Re: Iti & ti

>Could anyone give a good explanation why in Pali an anusvaara + iti becomes
>dental n + ti
>(e.g. caaveyyan ti)?  I was told that in some Praakrits -i + iti becomes -i
>tti (similarly for a, u, e and o), but what happens in these Praakrits with
>a dental n + iti ?  >  -n tti ?
>Thank.

Dear Bhante Nyanatusita,

I would guess that the reason is that iti's apostrophe form /ti/ came to be felt as a word in its own right. As you know, often when a word ends in a short vowel + iti, the sandhi is final-vowel>long + ti. After hearing this often enough users of the language could begin to experience /ti/ as an independent form that causes lengthening of preceding vowels, instead of just the result of a sandhi. This was certainly my experience when first learning to chant the iti pi so. When it ends with 'buddho bhagavaa ti' I registered /ti/ as a word, and it stuck despite later learning about the sandhi.

So the reason why anusvara > n, is simply because it is preceding the dental consonant /t/. It's not anusvara + iti, it's simply anusvara + ti, in those cases.

Stranger things have happened in languages. In colloquial English you can hear expressions like 'I have to wait a whole nother year?' (sic). Here the word 'another'  (which obviously originated in an + other) is 'felt' as being analyzed a + nother, in order to make space to insert an adverbial)

Swedish developed a new 2nd person plural pronoun /ni/ fairly recently. Up until about a hundred years ago the pronoun was /i/, and verb forms using it ended in -en.

Så compare: vill du... (would you like to...)
villen i... (would you guys like to...)

The final n of /villen/ came to be felt as being part of a new word /ni/ so the modern form is:

vill ni...

I'm not 100% sure that this is the correct explanation, but it wouldn't surprise me.

best regards,

/Rett