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[Y-Indology] Past participles and retroflexion

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The variations are caused by several sandhi rules coming into play at once.

 

-Dha or -gdha depends on whether the final h of the stem represents

original 'h' or 'gh'. muh- presumably existed in both forms.

 

The long vowel + retroflex forms are thought to have arisen via forms

with voiced spirants ('z', and retroflex and aspirated equivalents),

which behaved in sandhi terms very like 's', and then dropped out of

the language, leaving resultant long syllables and retroflexion.

 

(On soDhum, infinitive of sah-): 'Here o represents the Indo-Iranian

aZh, which after cerebralizing and aspirating the following dental

becomes o, just as original as (through az) becomes o; e.g. in

manobhiH.' Macdonell, p. 32, note on para 69.

 

On top of this we get samprasAraNa (vah- > uh- in UDha) and the law

(Grimm's?) that prohibits aspirates at the beginning and end of the

same syllable.

 

The rules are explained individually in Macdonell's Sanskrit

Grammar, particularly paras 55 and note, para 69 and notes. There's

sure to be a fuller account in T. Burrow, 'The Sanskrit Language',

Faber & Faber, London, 1955, but alas, I haven't got it to hand.

 

Valerie J Roebuck

Manchester, UK

 

At 2:11 pm -0500 26/1/04, Harry Spier wrote:

>Dear list members,

>

>While looking up a past passive participle in the dicitionary I noticed the

>following phenomenon.

>

>It appears that whenever a past passive participle of type root + "ta" is

>formed from a root ending in a short vowel + h ,

>the past passive participle form either:

>1. retains the short vowel and the termination is a unretroflexed double

>consonent.

>or

>2. now has a long vowel plus a single consonent retroflexed termination.

>

>So we have:

>

>guh gUDha

>dah dagdha

>dih digdha

>duh dugdha

>druh drugdha

>nah naddha

>mih mIDha

>muh mugdha and mUDha !!

>rih rIDha

>ruh rUDha

>lih lIDha

>vah UDha

>sah sADha or sODha

>snih snigdha

>

>Is this in fact an invariable rule, and is it likely that the retroflex

>forms were a historical linguistic development from an earlier but now

>usually lost form of short vowel + non-retroflex ending.

>

>I.e. short vowel + gdha ----> long vowel + Dha at some point in time for

>these forms.

>

>Thanks,

>Harry

>

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