Vowel gradation in Sanskrit and PIE

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zompist
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Vowel gradation in Sanskrit and PIE

Post by zompist »

We have some Indo-Europeanists here, so I'm hoping someone can explain the relationship.

Sanskrit has a set of vowel grades called weak, guna, and vrddhi.

a ā > a ā > ā
i ī > e > ai
u ū > o > au
ṛ > ar > ār
ļ > al

We see different grades throughout the morphology, e.g. kṛta- ‘made’, kartṛ- ‘doer’, kārya- ‘business’.

Now, we could explain gunation by internal reconstruction by supposing that you prefix a-, and that a + i > e, a + u > o. In fact this is a sandhi rule, e.g. ca + uktam = coktam. Similarly vrddhi can be explained as prefixing ā-.

So, my question: is this prefixed a- actually a historical process, or perhaps just a nice set of abstract rules that help make sense of Sanskrit morphology?

And how do these gradations relate to PIE vowel grades?

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Re: Vowel gradation in Sanskrit and PIE

Post by Sumelic »

zompist wrote:We have some Indo-Europeanists here, so I'm hoping someone can explain the relationship.

Sanskrit has a set of vowel grades called weak, guna, and vrddhi.

a ā > a ā > ā
i ī > e > ai
u ū > o > au
ṛ > ar > ār
ļ > al

We see different grades throughout the morphology, e.g. kṛta- ‘made’, kartṛ- ‘doer’, kārya- ‘business’.

Now, we could explain gunation by internal reconstruction by supposing that you prefix a-, and that a + i > e, a + u > o. In fact this is a sandhi rule, e.g. ca + uktam = coktam. Similarly vrddhi can be explained as prefixing ā-.

So, my question: is this prefixed a- actually a historical process, or perhaps just a nice set of abstract rules that help make sense of Sanskrit morphology?

And how do these gradations relate to PIE vowel grades?
From what I remember, this is indeed related to PIE vowel grades. Weak would correspond to zero grade, guna would correspond to short grades (PIE *a *o *e all developed to Sanskrit /a/) and vrddhi would correspond to lengthened grades (apparently PIE *ā *ē *ō also all merged to Sanskrit /ā/). I'd assume the words with long vowels in the weak grade derive from former sequences of short vowel + laryngeal. (In the case of weak-grade ā, another possible origin might be Brugmann's law.)

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KathTheDragon
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Re: Vowel gradation in Sanskrit and PIE

Post by KathTheDragon »

To answer the first question in a more general sense, much of what the grammarians wrote is in fact just abstract rules designed to make sense of Sanskrit grammar, rather than provably real historical processes.

Šọ̈́gala
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Re: Vowel gradation in Sanskrit and PIE

Post by Šọ̈́gala »

Not claiming to be an expert on this, but

the Sanskrit vowel gradation system doesn't seem all that different from the PIE system morphologically. In PIE, it's basically

weak grade: ∅ + optional semivowel or anaptyctic *e if the syllable would otherwise be phonologically illicit
guna grade: *e + optional semivowel
vrddhi grade: *o + optional semivowel

Plus long ē and ō appearing as a separate pattern, essentially a second type of vowel grade more or less independent of the first.

and in Sanskrit (after merger of *e and *o as a), it's

weak grade: ∅ + either semivowel or anaptyctic ā̆
guna grade: a + optional semivowel
vrddhi grade: ā + optional semivowel

Plus long variants of surface vowels appearing in the weak grade as a separate pattern, essentially a second type of vowel grade independent of the first (with the caveat that it is neutralised outside of weak grade).

So, the main difference is that Sanskrit has an ā grade instead of a o grade (which would be identical to the e grade due to sound changes).

As for morphosyntax, which grammatical forms use which grades, how similar that is between PIE and Sanskrit.

As for whether the infixed -a- is an actual historical process or just an abstraction, since the Sanskrit grade system appears to be an adjusted form of the PIE grade system, I'd say that means it's not a historical process in Indic. I've always assumed there was once a series of phonological processes that produced the PIE grade system, but that seems to be tantalisingly just out of reach in the immediate pre-PIE period.

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Re: Vowel gradation in Sanskrit and PIE

Post by hwhatting »

zompist wrote:So, my question: is this prefixed a- actually a historical process, or perhaps just a nice set of abstract rules that help make sense of Sanskrit morphology?
One thing to keep in mind is that traditional Indian grammar took the weak grade as basis, while in PIE studies the full grade (e/o grade = Sanscrit guna) is taken as basis; so you have vowel deletion in the zero grade (Sanscrit weak grade) and vowel lengthening in the lengthened grade (vrddhi). As other posters said, interaction with laryngeals and Brugmann's law (PIE /o/ > Sanscrit /a:/ in open syllables) complicated the picture in Sanscrit.

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Re: Vowel gradation in Sanskrit and PIE

Post by Šọ̈́gala »

Note that if you go by the proposal made by various incl. Kümmel (cf. https://www.academia.edu/1538887/Typolo ... o-European ) that */e/ was earlier *[a] and */o/ was *[ā], then PIE vowel grades start to look extremely similar to Sanskrit vowel grades: both are essentially ∅ vs. a vs. ā. This is surprising because the original quantity distinction between */e/ and */o/ was apparently neutralised (became a quality distinction) after early PIE, so it would seem impossible that the PIE ablaut could be continued unchanged in Sanskrit. On the other hand, if you go by Bruggman's law, the quantity distinction was maintained in IIr in some environments, so you could see Sanskrit gradation precisely as continuing from PIE in those environments, reinforced by analogy into other comparable paradigms.

P.S. As far as I know, there's no evidence that */o/ was ever rounded in dialects ancestral to Sanskrit, with the possible exception of the auslaut sandhi alternation between -aḥ and -o (underlying -as vs. -au with the a < *a or *o).

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