NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/sci/lang/8999

Text File | 1993-01-27 | 4.8 KB | 92 lines

Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: sparky!uunet!charon.amdahl.com!pacbell.com!decwrl!ames!agate!stanford.edu!nntp.Stanford.EDU!alderson
From: [e-mail] (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: Tones in PIE?
In-Reply-To: [e-mail] (rahul  bonner)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Originator: [e-mail]
Sender: [e-mail] (Mr News)
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Cisco Systems (MIS)
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 93 15:52:21 GMT
Lines: 77

In article <[e-mail]>, bon6@quads (rahul  bonner) writes:
>In an article on PIE accent, [e-mail] (Rich Alderson) writes:
>
>>Vedic Sanskrit had a pitch rise on the accented syllable within a word, with
>>a slightly lower than normal pitch on the immediately preceding syllable and
>>a much lower than normal pitch on the immediately following syllable. . . .
>>The accented syllable is called _udatta_ "raised" in Sanskrit grammatical
>>treatises, and the following is called _anudatta_ "not raised."
>
>Here is a passage from one of those treatises, in my own rough translation:
>
>    The words _uda:tta_, _anuda:tta_, and _svarita_ are well known both in
>    the world and in the veda in the sense of a pitch (_svara_) that is a
>    quality of a speech sound.  Here (i.e., in this and the next two
>    sutras) they are given as technical designations of vowels that possess
>    such a quality.  A vowel that is pronounced high is called _uda:tta_.
>    "High" is not to be understood to refer to the force of the sound, as
>    when we say, "He speaks 'high,'" i.e., "He speaks out loud," or "He
>    recites 'high,'" i.e., "He recites out loud."  How, then, is it to be
>    understood?  "High" is with respect to the place of articulation; it is
>    a word that modifies the term that is here being defined.  Speech
>    sounds are produced at the five places of articulation, and these
>    places of articulation have different parts; a vowel that is produced
>    in the upper part of a place of articulation is called _uda:tta_.
>    While it is being produced, the organs of articulation are tense and
>    contracted, the pitch is rough and dry, and the opening of the throat
>    is constricted.
>
>This is from the _Ka:'sika: V.rtti_, a fifth century (?) commentary on
>Pa:.nini's _A.s.ta:dhya:yi:_.  It is the comment on sutra 1.2.29, _uccair
>uda:tta.h_.
>
>What I find noteworthy here is that the accent is being related to the places
>of articulation in the mouth.  Whenever I have thought about Old Indic accent,
>which is admittedly not very frequently, I have imagined it as something more
>or less musical: the _uda:tta_ was a few notes higher than the _anuda:tta_.
>But this passage clearly says that a vowel with the _uda:tta_ is pronounced in
>a different place than a vowel with the _anuda:tta_.

Of course, a 5th century commentary would be 1000 years after Panini, with the
problems of transmission of texts and of concepts.

In Classical Sanskrit, as opposed to the language of the Vedas and Brahmanas,
the accent was a stress placed according to rules similar to Latin:  The accent
fell on the next to the last syllable if it was heavy, the syllable before that
if the next to last was light and it was heavy, or the syllable before *that*
in other cases.  "Light" means "with a short vowel and no following consonant
in the same syllable" and "heavy" means "with a long vowel, or with a short
vowel and following consonant in the same syllable).  Diagrammatically (with X
marking a syllable whose weight is unimportant in accent assignment):

    X X X CV:' X
          CVC'

    X X CV:' CV X
        CVC' CV X

    X X' CV CV X

This strong stress accent appears to have operated in the Prakrits (as is evi-
denced by various vowel and syllable reductions).  It is entirely possible that
the commentator who composed the _Ka:s'ika Vrtti_ was influenced by the stress
accent of his native language, which produced a distinction between tense
vowels under accent and lax vowels in unaccented syllables.

(Note that this last is speculation, based on other descriptions of the accent
as "musical.")

I have read of at least one modern school of pandits who pronounce the *marked*
syllables differently, relegating the _uda:tta_ to less prominence, based on a
notion that what is mentioned is important and that since the _uda:tta_ is
defined in terms of the surrounding syllables, *those* are the important ones.
--
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
[e-mail]                              _The Lost Road_