[INDOLOGY] Hindi v Sanskrit

Wed Aug 19 02:04:28 UTC 2015

Dear Prof Hans,

I would also like to share our experience while building a Kannada-Hindi
Anusaaraka system, later followed by Telugu-Hindi, Marathi-Hidi Anusaaraka
systems. (Anusaaraka is a machine that follows the source language
constructions and produces its image in the target language).

We found that there are only 3 differences at the syntactic level between
the modern Indo Aryan and Dravidian languages.
Without going into linguistic details, let me put in simple form.

a) copula : Dravidian languages have copula less constructions such as
raamu.du vaidya.du, while Hindi requires an explicit 'hai' as in raama
vaidya hai.

b) 'ki' construction: The sentences with 'ani' in Telugu of the form X ani
Y are best translated into Hindi as 'Y ki X', though Hindi allows a
construction X aisaa Y.
For example, nenu i.m.tiki ve.ltunnaa.du ani raamu.du cepaa.du  -> mai.m
ghara jaa rahaa hu.m aisaa raama ne kahaa
better translation would be 'raama ne kahaa ki mai.m ghara jaa rahaa hu.m'

c) relative participial: While  Sanskrit and Hindi mark the information of
kaaraka in the k.rdanta, Telugu does not mark the kaaraka information but
marks the tense information.

So in Telugu it is possible to say
raamu.du tinina pa.ndu : The fruit eaten by Raama, raama ne khaayaa huaa
phala
raamu.du tinina pa.l.le.m : The plate in which Raama ate, raama ne jisa
thaalii me.m khaaya vaha thaalii
raamu.du tinina cemcaa : The spoon with which Raama ate, raame ne jisa
camacca se khaayaa vaha camacca

This is where the Dakkini borrowed the 'so' construction and we have raama
khaayaa so plate/cammaca/phala etc in Dakkani.

Best regards,
Amba

On 18 August 2015 at 22:07, Hock, Hans Henrich <hhhock at illinois.edu> wrote:

> Let me add a few more cents’ worth.
>
> The idea that Indo-Aryan, including Sanskrit, fundamentally differs from
> Dravidian in its syntactic typology, though sanctioned by a certain
> “tradition” in South Asian linguistics, is problematic on several counts.
>
> First, the only area in which (most of) Modern Indo-Aryan can be said to
> be robustly right-branching is that of Complement structures (marked by
> *ki/ke/jo/je*) — a relatively recent phenomenon, reflecting Persian
> influence. (Some of the languages also are beginning to adopt postnominal,
> center-embedded relative clauses, most likely based on the English model.)
>
> Earlier Indo-Aryan is essentially left-branching, but with a fair amount
> of word-order (and not just phrase-order) freedom, depending on genre. This
> freedom is often contrasted with the supposedly very rigid structure of
> Modern Dravidian. However, Susan Herring has furnished excellent evidence
> from Old Tamil attesting to a fair amount of phrase-order freedom,
> includiing structures that are verb-initial, with all other elements
> extraposed to the right. I have observed similar freedom (through
> interviews) in a colloquial variety of Modern Kannada, and I suspect that
> the rigidity attributed to the modern (literary) languages is an effect of
> diglossia, similar to the relatively more rigid sentence structure of
> modern literary German, as contrasted with colloquial or dialectal
> varieties.
>
> Another feature shared by traditional Indo-Aryan, including Sanskrit, and
> Dravidian is the fact that relativization can be encoded both in nonfinite
> form, through (relative) participles, and in finite form, through
> relative-correlative structures. The latter had for a long time been
> considered to be Indo-Aryan borrowings in Dravidian (and some linguists
> considered the Indo-Aryan counterparts to somehow reflect an innovation,
> triggered by contact with Dravidian); but starting with research by
> Ramasamy, Lakshmi Bai, and Steever, it has become clear that the structures
> are indigenous to Dravidian, and I have presented arguments and evidence
> that the Sanskrit/Indo-Aryan structures are inherited from
> Proto-Indo-European.
>
> There is, however, one important behavioral difference: Dravidian relative
> clauses can only precede their correlative counterparts; in
> Sanskrit/Indo-Aryan (and PIE) they can either precede or follow (and in
> some cases both precede and follow, one on each side). Whether this should
> be considered evidence for “right branching” or “mixed right- and
> left-branching” might be subject to debate (fueled, in many cases, by
> theory-internal or even ideological considerations). What is important to
> know, however, is that relative-correlatives are a common phenomenon in
> languages that would otherwise be considered “rigid” SOV/verb-final or
> left-branching.
>
> One more thing that is worth bearing in mind. Recent publications by
> Pilot-Raichoor (with Murugaiyan) suggest that prehistoric (i.e. pre-Old
> Tamil) Dravidian may have been very different in its morphology and, by
> implication, in its morphosyntax, with traces still observable in Old Tamil
> and elsewhere. At this point, these publications do not seem to have been
> subjected to the (obligatory) vetting process; from personal experience I
> know that many Dravidologists are skeptical. Nevertheless, this work
> suggests that we need to be cautious concerning claims about the syntactic
> similarities and differences between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian at, say, 1500
> BC.
>
> All the best,
>
> Hans Henrich Hock
>
>
>
> On 18 Aug 2015, at 07:58, Robert Zydenbos <zydenbos at uni-muenchen.de>
> wrote:
>
> George Hart wrote:
>
> Of course, Sanskrit compounds can seem
> difficult if one’s native language does not mimic their syntax. Both
> Hindi and Sanskrit are right-branching, whereas Dravidian is
> left-branching.
>
>
> Please allow me a bit of nit-picking. If by 'left-branching' we mean
> that, e.g., attributes precede the substantives to which they refer,
> then both Sanskrit and Hindi (and all the rest of the so-called
> Indogermanic / Indo-European languages of India, i.e., 'Indo-Aryan') are
> quite left-branching indeed. The so-called 'genitive' in Hindi (which is
> actually a kind of adjective, inflected kā-ke-kī according to the gender
> and case of the following substantive) already illustrates this.
>
> Of course it is possible for genitives in Sanskrit or (very rarely)
> Hindi to follow the substantives to which they refer, esp. for metrical
> reasons in verse. But it seems that also in Sanskrit prose, genitives,
> as attributive words, as a rule precede that to which they refer – which
> is precisely not the tendency in a language such as Latin, which has a
> more clearly right-branching tendency. I think that this syntactic
> feature is one more bit of evidence that the Indo-Aryan languages were
> heavily Dravidianized already from their earliest historical beginnings,
> as F.B.J. Kuijper and others have pointed out.
>
> Naturally, people who speak those languages find
> Sanskrit compounds, which are left-branching like Dravidian languages,
> somewhat difficult.
>
>
> Indeed the internal structure of samāsas is left-branching, which may
> explain why an author like Rāmānujācārya in Tamiḻnāḍu sometimes uses
> very long compounds such as are uncommon among philosophical authors.
>
> Stella Sandahl wrote:
>
> The Sanskrit compound is not at all as complicated as students (and even
> teachers) like to think.
>
>
> Indeed. Though there may be statistically determinable average limits of
> quick comprehension among ordinary readers, I am sure that it is largely
> a matter of what one is accustomed to.
>
> RZ
>
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-- 
आ नो भद्रा: क्रतवो यन्तु विश्वत: ll
Let noble thoughts come to us from every side.
- Rig Veda, I-89-i.
Assoc Prof.
Department of Sanskrit Studies
University of Hyderabad
Prof. C.R. Rao Road
Hyderabad-500 046

(91) 040 23133802(off)

http://sanskrit.uohyd.ernet.in/scl
http://sanskrit.uohyd.ernet.in/faculty/amba

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