[tied] Re: Nominative: A hybrid view

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
<jer@...> wrote:

> You are confirming the very point I made: Sanskrit is monovocalic in
> exactly the same sense as PIE is sometimes said to be. Also PIE has

its

> intricate set of problems with clustering semivowels and sonants, and
> Sievers' Law does not always run as smoothly as desired. Still, it is not
> entirely without foundation in fact if one associates [i] with [y], [u]
> with [w], etc.
>
> In most cases I do actually think there is one and only one realization

of

> a given sequence of semivowels in Sanskrit: dyut- never *divt-, etc.

So we

> have [i:] when there is no adjacent vowel, while /yy/ is [iy] in /tyya/
> and actually hardly ever [yi] (still /rayym/ is [rayim], what else could
> it be?).
>
> On Mon, 2 Jun 2003, nathrao wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen

<jer@...>

> > wrote:
> > > Tee-hee, as I have said a number of times already, Sanskrit *is*
> > > monovocalic in exactly the sense of the most extremist view of

PIE.

> >
> > I am trying to pick this thread up in the middle, so please bear
> > with me.
> >
> > What are the rules for semi-vowel clusters? In particular, how do
> > we tell i: apart from yy or yi or iy? And, incidentally which
> > stage of Sanskrit? RV? late Brahmanan prose/Panini, Classical
> > (as found in Kavyas etc)? It makes a difference (for how Siever's
> > law operates, which is surely relevant to this question).
> > Desideratives can produce sequences like yiy: yiyapsati,
> > wants to f*ck, actually occurs I believe.
>
> Well, if that is decent Sanskrit, but who knows? And what did PIE have
> here, if the root was *yebh-, and the desiderative was reduplicated

with

> -i-? Did it realize [yiy-], or did it change it into something else? These
> cases are of marginal status, and they concern PIE and Sanskrit alike.

The

> two are really working the same here. I also believe we have PIE

*n&1tr-

> in the word for 'adder', as opposed to *n.-h1dti- in Gk. ne:~stis
> 'non-eating, fast', the first based on levelling in a paradigm that used
> to contain forms with *neH1t- also. Based on such instances I would

go so

> far as to set up, say, /&1/ ("Schwa one") and /h1/ as different

phonemes.

> To be fully consistent I should then also posit /i/ and /y/, etc. as
> different phonemes of Sanskrit (even /r/ and /r./ may be opposed to

each

> other), but the functional load these oppositions carry is close to zero.
> In fact they are more inconsistencies in the use of the system than

real

> oppositions designed to convey a meaningful contrast.

Did these contrasts carry much functional load in the early Prakrits, for
which the Indian alphabet was devised? (The palatal nasal, often cited
as a strange case of a script recording a merely allophonic contrast,
contrasts with other nasals in Pali.)

I have a near-minimal pair contrasting Sanskrit /yi/ and /i:/:

akri:Ni:ma 'we bought' (imperfect, root kri:)
ninyima 'we lead' (perfect, root ni:)

How much better can we do? ( For starters, most other class IX verbs
would be an improvement on kri:!)

Richard.