Vedic Sanskrit grammar

Vedic Sanskrit grammar

Vedic Sanskrit grammar is the oldest attested full case and tense system grammar of a language from the Indo-European language family.
Comparing with Classical Sanskrit, Vedic Sanskrit had a subjunctive absent in Panini's grammar and generally believed to have disappeared by then at least in common sentence constructions. All tenses could be conjugated in the subjunctive and optative moods, in contrast to Classical Sanskrit, with no subjunctive and only a present optative. (However, the old first-person subjunctive forms were used to complete the Classical Sanskrit imperative.) The three synthetic past tenses (imperfect, perfect and aorist) were still clearly distinguished semantically in (at least the earliest) Vedic. A fifth mood, the injunctive, also existed.

Long-"i" stems differentiate the Devi inflection and the Vrkis inflection, a difference lost in Classical Sanskrit.

*The subjunctive mood of Vedic Sanskrit was also lost in Classical Sanskrit. Also, there was no fixed rule about the use of various tenses Unicode|("luṇ, laṇ" and "liṭ").
*There were more than 12 ways of forming infinitives in Vedic Sanskrit, of which Classical Sanskrit retained only one form.
*Nominal declinations and verbal conjugation also changed pronunciation, although the spelling was mostly retained in Classical Sanskrit. E.g., along with the Classical Sanskrit's declension of "deva-" as Unicode|"devas"—"devau"—"devās", Vedic Sanskrit additionally allowed the forms Unicode|"daivas"—"daivā"—"daivāsas". Similarly Vedic Sanskrit has declined forms such as "asmai", "tvai", Unicode|"yuṣmai", "tvā", etc. for the 1st and 2nd person pronouns, not found in Classical Sanskrit. The obvious reason is the attempt of Classical Sanskrit to regularize and standardize its grammar, which simultaneously led to a purge of Old Proto-Indo-European forms.
*To emphasize that Proto-Indo-European and its immediate daughters were essentially end-inflected languages, both Proto-Indo-European and Vedic Sanskrit had independent prefix-morphemes. Such prefixes (especially for verbs) could come anywhere in the sentence, but in Classical Sanskrit, it became mandatory to attach them immediately before the verb.

Phonology

Vedic Sanskrit differs from Classical Sanskrit to an extent comparable to the difference between Homeric Greek and Classical Greek. Tiwari ( [1955] 2005) lists the following principal differences between the two:

* Vedic Sanskrit had a voiceless bilabial fricative (IPA| [ɸ] , called "upadhmānīya") and a voiceless velar fricative (IPA| [x] , called "jihvāmūlīya")—which used to occur when the breath "visarga" (अः) appeared before voiceless labial and velar consonants respectively. Both of them were lost in Classical Sanskrit to give way to the simple "visarga" - upadhmaniya occurs before "IAST|p" and "IAST|ph", jihvamuliya before "IAST|k" and "IAST|kh".

* Vedic Sanskrit had a retroflex lateral approximant (IPA| [ ɭ ] ) as well as its aspirated counterpart IPA| [ɭʰ] (ळ्ह), which were lost in Classical Sanskrit, to be replaced with the corresponding plosives IPA| [ɖ] (ड) and IPA| [ɖʱ] (ढ). ("Varies by region; vedic pronunciations are still in common use in some regions, e.g. southern India, including Maharashtra".)
Vedic also had a separate symbol Unicode|ळ for retroflex "l", an intervocalic allophone of "IAST|ḍ", transliterated as "IAST|ḷ" or "IAST|ḷh". In order to disambiguate vocalic "l" from retroflex "l", vocalic "l" is sometimes transliterated with a ring below the letter, "Unicode|l̥"; when this is done, vocalic "r" is also represented with a ring, "Unicode|r̥", for consistency (c.f. ISO 15919).

* The pronunciations of syllabic IPA| [ɻ̩] (ऋ), IPA| [l̩] (लृ) and their long counterparts no longer retained their pure pronunciations, but had started to be pronounced as short and long IPA| [ɻi] (रि) and IPA| [li] (ल्रि). ("Varies by region; vedic pronunciations are still in common use in some regions, e.g. southern India, including Maharashtra")

* The vowels e (ए) and o (ओ) were actually realized in Vedic Sanskrit as diphthongs IPA| [ai] and IPA| [au] , but they became pure monophthongs IPA| [eː] and IPA| [oː] in Classical Sanskrit. In this article these diphthongs are written in the original pronunciation, i. e., "ai" and "au".

* The vowels ai (ऐ) and au (औ) were actually realized in Vedic Sanskrit as long diphthongs IPA| [aːi] (आइ) and IPA| [aːu] (आउ), but they became short diphthongs IPA| [ai] (अइ) and IPA| [au] (अउ) in Classical Sanskrit. In this article these diphthongs are written in the original pronunciation, i. e., "āi" and "āu".

* The "Prātishākhyas" claim that the dental consonants were articulated from the root of the teeth ("dantamūlīya"), but they became pure dentals later. This included the IPA| [r] , which later became retroflex.

* Vedic Sanskrit had a pitch accent which could even change the meaning of the words, and was still in use in Panini's time, as we can infer by his use of devices to indicate its position. At some latter time, this was replaced by a stress accent limited to the second to fourth syllables from the end. Today, the pitch accent can be heard only in the traditional Vedic chantings.
Since a small number of words in the late pronunciation of Vedic carry the so-called "independent svarita" on a short vowel, one can argue that "late" Vedic was "marginally" a tonal language. Note however that in the metrically restored versions of the Rig Veda almost all of the syllables carrying an independent svarita must revert to a sequence of two syllables, the first of which carries an udātta and the second a (so called) dependent svarita. Early Vedic was thus definitely not a tone language but a pitch accent language. See Vedic accent.
Pitch accent was not restricted to Vedic: early Sanskrit grammarian Panini gives (1) accent rules for the spoken language of his (post-Vedic) time and (2) the differences of Vedic accent. We have, however, no extant post-Vedic text with accents.

* The pluti vowels (trimoraic vowels) were on the verge of becoming phonological during middle Vedic, but disappeared again.

* Vedic Sanskrit often allowed two like vowels to come together without merger during Sandhi.

Morphology

Nouns

Vedic Sanskrit is a highly inflected language with three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and three numbers (singular, plural, dual). It has eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, and locative.

In this article nouns are divided into five declensions. The declension to which a noun belongs to is determined largely by form.

The basic declension suffix scheme for nouns and adjectives

The basic scheme is given in the table below — valid for almost all nouns and adjectives. However, according to the gender and the ending consonant/vowel of the uninflected word-stem, there are predetermined rules of compulsory "sandhi" which would then give the final inflected word. The parentheses give the case-terminations for the neuter gender, the rest are for masculine and feminine gender. When two or three forms are given, the first is masculine (and neuter), but the second and third - feminine.

Monosyllabic stems

The demonstrative "ta", declined below, also functions as the third person pronoun.

Tense systems

The verbs tenses (a very inexact application of the word, since more distinctions than simply tense are expressed) are organized into four 'systems' (as well as gerunds and infinitives, and such creatures as intensives/frequentatives, desideratives, causatives, and benedictives derived from more basic forms) based on the different stem forms (derived from verbal roots) used in conjugation. There are four tense systems:
* Present (Present, Imperfect, Imperative, Optative)
* Perfect
* Aorist
* Future (Future, Conditional)

Present system

The present system includes the present and imperfect tenses, the optative and imperative moods, as well as some of the remnant forms of the old subjunctive. The tense stem of the present system is formed in various ways. The numbers are the native grammarians' numbers for these classes.

For thematic verbs, the present tense stem may be formed through:
* 1. Suffixation of the thematic vowel "a" with guUnicode|ṇa strengthening, for example, "bháva-" from "bhū" 'be', "bhara-" from "IAST|bhṛ" (guUnicode|ṇa form "bhar-") 'bring'.
* 6. Suffixation of the thematic vowel "a" with a shift of accent to this vowel, for example "tudá-" from "tud" 'thrust'.
* 4. Suffixation of "ya", for example "dī́vya-" from "div" 'play', "paśya-" from "pś" 'see'.

For athematic verbs, the present tense stem may be formed through:
* 2. No modification at all, for example "ad-" from "ad" 'eat'. Actually these are shortened forms of 1. class (without guUnicode|ṇa), e.g. "adti < adati", "asmi < asāmi".
* 3. Reduplication prefixed to the root, for example "juhu-" from "hu" 'sacrifice', "dadhā-" from "dhā" 'put'.
* 7. Infixion of "ná" or "n" before the final root consonant (with appropriate sandhi changes), for example "rundh-" or "ruUnicode|ṇadh-" from "rudh" 'obstruct', "yunaj-" from "yuj" 'join' ("yunakti" 'he joins').
* 5. Suffixation of "nu" (guUnicode|ṇa form "náu"), for example "sunu-" from "su" 'press out', "IAST|stṛnau-" from "IAST|stṛ" 'strew' ("IAST|stṛnumaḥ" 'we strew', "IAST|stṛnvanti" 'they strew').
* 8. Suffixation of "u" (guUnicode|ṇa form "au"), for example "tanu-" from "tan" 'stretch'. For modern linguistic purposes it is better treated as a subclass of the 5th. "tanu-" derives from "tnnu-", which is zero-grade for *"tannu-", because in the Proto-Indo-European language [m] and [n] could be vowels (i.e. [am] , [an] ), which in Sanskrit (and Greek) change to [a] . Most members of the 8th class arose this way; "kar-" 'make, do' was 5th class in Vedic Sanskrit ("krnauti" 'he makes'), but shifted to the 8th class in Classical Sanskrit ("karauti" 'he makes')
* 9. Suffixation of "nā" (zero-grade "nī" or "n"), for example "krīUnicode|ṇa-" or "krīUnicode|ṇī-" from "krī" 'buy', "pūna-" from "pū" 'clean'.
* 10. This class described by native grammarians refers to a process which is derivational in nature, and thus not a true tense-stem formation. It is formed by suffixation of "ya" with guUnicode|ṇa or vUnicode|ṛddhi strengthening and lengthening of the root's last vowel, for example "bhāvaya-" (< "bāu-a-ya-") from "bhū" 'be', "pūjaya-" from "pūj" 'honour', "cauraya-" from "cur" (guUnicode|ṇa form "caur-") 'steal', "dāvaya-" from "du" (vUnicode|ṛddhi form "dāv-") 'burn'.

The present system also differentiates strong and weak forms of the verb. The strong/weak opposition manifests itself differently depending on the class:
*The root and reduplicating classes (2 & 3) are not modified in the weak forms, and receive Unicode|guṇa in the strong forms.
*The nasal class (7) is not modified in the weak form, extends the nasal to "ná" in the strong form.
*The nu-class (5) has "nu" in the weak form and "náu" in the strong form.
*The nā-class (9) has "nī" in the weak form and "nā́" in the strong form. "nī" disappears before vocalic endings.

Perfect system

The perfect system includes only the perfect tense. The stem is formed with reduplication as with the present system.

The perfect system also produces separate "strong" and "weak" forms of the verb &mdash; the strong form is used with the singular active, and the weak form with the rest.

The perfect in the Sanskrit can be in form of the simple perfect and the periphrastic perfect. The only perfect tense is in the indicative. The simple perfect is the most common form and can be made from most of the roots. The simple perfect stem is made by reduplication and if necessary by stem lengthening. The conjugated form takes special perfect endings. The periphrastic perfect is used with causative, desiderative, denominative and roots with prosodic long anlauted vowel (except a/ā). Only few roots can form both the simple and the periphrastic perfect. These are "IAST|bhṛ" 'carry', "IAST|uṣ" 'burn', "vid" 'know', "bhi" 'to be afraid', "hu" 'sacrifice'.

Aorist system

The aorist system includes aorist proper (with past indicative meaning, e.g. "abhūs" 'you were') and some of the forms of the ancient injunctive (used almost exclusively with "mā" in prohibitions, e.g. "mā bhūs" 'don't be'). The principal distinction of the two is presence/absence of an augment – "a-" prefixed to the stem.

The aorist system stem actually has three different formations: the simple aorist, the reduplicating aorist (semantically related to the causative verb), and the sibilant aorist. The simple aorist is taken directly from the root stem (e.g. "bhū-": "a-bhū-t" 'he was'). The reduplicating aorist involves reduplication as well as vowel reduction of the stem. The sibilant aorist is formed with the suffixation of "s" to the stem. The sibilant aorist by itself has four formations:
* athematic s-aorist
* athematic iUnicode|ṣ-aorist
* athematic siUnicode|ṣ-aorist
* thematic s-aorist

Future system

The future system is formed with the suffixation of "-sya-" or "-iUnicode|ṣya-" and guUnicode|ṇa, both in the simple future and conditional. There exists also so called periphrastic future, which is made by adding suffix "tUnicode|ṝ" to the stem and the short "as" 'to be' form.

Conjugation

Each verb has a grammatical voice, whether active, passive or middle. There is also an impersonal voice, which can be described as the passive voice of intransitive verbs. Sanskrit verbs have an indicative, an optative and an imperative mood. Older forms of the language had a subjunctive, though this had fallen out of use by the time of Classical Sanskrit.

Basic conjugational endings

Conjugational endings in Vedic Sanskrit convey person, number, and voice. Different forms of the endings are used depending on what tense stem and mood they are attached to. Verb stems or the endings themselves may be changed or obscured by sandhi.

The aorist takes secondary endings.

The imperative takes imperative endings.

The second or periphrastic future is made by adding suffix "tUnicode|ṝ" to the stem and the short "as" 'to be' form, except 3rd person, both singular and plural, having feminine Unicode|ṝ-stem nominative endings, e.g., "bhavi-" + "tā" + "asmi" = "bhavitāsmi", but "bhavi-" + "tā/tārāu/tāras" = "bhavitā/bhavitārāu/bhavitāras". The passive forms are identical to the middle forms.

yntax

Because of Vedic Sanskrit's complex declension system the word order is free (with tendency toward SOV).

ee also

* Vedic Sanskrit
* Classical Sanskrit
* Old Persian grammar
* Vedic accent

References

* Ernst Wilhelm Oskar Windisch, Berthold Delbrück, "Die altindische Wortfolge aus dem Catagathabrahmana" [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0543940349&id=DoaWr78cxKQC&dq=Altindische]
* Arthur Anthony MacDonell, "Vedic Grammar" (1910)
* Arthur Anthony MacDonell, "A Vedic Grammar for Students". Bombay, Oxford University Press. (1916/1975)
* Bruno Lindner, "'Altindische Nominalbildung: Nach den IAST|S̆amhitas dargestellt" (1878) [http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC05275028&id=dVsIAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=Altindische]
* Michael Witzel, "Tracing the Vedic dialects" in "Dialectes dans les litteratures Indo-Aryennes" ed. Caillat, Paris, 1989, 97&ndash;265.
* Müller M., "Sanskrit Grammatik", Leipzig (1868)
* Renou L., "Grammaire de la langue védique", Paris (1952)
* William Dwight Whitney, "Sanskrit Grammar". 5th edn. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. (1924) [1st ed. 1879]

External links

Grammars

* [http://www.danam.co.uk/Sanskrit/Sanskrit%20Introductory/Wikner%20Sanskrit%20Intro.pdf Charles Wikner "A Practical Sanskrit Introductory"]
* [http://srimadbhagavatam.org/downloads/sanskritgrammar.pdf A vaishnava version of Pānini's grammar: Harivenu Dāsa "An Introductory Course based on Šrīla Jīva Gosvāmī's Grammar"]
* [http://nagari.southindia.ru/sanskrit/Elizarenkova-Vediskaya-Grammatika1982_(Gasuns).pdf Elizarenkova T. Ya. "Grammatika vediyskogo yazyka" ("Vedic grammar") (1982) (in Russian)]
* [http://nagari.southindia.ru/sanskrit/Ivanov-Toporov-Sanskrit1960_(Gasuns).pdf Ivanov V. V., Toporov V. N. "Sanskrit" (1960) (in Russian)]

Phonology

* [http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/vedic/Vedic_accents_doc.pdf Vedic Accents]
* [http://www.kortlandt.nl/publications/art188e.pdf Frederik Kortlandt "Accent and ablaut in the Vedic verbs"]
* [http://www.unc.edu/~melfraz/ling/frazier-UCLA-handout.pdf Melissa Frazier "Accent in Proto-Indo-European Athematic Nouns and Its Development in Vedic Sanskrit"]
* [http://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/Textual-Studies/Prosody-Articles/Macdonell-Vedic.pdf Arthur Anthony Macdonell "A Vedic Grammar for Students: Appendix II: Vedic Metre"]

Morphology

* [http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~papke/downloads/ICHLhandout.pdf Julia Papke "Order and Meaning in Sanskrit Preverbs"]
* [http://www.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/Papers/injunctive.article.pdf Paul Kiparsky "The Vedic Injunctive: Historical and Synchronic Implications"]
* [http://www.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/Papers/yearbook.pdf Paul Kiparsky "Aspect and Event Structure in Vedic"]
* [http://voiceofdharma.com/indology/baumrejoinder.html V. Swaminathan "Panini’s Understanding of Vedic Grammar"]
* [https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/dspace/bitstream/1887/4291/3/Thesis.pdf Daniel Baum "The Imperative in the Rigveda"]
* [http://www.easterntradition.org/virtually%20unknown%20benedictive.pdf "The «Virtually Unknown» Benedictive Middle in Classical Sanskrit"]
* [http://sanskrit.inria.fr/ The Sanskrit Heritage Site]


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