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Sanskrit and Its Development From Proto-Indo-European (PDFDrive)
Sanskrit and Its Development From Proto-Indo-European (PDFDrive)
Proto-Indo-European
Miriam Kennerknecht und Sonja Eberhardt
15.12.2014
Content
1 History of Sanskrit
2 Phonology
3 Morphology
3.1 nominal
3.2 verbal
4 References
1. History
1.1 The Indians
• Original homeland of the Indians:
a region north-west of India
• Around the middle of the second millennium BC the
forebears of the Indians moved into India
• The oldest Indic language:
Sanskrit
• Sanskrit is an Indo-European language
1. History
1.2 The writing system
• first texts were transmitted
orally
• The inscriptions of the ruler
Aśoka in the third century BC
were the first documentary
evidence for Middle Indic
• The first direct attestation of
Sanskrit: inscription of the
ruler Rudradāman AD 150
• Sanskrit is written in the
‘devanāgarī’ script
1. History
1.3 The Indo-Iranian language
family
• Consists of Indo-Aryan and Iranian and
the Kafir languages of the North-west
India
• The speakers referred to themselves as
ārya- (Aryans)
• is without doubt the most archaic of the
Indo-European languages
1. History
1.3 The Indo-Iranian language family
Indic (Indo-Aryan)
• Oldest form is called Vedic
• As of the fifth century B.C. we speak of
Middle Indo-Aryan
• Languages of modern India:
→ Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarathi
• The land of origin of the Rig Veda is the
Punjab
→ From there the Indo-Aryan language
spread toward the south
1. History
1.3 The Indo-Iranian language
family
1. History
1.3 The Indo-Iranian language family
Iranian
• Old Iranian languages: Avestan & Old
Persian
• Modern Iranian comprises: Modern
Persian (Farsi), Pashto, the official
language of Afghanistan, Kurdish, and
the Ossetic language spoken by a
minority people of the Caucasus
1. History
1.3 The Indo-Iranian language family
• Sanskrit and Iranian share a number of
common features
→ vocabulary is largely shared
→ the nominal declension and verbal
flexion
• There was a period of extensive contact
between the two languages
• There subsequently occurred a process of
fragmentation
1. History
1.3 The Indo-Iranian language family
• differences between Sanskrit and Iranian:
→ in Iranian *(-)s- becomes (-)h-; in Sanskrit it
is preserved
→ in Sanskrit the voiced aspirates *bh, *dh, *gh
remain as such while in Iranian they lose their
aspiration
→ in Sanskrit there appears a series of
retroflex phonemes (t, th, d, dh, n, s) which do
not exist in Iranian
1. History
1.3 The Indo-Iranian language family
The Kafir languages (Nuristani languages)
• Ashkun and Prasun of Northeastern
Afghanistan
• Perhaps a third branch of the Indo-Iranian
group
• Could also be derived from the Iranian
languages
1. History
1.4 The Hurrians
• The Aryans are the only IE peoples of whom linguistic
traces remain outside their historical homelands:
in Asia Minor and Mesopotamia
• The Hurrian kingdom of the Mitanni was dominated by
an Aryan aristocracy
→ The rulers of the Mitanni had names with a clear
Aryan stamp
→ numerals and horsemanship terms are of Indian
derivation
→ aika “one” (Skt. eka-), panza “five” (Skt. pan͂ca)
• The Aryan linguistic remains outside India resemble
Sanskrit more than Iranian
→ aika “one” (Skt. eka) but Iran. *aiwa-
1. History
1.5 The Aryan dialects
Vedic:
• literary language of the vedic tradition
• the oldest document:
→ the Rig Veda
→ goes back to around 1000 BC
→ a collection of hymns composed in
the western regions of India
1. History
1.5 The Aryan dialects
• Early and Later Vedic
→ Early Vedic: based on a western dialect
→ Later Vedic: more features deriving from
central dialects
• theory fails:
→ Some texts classed as later vedic are in
fact very ancient
→ Central dialect features are also present in
the Rig Veda
1. History
1.5 The Aryan dialects
Sanskrit
• Language of the classical literature of India
• Heavily formalized and standardized
(saṁskr̥ta “perfected”)
• Classical Sanskrit: language coded by the
grammarian Pāṇini
• Basis of Sanskrit: a dialect of the central region of
India (Madhyadeśa)
• Sanskrit shares many features with Later Vedic
1. History
1.5 The Aryan dialects
Differences between Sanskrit and Vedic:
→ stems in i and u:
•
3.1 Nominal Morphology
3.1.2 Case endings
• Nominal stems in
-a- (devas “god”)
•
3.1 Nominal Morphology
3.1.2 Case endings
Relative pronouns
• m. yas, f. yā, n. yat
→ PIE: *yos-, *yā -, *yod
3.1 Nominal Morphology
3.1.4 Pronouns
Anaphoric pronoun:
• sa, sā, tat
→ also used as a personal pronoun
→ usually in the third person
• forms:
→ Sg.: nominative: sa, sā, tat / accusative: m.
tam, f. tām / genitive: m. tasya
→ Pl.: nominative: m. te / instrumental: m.
tais, genitive: f. tāsām / locative: m. tesu
→ PIE: *so, f. *seh2, n. *tod
3.1 Nominal Morphology
3.1.4 Pronouns
Interrogative pronoun:
• formed from the PIE interrogative-
indefinite stem *kwo-/*kwe-, *kwi-
• m. kas, f. kā, n. kim (kat)
→ ka comes from *kwo-
• *kwe-, *kwi- survive only in cana- and cit-
→ when added to the interrogative, it
forms the indefinite
→ kas “who” > kas cit “someone”
3.1 Nominal Morphology
3.1.4 Pronouns
Personal pronouns:
• aham “I” (acc. mam, instr. mayā) < *eĝ(h)om
• tvam “you” (acc. tvām, instr. tvayā) < *tw-om
• vayam “we” (acc. asmān, instr. asmabhis)
• yuyam “you” (pl) (acc. yuṣmān, instr.
yuṣmabhis)
• for the third person sa is used
3.1 Nominal Morphology
3.1.5 Numerals
Cardinal numerals:
• from one to four: declined
for all three genders
→ m. trayas, f. tiṣras,
n. trīṇi “three”
• from five to ten:
declinable, but without
distinction of gender
→ pañca,
instrumental: pañca-bhis
“five”
3.1 Nominal Morphology
3.1.5 Numerals
• from eleven to nineteen:
form of copulative
compounds
→ ekadaśa
”
“eleven”
> lit. “one-ten
• The reconstruction of the
PIE forms is not
possible
3.1 Nominal Morphology
3.1.5 Numerals
Ordinal numerals:
• formed with the suffix –ma
• or the suffix –tama
→ pañcaśat “fifty” > pañcaśattamas
“fiftieth”
• both suffixes are also superlative
morphemes
3.1 Nominal Morphology
3.1.5 Numerals
3.1 Nominal Morphology
3.1.6 Development from PIE to
Sanskrit
• Still eight cases in Sanskrit
• three genders in Sanskrit
• No articles in PIE and Sanskrit
• No personal pronoun for the third person in both
languages, a demonstrative is used
• Still singular, plural and dual in Sanskrit
• Proto-Indo-European nominal derivation is well
preserved in Sanskrit
3.2 Verbal Morphology in
Classical and Vedic Sanskrit
● Verb conjugation via processes and states with
distinction of present and past tense
Representation of Representation of states
actions