[INDOLOGY] Sandhi and grammar

[Martin Joachim Kümmel]

The basic reason for the special behaviour of dual endings might rather be that some of them originally had a disyllabic structure *-ahiH,  *-iHiH so that it was not reduced to a simple diphthong or vowel in Sandhi, and by analogy this was extended to other duals.
Malzahn assumes this also for the neuter in *-o-jh₁#V > *-aiH#V > *-ayy#V but here I would doubt that the laryngeal had such an impact since it clearly did not in cases of *ayHV > Skt.  ayV in internal position. But feminine forms in *-aH-iH and *-iH-iH are a different case. I discussed this in a review (Kratylos 49, 2004, pp. 53-55).

Best wishes,
Martin


Von: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info> Im Auftrag von Hock, Hans Henrich via INDOLOGY
Gesendet: Samstag, 24. Februar 2024 19:48
An: Dieter Gunkel <dcgunkel at gmail.com>
Cc: indology at list.indology.info
Betreff: Re: [INDOLOGY] Sandhi and grammar

Thanks, Dieter, for this helpful reference.

If I read Malzahn’s arguments regarding the dual endings correctly, she suggests that their exceptional behavior can be attributed to the frequency of pre-pausal forms in numerals and vocatives, and that in the latter case prosodic factors may have played a role.

I’m not convinced, however, that this will explain the lack of sandhi; if anything, a short final vowel might be expected to undergo contraction even more readily than a long final vowel. Moreover, there are many forms in short final vowel (e.g. the vocative in -a of a-stems) that do not exhibit exceptional sandhi behavior. So the situation still looks murky to me.

Best wishes,

Hans Henrich


On Feb 24, 2024, at 11:36, Dieter Gunkel <dcgunkel at gmail.com<mailto:dcgunkel at gmail.com>> wrote:

On the sandhi behavior of the dual endings and the linguistic history of their pragRhyatva, see Melanie Malzahn's dissertation, esp. ch. 2:
https://richmond.box.com/s/qp9cn2t34zb1akvwgylmhsdgda3ltpnk<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/richmond.box.com/s/qp9cn2t34zb1akvwgylmhsdgda3ltpnk__;!!DZ3fjg!9jgUjd-WaWmgFPajC1MuIy2Hykrhh_pAkeWtPJ4Awgl_RSwylNGRsGYjfAYIEYnwu7siMSK0CKf7fiRjjQ$>

Best wishes,

Dieter

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