[INDOLOGY] Sanskrit sandhi and pronounciation

Harry Spier vasishtha.spier at gmail.com
Wed Aug 10 01:24:02 UTC 2022


The book and article Madhav refers to can be downloaded from:

Phonetics in Ancient India, W.S. Allen
https://archive.org/download/in.gov.ignca.7855/7855.pdf

APhonemic Interpretation of Visarga, A. H. Fry
https://www.jstor.org/stable/409200

Harry Spier


On Tue, Aug 9, 2022 at 6:41 PM Madhav Deshpande via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> Here are some scholarly deliberations on visarga versus parasavarṇa in
> Sanskrit:
>
> W. S. Allen (1953: 51):
>
> "In later, though still ancient, times there appears to have been a
> tendency for -*ḥ* to extend its usage to contexts other than in pausa.
> The earliest of these extensions was to the position before the initial
> fricatives *ś, ṣ**, s,*
>
> where it replaced the homorganic final *ś, ṣ, s* (*indraśśūraḥ **> indraḥ
> śūraḥ*, &c). This practice was then extended to the position before the velar
> and labial voiceless stops: in connexion with this innovation we find
> mentioned the names of  Āgniveśya, Vālmīki, Śākalya, and the Mādhyandina school,
> whilst the ancient grammarian Śākaṭāyana is quoted as holding to the more
> conservative practice."
>
>
> Allen also refers to A. H. Fry’s (1941) view that “the spread of *-ḥ* was
> due to the writers of Classical Sanskrit operating with a phonemic
> orthography.”
>
>
> 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]
>
> ology <https://list.indology.info/mailman/listinfo/indology>
>
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