[INDOLOGY] Sandhi examples in the english language

[Satyanad Kichenassamy]

Dear Colleague, Dear All,

There are many examples in French (règles de liaison). In examples with an inserted t (ex.: y a-t-il) the modification is reflected in writing.

A recent thesis I happened to find is "Les phénomènes de sandhi dans l’espace
gallo-roman" https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00807535/document

You may want to give the example of tone sa.mdhi in Chinese (ex: 不要 bu4 yao4 becomes bu2 yao4 -- the number indicates the tone). This is not indicated in writing.

It may also be appropriate to stress that the discovery of Sanskrit grammar, and of sa.mdhi in particular, played an important role in clarifying Greek and Latin grammar. As  Barthélémy Saint-Hilaire says, "Le sandhi grec nous apparaît pour ce qu'il est réellement, pour un débris d'un édifice plus complet, que nous contemplons sans ruines et sans lacunes dans la langue et la grammaire sanskrites." (see page 354 in his paper in Journal des Savants 136 (June 1859) 348-360 -- saw it on Google, I do not have the pdf).

Best,

     Satyanad Kichenassamy

On Thu, 4 Aug 2022 15:51:43 -0400
Harry Spier via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> Dear list members,
> I need to give a brief introductory talk to english speakers, not
> linguistic or sanskrit students, but english speakers who chant sanskrit
> mantras and shlokas.
> I thought I'd briefly talk about and give examples of:
> 1) How sanskrit is very independent of word order.
> 2) How sanskrit uses case endings
> 3) How sandhi is widespread in sanskrit andi is also part of the spelling
> in sanskrit .
> 
> I'd like to give examples of sandhi in english to to make the concept of
> sandhi more clear.  The examples I know of are:
> 1) final "s"
> "books" pronounced as "books" but "bags" pronounced as "bagz".
> 2) final "d"
> "glazed" pronounced as "glaizd" but "placed" pronounced as "plaist"
> 
> It would be helpful if someone could give me other examples of sandhi in
> english. Not final "s" or final "d"
> 
> Also is it true that most (all?) languages have sandhi ?
> 
> Is sandhi expressed in the spelling (and not just the pronounciation) of
> any non-Indian languages?
> 
> Thanks,
> Harry Spier
> 
> Thanks,
> Harry Spier


-- 
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Satyanad KICHENASSAMY
Professor of Mathematics
Laboratoire de Mathématiques de Reims  (CNRS, UMR9008)
Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne
F-51687 Reims Cedex 2
France
Web: https://www.normalesup.org/~kichenassamy
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