Sanskrit "palatals"

[Chengjiang]

These are just normally reconstructed as alveopalatal sibilants, right? I more often see them transcribed with the characters for true palatals (occasionally even the fricative!) but I thought they were being used as shorthand for sibilant affricates as they are by some linguists. Am I correct?

[zompist]

"Reconstructed", I don't think so. Here's what Whitney (1889) has to say:

44. The palatal mutes are by European scholars, as by the modern Hindus also, pronounced with the compound sounds of English ch and j (in church and judge).
a. Their description by the old Hindu grammarians, however, gives them a not less absolutely simple character than belongs to the other mutes. They are called tālavya palatal, and declared to be formed against the palate by the middle of the tongue. They seem to have been, then, brought forward in the mouth from the guttural point, and made against the hard palate at a point not far from the lingual one (below, 45), but with the upper flat surface of the tongue instead of its point. Such sounds, in all languages, pass easily into the (English) ch- and j- sounds.

And the "old Hindu grammarians", Pāṇini et al., knew what they were talking about.

FWIW Whitney says that /c j/ normally derive from /k g/, so comparison to IE doesn't help here.

[Chengjiang]

Really! Does that include the fricative as well, then?

Granted, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that proper palatal stops would have exclusively sibilants (palatoalveolar or otherwise) as reflexes in modern Indo-Aryan.

[2+3 clusivity]

Take a look at Section 52 of Kobayashi's disseration -- most of the chapter that is in is relevant too. The Diss is available here: http://www.gengo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~masatok/

Kobayashi's a pretty prolific modern Sanskritist. The disseration has some pretty interesting stuff on other Sanskrit phonology topics as well. Some of his views on PIE are a little off at least in my understanding, so read with some salt. Most of his publications -- many of which are on Sanskrit phonology -- are available on his staff page: http://www.gengo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~masatok/