Sanskrit and its development from
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:
• Vedic preserves very ancient IE features:
injunctive, subjunctive, some verb endings, the
infinitive expressed with a noun of action declined
according to its syntactic function
• Vedic exhibits a series of innovations:
a) The -a- stem nominative plural –āsas
(Sanskrit has -ās < *-ōs)
b) the -a- stem instrumental plural –ebhis
(Sanskrit has -ais < *-ōjs)
c) the first person plural active ending –masi
(Sanskrit has -mas < *-me/os)
1. History
1.5 The Aryan dialects
The Prākrits
• Belong to the Middle Indian tradition
(300 BC to AD 200)
• Do not derive from Sanskrit but from a parallel
tradition going back to Vedic period
• Some innovative features are shared by Vedic and the
Prākrits but not by Sanskrit
→ The -a- stem nominative plural -āsas
→ dative plural -ebhis
1. History
1.5 The Aryan dialects
• The Prākrits do not go back directly to the dialect
which formed Vedic, but rather to a parallel tradition
(Vedic Prākrits)
• The most important of the ancient Prākrits: Pāli
→ language of the canon of the Buddhist faith
• The modern Aryan dialects of India go back to the
spoken dialects on which the Prākrits were based
2. Phonology of Sanskrit
●
1860 – discovery of rules for sound changes
E. g. the assumption of analogy (cf. Beekes,
2011: 17) as
Sanskrit a becomes e in Greek
1. Skt. jánas Gr. génos (gender, race)
2. Skt. saptá Gr. heptá (seven)
2. Phonology
Development from PIE to Sanskrit
●
PIE vowels e, o, a > Skt. a
some examples
PIE
Sanskrit
Latin
*esti
asti
est
*poti-
pati-
potis (lord)
*akso-
aksa
axis (axle)
2. Phonology
Development from PIE to Sanskrit
●
PIE diphthongs *ej, *oj, *aj
> *aj
*ew, *ow, *aw > *aw
→ Sanskrit monophthongs e and o
some examples
PIE
Sanskrit
Greek/Old Lat.
*ejti
eti
Gk eîsi (goes)
*wojda
veda
Gk (w)oîda
(I know)
*lowko-
loka
OLat. loukom
(free space)
2. Phonology
Development from PIE to Sanskrit
●
long diphthongs shortened 1st element in PIE
and then became in Sanskrit ai and
*naws > naus (ship)
●
schwa → i: *pəter > pitar (father)
2. Phonology
Development from PIE to Sanskrit
●
PIE vowel triangle with symmetric long and
short sounds
2. Phonology
Development from PIE to Sanskrit
→ length phonologically not
relevant,
morphophonological variants
of the bi-phonemic clusters
ai and au (PIE)
development maybe from
the three laryngeals *h1,
*h2, *h3
Two asymmetrical triangles emerged.
2. Phonology
Development from PIE to Sanskrit
●
PIE liquids l and r merge to Sanskrit r
Example with r:
*mrt- > Skt mrtyu- (mors, death)
●
PIE nasals m and n become Skt a
Example with m:
*septm > Skt sapta (seven)
2. Phonology
Development from PIE to Sanskrit
●
Velars belong to the most important changes.
h
w
w
Pure (*k, *g, *g ) and labiovelars (*k , *g ,
*gwh) before *i and *e > a became c, j, h and
stayed in other environments pure k, g, gh.
●
●
h
Palatals *k, *g, *g > s, j, h
w
Example for velars: *k id > cit (Lat. quid),
w
w
*k e > ca (Lat. -que) and *k os > kas (Lat.
quod)
2. Phonology
Development from PIE to Sanskrit
2. Phonology
Development from PIE to Sanskrit
●
●
●
Accentuation is only known in Vedic Sanskrit
due to representation via diacritics in Vedic
texts.
Probably the pronunciation of present-day
Sanskrit (accent on penultimate segment as in
Latin) goes back to the classical age
(Wackernagel 1896).
Regarding pronunciation: some tendencies like
the change of word-endings depending on the
beginning of the following word.
3.1 Nominal Morphology
3.1.1 Gender
• Three grammatical genders
→ masculine, feminine and neuter
→ is the result of an innovation
• The contrast between masculine and feminine has been
generalized
→ all nouns in -a- (<*-o-): masculine
→ all nouns in -ā- (<*-ā-): feminine
• the distinction between masculine and neuter is often
only expressed by the case endings
3.1 Nominal Morphology
3.1.2 Case endings
Stems
• Vowel stems:
→ the short a thematic type:
→ ā and ī feminine stems
→ 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
Nominal stems in -a-
3.1 Nominal Morphology
3.1.2 Case endings
Consonant stems
• stems with: an-, ar-, ant-, vas- and as• Nominal stems in -n-: rājan- “king”
3.1 Nominal Morphology
3.1.2 Case endings
The dual
example: somone‘s two eyes → Skt. akṣī
3.1 Nominal Morphology
3.1.2 Case endings
3.1 Nominal Morphology
3.1.3 Adjectives
• The adjectives follow the noun flection
→ when the masculine is in -a (<*-o-), the
feminine shows -ā- (pāpas/pāpā “bad”)
→ otherwise the feminine is formed with the
suffix -ī- (uru/urvī “broad”)
• Extremely archaic are the several instances of
suffixal suppletion where the masculine in -van
contrast with the feminine in -varī (pīvan-/pīvarī
“fat”)
3.1 Nominal Morphology
3.1.3 Adjectives
• The comparative:
→ suffix -iyas- added to the full grade root (<*-ios-):
dūras “far” > davīyas→ suffix: -tara- (< *-tero-) added to the adjectival
stem:
dūra-taras “further”
• The superlative:
→ suffixes: -isṭḥa (< *-istos-) and -tama (< *-tomo)
→ In Proto-Indo-European the two types were
functional distinct: *-tero- und *-tomo- indicate a
separative-spatial value, *-ios- und *-istos- a qualitativedimensional value
3.1 Nominal Morphology
3.1.4 Pronouns
•
•
•
•
Exhibit the following PIE characteristics
Frequent suppletion of the stem
→ aham “I”, acc. mām
In some cases, a special set of endings, different from those
of the nouns
→ n.nom.sing. ta-t “that” beside yuga-m
Infixed elements
→acc. ta-m “that”, abl. ta-sm-āt beside deva-m, devāt
Scope for expansion by using particles; some of these are
reanalyzed as inseparable parts of the pronoun
→ n.nom.-acc.sg. id-am
3.1 Nominal Morphology
3.1.4 Pronouns
Demonstrative pronouns:
• m. ayam, f. iyam, n. idam „this“
→ PIE: *h1e, f. *(h1)ih2, n. *(h1)id
• m. asau, f. asau, n. adam „that“
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 interrogativeindefinite 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
actions
Representation of states
present
present
polymorphism
(present) perfect
past
characterized by
augment+special set of
endings
Imperfect (present stem)/ pluperfect
Aorist (independent
stem)
3.2 Verbal Morphology in
Classical and Vedic Sanskrit
●
6 athematic and 4 thematic flection present
stem classes of the Indian grammarians
(verbs can form more than one present stem)
Example (Engl. 'he bears')
●
●
●
Class 1): bhár-a-ti → full grade, root-accent
thematic vowel *e/o > a/ā betw. stem+ending
Class 2): bharti → radical (*bherti), athematic
endings added directly to stem
Class 3): bi-bhar-ti → reduplicated
3.2 Verbal Morphology
Development from PIE to Sanskrit
●
Ablaut alternation in the stem of athematic
flection:
- *e > a, *ej > e, *ew > o (full grade in sg.
active indicative)
- 0, i, u (reduced grade in the other forms)
Example
*es-ti > asti and *s-me/os > smas
3.2 Verbal Morphology in
Classical and Vedic Sanskrit
●
●
The scheme bears features of PIE and other
languages which links Sanskrit, Iranian and
Greek verbal systems.
A Difference: Sanskrit imperfect indicates
distant past and the aorist recent/immediate past
Augment: particle a- (*e-) as prefix to stem
●
Vedic and Sanskrit express future tense
grammatically
3.2 Verbal Morphology
Development from PIE to Sanskrit
Primary and secondary verbal endings
3.2 Verbal Morphology in
Classical and Vedic Sanskrit
●
Moods:
1) Indicative: general present
2) subjunctive: action with certain realization
3) optative: action with possible realization
4) special case: injunctive: + preterite + modal
values
5) imperative
3.2 Verbal Morphology in
Classical and Vedic Sanskrit
●
Numbers: singular, dual, plural
●
Voices: active, middle, passive
→ passive = innovation, the others from PIE
3.2 Verbal Morphology in
Classical and Vedic Sanskrit
●
●
●
Present tense (primary endings)
Aorist (root and sigmatic) and imperfect (secondary
endings)
Perfect: reduplication vowel *e > a + set of endings
→ The features are from PIE
4. Quellen
●
●
●
●
Beekes, Robert S. P. (2011): Comparative Indo-European Linguistics. An
Introduction. Second Edition. Amsterdam/Philadelphia. John Benjamins Publishing
Company.
Giacalone Ramat, Anna/Ramat, Paolo (1998): The Indo-European Languages.
Routledge. London/New York.
Jamison, S. W. (2008), Sanskrit. In Roger Woodard The Ancient Languages of Asia and Americas. Cambridge.
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