[INDOLOGY] Sanskrit linguistics

Tue Aug 31 17:43:01 UTC 2021

Madhav, Hans,

Many thanks for the references and detail. As Madhav stated earlier, the issue of retroflex ṣ is “complicated” and it was instructive to see the factors at work behind its various incarnations, going back to PII.

Jim

> On Aug 29, 2021, at 5:49 PM, Madhav Deshpande <mmdesh at umich.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hello Hans,
> 
>      I have lost track of some of the relevant old publications, but I remember that some of the occurrences of ṣ in Sanskrit were accounted for by Fortunatov's law regarding the IE l+dental changing to retroflex in Sanskrit, and some others may be what Thomas Burrow called spontaneous retroflexes. Are some of your examples [other than ruki and oḱtō > aštā ‘eight’, covered by these theories?
>      The other indication to suggest the instability of ṇ/ṣ is the discussion in the Aitareya-Āraṇyaka about whether the RV Saṃhitā was aṣakāra/aṇakāra or saṣakāra/saṇakāra. The Āraṇyaka says that the Māṇḍūkeya version of the RV was saṣakāra/saṇakāra, and that Śākalya followed Māṇḍūkeya in this respect. But the discussion itself indicates that there may have been other reciters whose Saṃhitā was aṣakāra/aṇakāra. 
> 
> Madhav
> 
> Madhav M. Deshpande
> Professor Emeritus, Sanskrit and Linguistics
> University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
> Senior Fellow, Oxford Center for Hindu Studies
> Adjunct Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India
> 
> [Residence: Campbell, California, USA]
> 
> 
> On Sun, Aug 29, 2021 at 1:55 PM Hock, Hans Henrich via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info <mailto:indology at list.indology.info>> wrote:
> Dear Colleague,
> 
> Even as early as the Rig Veda there is evidence, both for ṣ occurring after a-vowels and for s occurring after i- and u-vowels. See the evidence further below.
> 
> What made the distribution of s and ṣ unpredictable is the fact that Proto-Indo-Iranian š, the source of Skt. ṣ is of two sources. One if the development of earlier s to š after “RUKI” (i.e. r-sounds, u-sounds, velars, and i-sounds; in the case of the vocalic sounds, both syllabic and nonsyllabic); the other was the development of PIE *ḱ to š before obstruent. Examples are nis- > niš ‘down’ and oḱtō > aštā ‘eight’. 
> 
> As the second example shows, the second of these changes introduced š after a-vowels and thus made the RUKI outcome of s opaque and hence contrastive (consider e.g. Skt. asta- ‘thrown’ beside aṣṭā(u) ‘8’, with s and ṣ contrasting after a-vowel. 
> 
> This contrastiveness, in turn, made it possible for analogical processes to extend ṣ into contexts after a-vowels (as in pary-a-ṣasvajat) as well as for borrowings and the like with ṣ after a-vowels and s after “RUKI” to be adopted without further adjustment.
> 
> All the best,
> 
> Hans Henrich Hock
> Linguistics and Sanskrit (emeritus)
> University of Illinois
> 
> Contrastiveness of retroflex sibilant in Sanskrit
> 
> Unpredictable occurrences after a-vowels in the RV 
> 
> áṣāḍha ‘invicible’
> 
> áṣatarā ‘more beneficial’ (1.183.4)
> 
> kaváṣa (PN) (534.12)
> 
> cā́ṣa ‘Häher’ (923.13)
> 
> jálāṣa ‘healing’ (1.43.4 in compound)
> 
> caṣā́la ‘Knauf der Opfersäule’ (1.162.6)
> 
> váṣaṭ (ritual call) (passim) 
> 
> Note also
> 
> paryaṣasvajat (pluperf.) ‘embraced’ 
> 
> Contrastive and unpredictable examples after a-vowels in later Vedic
> 
> mā́ṣa ‘bean’
> 
> mā́sa ‘moon, month’
> 
> bhāṣ- ‘speak’
> 
> bhās- ‘shine’
> 
> jhaṣá ‘large fish’ 
> 
> Some Post-Vedic examples after a-vowels
> 
> kaṣ- ‘rub, scratch’
> 
> kas- ‘go, move’ (DhP)
> 
> laṣ- ‘desire’ (MBh etc.)
> 
> Dental sibilant (s) after i- and u-vowels in Vedic
> 
> ṛbī́sa ‘cleft, gap’ (RV)
> 
> kīstá ‘singer’ (RV)
> 
> kúsindha ‘trunk’ (AV)
> 
> Some examples of ental sibilant (s) after i- and u-vowels in Post-Vedic
> 
> kisalaya ‘sprout, shoot’
> 
> kusuma ‘flower’
> 
> bisa ‘shoot, sucker’
> 
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> 
>> On 23 Aug2021, at 14:11, Jim Ryan via INDOLOGY <INDOLOGY at list.indology.info <mailto:INDOLOGY at list.indology.info>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> A question: I go back to a memory (possibly incorrect) of hearing from a linguistics teacher at UW (long ago) that the retro-flex "ṣ" in Sanskrit was "barely phonemic." A  former student who had studied, through his Ph.D. exams, historical linguistics at UCLA focusing on Indo-European (maybe also Indo-Aryan) insisted that this sound was not phonemic. From time to time I'd encounter the issue in articles/books and found that the consensus seemed to favor this understanding. I used to challenge my student from time to time to test this, somehow, I suppose, wanting to vindicate my long ago teacher's position (or at least what I thought I recalled it to be). I've thought recently of two examples: the verbal root bhāṣ - “to speak.” and ṣaṣ (six). In neither case is there a "non-a vowel" preceding the sibilant, which would ordinarily condition retroflexion. In the case of "six,"  the ṣ is initial also.  How do we explain these instances in accord with the non-phonemic nature of ṣ?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Jim Ryan
>> 
>> Asian Philosophies and Cultures (Emeritus)
>> California Institute of Integral Studies
>> 1453 Mission St.
>> San Francisco, CA 94103
>> 
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