Re: Iti & ti

Dear Bhante Nyanatusita, Eizel and group,

Interesting and informative discussions, thanks. As usual, my questions are more at the student level.

Eizel wrote:
> you could scan the
>Gatha literature for an example of _nti_ that breaks the metre, i.e.,
>demonstrating that an earlier revision of the poem once had (the
>Prakritic) _itti_, but was supplanted.

Could you explain this a bit more? I see the above as combining two separate issues, but it could just be because of my meagre knowledge of prakrit:

1) anusvara + iti > nti
2) vowel + iti >  (V)-tti

How could a case of /itti/ ever develop into /nti/ ? They originate from different types of situations. Ex. pali < (pkt) < Skrt:

1) ruupan ti < ruupa.m iti
2) bhagavaa ti < bhagava tti < bhagavaan iti.


>Following standard (Pali) rules of euphony, the "i" is omitted, and,
>resultantly, anuswara matches the consonant class of the "t"

Yes, you can use those two Kacc. rules in succession, but I don't see this as necessarily answering the question. Aren't the rules in Kacc part of what needs to be explained? Aren't they an after-the-fact description of the phenomenon at hand, not a complete developmental explanation?

So the question would be whether the successive application of those two Kacc rules (1. ellision of initial vowel after anusvara, 2. anusvara shifts to nasal of following-consonant's class) maps the actual phonetic development. It might do so in this case, but that still might not be the whole story.

For example, perhaps part of the reason for the loss of the intial short-i in iti was due to its being an unaccented syllable. (Pischel §143). AFAIK accent isn't mentioned in Kacc (please correct me if I'm wrong).

It's interesting that you bring up the possibility that there are orthographical considerations involved that run their own course apart from issues of real-life pronounciation. It's probably prudent to check this angle as well.

best regards,

/Rett