Re: [tied] Sanskrit Accents

Thanks. If the lack of vowel alternation in Sanskrit compounds
matching the alternation of accent is an indication of a shift from
stress to pitch accent (This was my hunch), that would put this
shift in pre-Vedic phase of Indo-Iranian. How far back can one
push this shift to pitch accent? Another way to look for would be
to see how far back can one trace the lack of vowel alternation in
compounds? Before Indo-Iranian split from its parent? During
the spit of Iranian from Indo-Aryan? Best,

Madhav Deshpande

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer
<mcv@...> wrote:

> On Thu, 30 Jan 2003 21:52:12 -0000, "deshpandem

<mmdesh@...>"

> <mmdesh@...> wrote:
>
> > I am wondering if there are signs of change in the nature

of

> >Sanskrit accent in the following way. Alternations like asti

versus

> >santi, and naumi versus nuva.h are linked to shifts of accent

from

> >the root to the suffix. If these sorts of shifts indicate that an
> >unstressed vowel gets contracted, or at worst deleted, can

one infer

> >that the accent of Sanskrit in its formative stages was stress
> >accent, rather than pitch accent as it get represented in Vedic
> >traditions? Would pitch accent cause the same sort of

contractions

> >of vowels?
>
> Not to my knowledge. Shortening, reduction or deletion of

unaccented

> vowels is surely the result of stress differences between

unaccented

> and accented syllables. That being said, stress accent and

pitch

> accent are not mutually exclusive: besides the possibility that

PIE

> went through a stress-accent stage first, then through a

pitch-accent

> stage, and then back to stress accent in many of its branches,

we can

> also imagine a scenario where PIE had had *both* types of

accent

> initially, and that some languages (e.g. Sanskrit) lost the

stress,

> while others (e.g. Latin) lost the pitch.
>
> By the way, the alternation ásti ~ sánti (reconstructed PIE

*h1és-ti,

> *h1s-énti) can be accounted for by stress alone (**h1és-t(i) ~
> *h1es-ént(i)), but in the case of náumi ~ nuváh. we need

another

> factor to account for the length (vr.ddhi) in the stressed

member.

> I'm not sure what it is: is the present tense of /nu/ a Narten
> present?
>
> >My second question is this. While the correlation of
> >vowel contractions with accent shifts is visible in verb forms

and

> >certain nominal paradigms, why is it that there is no similar

effect

> >left in the formation of Sanskrit compounds? Consider the

accent

> >difference between a Tatpuru.sa versus a Bahuvriihi. There

are no

> >vowel alternations similar to naumi versus nuva.h between

Tatpuru.sa

> >and Bahuvriihi. Is it likely that the nature of accent changed

from

> >the stage when forms like naumi/nuva.h originated to the

stage when

> >compounds emerged?
>
> Certainly. By the time these compounds formed, Sanskrit was

already a

> pitch-accent language, so the stress difference (tatpurus.a's

accented

> on the final member, bahuvri:hi's usually on the first) did not

have a

> great impact on the phonetic shape of the unaccented part,

except

> perhaps for the loss of -n in bahuvri:his with n-stems as the

last

> element (vis'vá-karma or vis'vá-karman), the reduction of *-o:(y)

to

> -a in compounds made with sakha: (kava:-sakhá [note the

accent,

> however]), and -a > -i in dhu:má-gandhi (gandha-) and a some

others.

>
>
> =======================
> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
> mcv@...