--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "wtsdv" <liberty@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
> <richard.wordingham@...> wrote:
> >
> > 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.
>
> Where do you find "ninyima"? My "A Vedic Grammar for Students"
> gives "nini:má".
>
> David
From the 'Digital Buddhist Library & Museum', at
sino-sv3.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/SANSKRIT , or rather an earlier mirror
site at Ohio State University. It gives ninyi-, not nini:-, before all the=
weak suffixes beginning with a consonant. The 3pl. active is given as
ninyuh., and the 3pl middle as ninyire. For the 2s. it gives two forms -
ninayitha and ninetha.
I suppose 'ninyire' should be sound, but the PIEML reference demolishes
the claim to monovocalicness claim by citing the contrasting prefixes ura-
and vra-. Such contrasts demonstrate that [u] ~ [v] was a phonemic
contrast, not an allophonic variation. I suppose the critical point is tha=
t
prosodic contrasts are fundamental, while the phonemic contrasts are
incidental.
Richard.