Re: Special bases?

From: Bryan Levman
Message: 4943
Date: 2017-08-31

Dear Dmytro,

Yes, it is as you have suspected, a question of evolution OI > MI (Old Indic to Middle Indic):

 

araha(t) present participle of the verb arahati which has both a strong and a weak stem i. e. arahant and arahat (see Whitney §443). It also sometimes appears (in the dictionary or as a headword) in the nom. sing form arahan (with the loss of the final -t). In Pali the nom. sing is arahaṃ with the change of arahan > arahaṃ. But more commonly this form is transferred to the -a declension (because of simplification) and becomes arahanto (See Geiger §96, 97)

 

 

dāta(r) comes from the OI root dātṛ whose nom. sing is dātā. The Pāli declension is a mix of the historical OI form and simpler forms from other declensions. See Geiger §90.

natta(r) < OI naptṛ (by analogy from mātṛ). Same as above.

ceta(s) < OI cetas, nom. sing. ceto, usu. neuter, see Geiger §99. Some of the OI forms are kept and sometimes the declension is transferred to the neuter –a declension.

chanda(s)

tama(s)

tapa(s)

teja(s)

all neuters as above

-in declensions like bālin, nom. sing. balī in OI, same in Pali. Again, some of the declensions mirror the OI, and some are simplified like accus. sing. balinaṃ (same as OI) alongside baliṃ (Pali only).


So in summary, Pali keeps the OI inflections sometimes, but also simplifies them by adding in -a declension endings (and mixing in others as you will see), whereas OI always stays to the one declension. That's why Cone puts the final (-r) in brackets for a word like sattha(r) < OI śāsṭṛ), because sometimes Pali follows the -ṛ declension nouns and sometimes it doesn't.
Pali, as you know has no vowel, so śāsṭṛ changes to satthar in Pali with -sṭ- > -tth-, -ṛ > ar, and ś- > s-, all normal Prakrit evolutions. The long ā > a, as a vowel before two consonants is always long in Pali (Geiger §5)

Best wishes, Bryan


From: Dmytro Ivakhnenko aavuso@... [palistudy] <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: "palistudy@yahoogroups.com" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2017, 6:58:37 AM NDT
Subject: Re: [palistudy] Special bases?

 

Dear Bryan,

Thank you for a detailed explanation.

As we continue to work on a morphological analyzer, my colleague raises some unexpected questions.

Would you please explain the origin of bases which end in  -ar, -at, -as, -us, -an, -in?
How come that in most declensions the final consonants are elided?

I understand that this has to do with evolution of Prakrits, but some more details would be helpful.

Margaret Cone in her dictionary often gives such words with final consonants in brackets:

araha(t)
dāta(r)
natta(r)

ceta(s)
chanda(s)
tama(s)
tapa(s)
teja(s)

 

araha(t) present participle of the verb arahati which has both a strong and a weak stem i. e. arahant and arahat (see Whitney §443. It also sometimes appears (in the dictionary or as a headword) in the nom. sing form arahan (with the loss of the final -t). In Pali the nom. sing is arahaṃ with the change of arahan > arahaṃ. But more commonly this form is transferred to the -a declension (because of simplification) and becomes arahanto (See Geiger §96, 97)

 

 

dāta(r) comes from the OI root dātṛ whose nom. sing is dātā. The Pāli declension is a mix of the historical OI form and simpler forms from other declensions. See Geiger §90.

natta(r) < OI naptṛ (by analogy from mātṛ). Same as above.

ceta(s) < OI cetas, nom. sing. ceto, usu. neuter, see Geiger §99. Some of the OI forms are kept and sometimes the declension is transferred to the neuter –a declension.

chanda(s)

tama(s)

tapa(s)

teja(s)

all neuters as above

-in declensions like bālin, nom. sing. balī in OI, same in Pali. Again, some of the declensions mirror the OI, and some are simplified like accus. sing. balinaṃ (same as OI) alongside baliṃ (Pali only).


Does it have some non-obvious meaning?

My colleague wonders, - are -t and -nt base endings (e.g. carat, carant) truncated versions of -ta and -nta suffixes?

Are the  -r, -n, -s, -d endings a result of   r, n, s, d insertion (e.g. caturo = catu-r-o)?

Our morphological analyzer is supposed to give some basic information on the origin and composition of words. 

Best wishes,
                     Dmytro






2017-08-25 5:08 GMT+03:00 Bryan Levman bryan.levman@... [palistudy] <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>:
 

Dear Dmytro,

 

dhā, dahati is irregular becaue it comes from Vedic dhā dadhāti (3rd conjugation). One would have expected the same form in Pāli, but the aspirated stop -dh- changes to -h- or aspiirate only. The change of aspirated stops in Old Indic (Vedic) to aspirates only is a common feature of the koine form which is the precursor of Pāli. It was no doubt in part caused by the fact that some of the indigenous languages of India do not have aspirated stops in their phonemic inventory (e.g. proto-Dravidian, proto-Munda and proto-Tibetan). Other Middle Indic Prarkits like Ardha-Magadhi and Gāndhāri also replaced the aspirated stop with an aspirate only, for it is also a normal feature of the synchronic evolution of language over time.

 

As you noted this change results in a homonym, with the form dahati (“to hold”) being the same as the regular form dahati (‘to burn” < Vedic dah, dahati).

The Vedic root mṛ (“to die”) has two forms,  marati (an active form), and  mriyati (a passive form). Although there is an active and passive form, they both have the same meaning ("he/she/it dies").  In Pali marati is the same as Vedic, but mriyati > miyyati; ordinarily, in the change of Old Indic to Middle Indic,  one would have expected mriyati > miyati with the change of the conjunct mr- > m-. However since in the passive the -i- can be either long (-ī-) or short (-i-), (Geiger §176.2), what appears to have happened here is that the long -ī- was used in the mīyati form, and to compensate for the short -i- in miyati, the -y- was doubled which automatically makes the short -i- long (see Geiger §5)

 

As you note, this creates a homonym with the root mid whose passive in Vedic is midyate and which naturally becomes miyyate > miyyati (as Pali lost the ātmanepada endings in the pasive, with the normal change of the conjunct -dy- > -yy-.

So yes the stems of daha- (fron the root dhā) and miyya- (or mīya- for the root mṛ) are special in this sense, that they are not a normal evolution. Hope that helps,

 

Best wishes,

Bryan

 





From: Dmytro Ivakhnenko aavuso@... [palistudy] <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2017, 3:10:22 PM EDT
Subject: [palistudy] Special bases?

 

Dear Pali friends,

Duroiselle in his Pali Grammar,  §404, lists "special bases" of irregular roots, and among them, for example, are:

1st conjugation √dhā --> daha (irregular) [√dhā - holding; bearing]

1st conjugation √mar --> miyya (irregular) [√mara - abandonment of life; dying]

which are the same as bases, formed in a regular way from other roots, namely,

1st conjugation √daha + a --> daha (regular) [√daha - burning and holding; bearing]

3rd conjugation √mida + ya --> midya --> miyya (regular) [√mida - sticking]

(there are other examples as well, where bases are identical in form and meaning, or only in form).

How come that these bases are identical? Are they really "special"?

Is this what Duroiselle describes in:
§367. There is a division of the tenses, more fictitious than real, into "Special Tenses" and"General Tenses". From such a division, one would be inclined to think that the former are formed on a special base or modified form of the root, and the latter, therefore, from the root itself. But such in fact is not the case, for it will later on be, remarked that the special and the general tenses not seldom interchange their bases.
Please shed some light on this.

Metta, Dmytro














В учебнике Дюрозеля в качестве примеров особых основ, образованных от корней не по стандартным правилам, указаны основы, которые идентичны основам, образованным по стандартным правилам, но от других корней, например:1-е спряжение √dhā --> daha (не по правилам) [√dhā - holding; bearing]1-е спряжение √daha + a --> daha (по правилам) [√daha - burning and holding; bearing]или1-е спряжение √mar --> miyya (не по правилам) [√mara - abandonment oflife; dying]3-е спряжение √mida + ya --> midya --> miyya (по правилам) [√mida - sticking]Вопрос: действительно ли данные основы являются особыми основами или нет?



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