Sanskrit Accents

[Guest guest]

Dear colleagues,

 

I am wondering if there are signs of change in the nature of

Sanskrit accent in the following way. Alternations like asti versus

santi, and naumi versus nuva.h are linked to shifts of accent from

the root to the suffix. If these sorts of shifts indicate that an

unstressed vowel gets contracted, or at worst deleted, can one infer

that the accent of Sanskrit in its formative stages was stress

accent, rather than pitch accent as it get represented in Vedic

traditions? Would pitch accent cause the same sort of contractions

of vowels? My second question is this. While the correlation of

vowel contractions with accent shifts is visible in verb forms and

certain nominal paradigms, why is it that there is no similar effect

left in the formation of Sanskrit compounds? Consider the accent

difference between a Tatpuru.sa versus a Bahuvriihi. There are no

vowel alternations similar to naumi versus nuva.h between Tatpuru.sa

and Bahuvriihi. Is it likely that the nature of accent changed from

the stage when forms like naumi/nuva.h originated to the stage when

compounds emerged? Some food for thought.

 

Madhav Deshpande

[Guest guest]

In an old post--- , "deshpandem <mmdesh@U...>"wrote:

> Dear colleagues,

>

> I am wondering if there are signs of change in the nature of

> Sanskrit accent in the following way. Alternations like asti versus

> santi, and naumi versus nuva.h are linked to shifts of accent from

> the root to the suffix. If these sorts of shifts indicate that an

> unstressed vowel gets contracted, or at worst deleted, can one infer

> that the accent of Sanskrit in its formative stages was stress

> accent, rather than pitch accent as it get represented in Vedic

> traditions? Would pitch accent cause the same sort of contractions

> of vowels? My second question is this. While the correlation of

> vowel contractions with accent shifts is visible in verb forms and

> certain nominal paradigms, why is it that there is no similar effect

> left in the formation of Sanskrit compounds? Consider the accent

> difference between a Tatpuru.sa versus a Bahuvriihi. There are no

> vowel alternations similar to naumi versus nuva.h between Tatpuru.sa

> and Bahuvriihi. Is it likely that the nature of accent changed from

> the stage when forms like naumi/nuva.h originated to the stage when

> compounds emerged? Some food for thought.

>

> Madhav Deshpande

 

 

Burrows in "The Sanskrit Language" p. 115 (1st edition) attributes the

"zero grade" reductions, by movement of a stress accent, to the PIE stage.

 

". . . there must have been a change between early and late

Indo-European. Earlier the accent had the power to reduce the

neighbouring syllables, indicating a strong stress element. In the

later period this power was certainly lost . . ."

 

Beekes in "Comparative Indo-European Linguistics" pages 153-154 also

places the zero grade reduction by a mobile accent in "one of the

stages of Proto-Indo-European"

 

But also says:

". . . the accent-system of both Sanskrit and Greek is neither a

stress-accent nor that of a tone language, but something in between."

 

and

"There are several indications that Proto-Indo-European was a tone

language . . . There are however a great number of problems, among

which is the question of how this may relate to the development of the

ablaut."

 

Szemerenyi "Introduction to Indo-european Linguistics" using the

example of santi and asmi gives cognates of this alteration in Doric

Greek, Gothic and Old Church Slavonic. (page 111). and assumes a

"predominantly expiratory or dynamic accent."

 

But earlier he says: (page 73)

 

"The most important means of emphasizing a syllable are expiratory

force (intensity), pitch, and duration. These are all employed in

every type of accent, so that the long-prevalent practice of dividing

languages into those with expiratory or dynamic accent and others with

musical or pitch accent, as though in the former only intensity, in

the latter only pitch played a part, is now obsolete. . . .Jakobson

has shown that the essential difference between the two traditional

types of accent is that in the one the extent of the accent is equal

to the duration of the whole syllabic phoneme, in the other the accent

affects only a part of the syllable, the mora. The former type is

perceived as an accent of intensity. The other . . . can take the

accent either on the first mora (falling accent) or on the second

(rising accent). . . Accordingly we must speak of syllabic accent and

mora accent.

 

On pages 77-78 he uses the fact that vedic long a is often treated as

disyllabic as evidence that the proto-indo-european accent was a mora

accent.

 

 

Harry Spier

371 Brickman Road

Hurleyville, NY