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 development maybe from
relevant, the three laryngeals *h1,
morphophonological variants
of the bi-phonemic clusters *h2, *h3
ai and au (PIE)

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 qualitative-
dimensional 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, devā-
t
• 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 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

present present (present) perfect

polymorphism

past Imperfect (present stem)/ pluperfect

characterized by Aorist (independent
augment+special set of stem)
endings
 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.
● http://www.google.de/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F
%2Fwww.languagesgulper.com%2Feng%2FIndoaryanmap_files%2FModer
%252520Indo-Aryan%252520final.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F
%2Fwww.languagesgulper.com%2Feng
%2FIndoaryanmap.html&h=847&w=707&tbnid=rC3aHxWRTEku6M
%3A&zoom=1&docid=M-
uEQZVoERIy0M&ei=HaeFVPvnFMu6ygPY_oHgDg&tbm=isch&iact=rc&uac
t=3&dur=645&page=1&start=0&ndsp=19&ved=0CCYQrQMwAQ
Thank you for your attention.