Topics in Pali Historical Phonology (Edition 1979)

The problems of early Indo-Aryan phonology have been an important concern of generative phonology in the last fifteen years. A central issue was the problems of rule ordering involved in the synchronic and diachronic operation of Grass- mann’s Law and the application of Bartholomae’s Law. The successive analyses of Zwicky (1965), Kiparsky (1965), and Anderson (1970) ran into a number of difficulties, and the debate is still going on in a number of recent articles mainly in Linguistic Inquiry (e.g., Sag [1974, 1976], Phelps [1975], Schindler [1976], etc.). Similarly, the so—called ruki-rule (retrollexion of s triggered by following r, ii, k or i) has been the object of lively discussion in view of the difficulty of considering the conditioning segments of the retroilexion rule as members of one "natural class" (cf., e. g., Zwicky [1970], Vennemann [1974], etc.), As a consequence, those aspects of Sanskrit phonology often found their way into the current handbooks; thus, S. Anderson deals extensively (pp. 44-47 and 203-208) with Grossmann’s Law in The Organization of Phonology (New York, Academic Press, 1974). 1VIiddle Indic, on the contrary, is widely neglected, and it is therefore a most welcome initiative that Dr. Indira junghare has taken to provide us with the first synchronic and diachronic phonological analysis of Pali, using the methods of generative phonology, The results that she obtained speak for themselves: they prove that the generative approach provides a better insight into the process of language change ; they throw a new light on some complex problems of Pali phonology, as for example the phonetic quality of Pali resonant plus h; they provide a model for further work on Middle Indic phonology, which is so badly needed if we want to understand the full scope of the development of Indo-Aryan until the present time.

But the work of Dr. junghare is not only timely—it is a work of great patience and industry, based on carefully checked data, exhaustively discussed with leading scholars like Professor S. Katre, and thoroughly analyzed and elaborated in the generative framework under the guidance of Professor R. King. Relevance to modern Indo-Aryan, problems of grammatical structure and development were also reviewed with Professor working with Dr. Junghare during the preparation of this volume one of the most exciting and challenging experiences of my career.

About the Book:

This book is an account of the phonological development of the Pali language from Sanskrit times, which incorporates the latest developments in linguistic scholarship. Within the framework of generate phonology, it deals with a number of interesting aspects concerning sound changes. It examines the underlying forms, the base for their postulation, readjustment rules, phonological rules, their order with respect to each other and with respect to the rules in other set. The study separates synchronic rules from historical processes, inherited rules from innovated rules, and generalized rules from particularized rules. Furthermore, it discusses restructuring and global constraint, and suggests some phonological universals on the basis of Pali assimilatory process.

About the Author

Indira Y. Junghare is an Associate Professor in the Department of South Asian Studies, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. She teaches Indo-Aryan Linguistics, Marathi, Hindi, Sanskrit, and Indian Philosophy. She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Nagpur University and an M.A. and Ph. D. in Linguistics from the University of Texas, Austin. Author of several articles on Indo-Aryan Linguistics in addition to articles on Marathi language and literature, she has also translated some Hindi and Marathi literature into English.

The problems of early Indo-Aryan phonology have been an important concern of generative phonology in the last fifteen years. A central issue was the problems of rule ordering involved in the synchronic and diachronic operation of Grass- man’s Law and the application of l3artholomae’s Law. The successive analyses of Zwicky (1965), Kiparsky (1965), and Anderson (1970) ran into a number of difficulties, and the debate is still going on in a number of recent articles mainly in Linguistic Inquiry (e.g., Sag [1974, 1976], Phelps [1975], Schindler [1976], etc.). Similarly, the so-called raid-rule (retro flexion of s triggered by following r, a, k or i) has been the object of lively discussion in view of the difficulty of considering the conditioning segments of the retro flexion rule as members of one ‘natural class” (cf., e. g., Zwicky [1970], Vennemann [1974], etc.). As a consequence, those aspects of Sanskrit phonology often found their way into the current handbooks: thus, S. Anderson deals extensively (pp. 44-47 and 203-208) with Grassmann’s Law in Tue Organization of Phonology (New York; Academic Press, 1974). Middle Indic, on the contrary, is widely neglected, and it is therefore a most welcome initiative that Dr. Indira Jung hare has taken to provide us with the first synchronic and diachronic phonological analysis of Pali, using the methods of generative phonology. The results that she obtained speak for themselves: they prove that the generative approach provides a better insight into the process f language change; they throw a new light on some complex problems of Pali phonology, as for example the phonetic quality of Pali resonates plus it; they provide a model for Srther work on Middle Indic phonology, which is so badly needed if we want to understand the full scope of the development of Indo-Aryan until the present time.

But the work of Dr. Junghare is not only timely—it is a work of great patience and industry, based on carefully checked data, exhaustively discussed with leading scholars like Professor S. Katra and thoroughly analyzed and elaborated in the generative framework under the guidance of Prof. R. King. Relevance to modern Indo-Aryan Problems of grammatical structure and development were also reviewed with Prof. H. Van Olphen As for myself I can only say that I found working with Dr. Junghare during the preparation of this volume one of the most exciting and challenging experiences of my career.

Pali is an archaic Prakrit a middle Indian language which is a descendant of one of the old Indo Aryan languages. It is very closely related to both Vedic and Sanskrit although by no means identical with either one of them.

It is of interest to know what happens to a language in the process of its developments. Every language extinct or living is important to a linguist. A linguist formulates hypotheses about phonological morphological and syntactic universals. Since he wishes these universals to be valid for all periods of human language he tired to test them on the basis of the study of both living and extinct languages.

The purpose and scope

The Purpose of this research is
1. To present a synchronic description of Pali Phonology
2. To Compare it with a synchronic description of Skt. Phonology and
3. To see their implications for the theory of historical phonology, morphology and morphophonology

Pali is the language of Buddhistic philosophic one of the greatest philosophies in the world. it is recorded in the literature of four periods (1) the language of the Gathas the metrical pieces which ahs a very heterogeneous character and contains many archaic forms; (2) the language of the canonical prose which is more homogeneous than the language of the Gathas (3) the language of post canonical literature and (4) the language of later artificial poetry having no homogeneous character. In this work no separate phonological descriptions are presented for the language of these stages. Instead the phonological presentation given here suffices for their description since they are not too dissimilar. Occasionally I have taken the liberty to standardize the language.

Pali is thought to be an artificial language a mixture of various dialects. However the dialectical differences are not so great as to require separate description. The differences so great as to require separate descriptions. The differences can be expressed in terms of the presence or absence of a few low level rules.

There are several opinions regarding the origin of Pali, both geographic and genetic. The most popular opinion is that Pãli is Magadhi, the language of Bihar where Buddhism arose. Buddhistic tradition claims that Pali-Tipitoka is composed in the language of Buddha; hence, Magadhi is also called Mulabhasã, the basic language. Burnouf and Lassen (1826) have, however, refuted this opinion on the grounds that some phonological features of Magadhi are not found in Pall. For example, every Skt. r is changed to I in Magadhi, but r is changed to I only sporadically in Pali. Also, the depalatalization of s, which is present in Pall, is absent in Mägadhi. Finally, in Magadhi, the masc. and neut. nouns ending in a, as well as consonants, take the nom. sg. suffix e. In the same noun stems of Pali, the nom. sg. suffixes of masc. and neut. nouns are o and am, respectively.

Some linguists, such as Kuhn (1875) and Franke (‘902), have considered Pali to be the dialect of Ujjayini since it stands closest to the language of the Moka-inscriptions of Girnar and since the dialect of Ujjayini is said to have been the mother- tongue of Mahinda who preached Buddhism in Ceylon. Hence, the Vindhya region has been considered to be the home of Pali; but linguists Oldenberg (1879) and Muller (1884) consider the Kalinga country to be the home of Pall. Their conclusion is based on the argument that the oldest settlement in Ceylon could have been founded by the people of Kalinga, the area on the mainland opposite Ceylon, rather than by people from Bengal and Bihar.

Pali has been considered as Ardha Mägadhi because there are similarities between Pali and Ara (Ardha Magadhi) phonologies and morphologies, and because Ardha Magadhi differs from Magadhi exactly on the same points as Pãli.

Bloch (1965) views the conflict and the linguistic evidence behind it and concludes that it is impossible to localize any Middle Indic language. The location of inscriptions is no clue; for example, Middle Indic inscriptions are found in areas which are Dravidian today and probably have always been Deavdian. Nor is linguistic evidence fruitful. Every Middle Indic language has forms which are not regular in that language but reflect regular phonological processes in other Middle Indic languages. An example is the use of o for the nom pl. and e for the accusative plural of consonant stems in Pali, the first is the regular Magadhi descendent of the same old Indic suffix. Writers freely borrowed forms form other languages to make distinctions they felt were useful even when the distinctions existed neither in the source language nor in the recipient language. But by and large correspondences between Pali and old Indic are regular and we may safely conclude that pali is very close to Middle Indic language spoken somewhere in the Indian cultural area but artificially modified in a few respects on the basis of other middle Indic languages and classical Sanskrit.