels to take on some degree of nasal ‘colour’ in
   contact with nasal consonants.⁷

   ⁷ RP xiv. 56 raktai rāgaḥ samavāye svarāṇām. Cf. also
   xiv. 9.

All best,
Stefan

-- 
Dr. Stefan Baums
Institute for Indian and Tibetan Studies
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich