PIE e/o Ablaut

petegray petegray at btinternet.com
Thu Apr 6 19:16:40 UTC 2000


>> Sanskrit short [e] and [o] >

> To my way of thinking, you have described a classic situation of a
> conditioned phone [e,o] of /e:,o:/ before initial {a-}.

Yes, of course.
I met another interesting example of /e/ just this morning:  RV 1:154:1.
The whole line goes:
  vicakrama:nas tredhoruga:yah.   "having strode out - triply - wide-paced"
The metre requires 11 syllables, and there are only ten.  The usual recourse
here is to separate out the resolved syllables in sandhi - here the o after
dh.   But Macdonnell says of tredha:,  "The first syllable [tre..] must be
pronounced ... equivalent to two short syllables;  the resolution tredha:
uruga:yah would produce both an abnormal break and an abnormal cadence".

So there's /e/ pronounced as two short syllables.   Anyone wish to suggest
it's /ai/?

Peter



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