Laryngeal Traces in Sanskrit

Summary

In the video by Cambridge Sanskrit, the creator discusses the significance of laryngeal traces, or lels, in the Sanskrit language. Lels are thought to be ancient sounds that vanished over time but left behind traces that explain some irregular forms in Sanskrit. The discussion delves into the origins of lels, their impact on Sanskrit's morphology, and how they were reconstructed based on data from Indo-European languages. It explains the system of using lels to understand certain linguistic oddities and traces, such as vowel lengthening and the insertion of 'e' between consonants, highlighting their relevance for learners of Sanskrit.

Highlights

• Lels are the reason for various irregular forms in Sanskrit! 😮
• The laryngeal theory explains linguistic oddities across multiple languages. 🌍
• Lels once existed but now are used to decode historical language patterns. 📚
• Lels impact Sanskrit morphology through vowel lengthening and 'e' insertion. 🤓
• The study of lels bridges past linguistic systems with present understanding. 🔗

Key Takeaways

• Understanding lels helps explain irregular forms in Sanskrit! 🧐
• Lels are ancient sounds that vanished, leaving traces behind. 🔍
• Learning about lels reveals the rich history of the Sanskrit language. 📜
• Using lels in Sanskrit helps decode linguistic oddities. 🗝️
• Lels and their traces present a fascinating case of linguistic detective work. 🕵️‍♂️

Overview

Understanding laryngeal traces, or lels, is akin to linguistic detective work. These ancient sounds, once an integral part of languages like Sanskrit, disappeared over time, leaving intriguing traces. These seemingly random remnants make Sanskrit rich yet complex, and exploring them can offer exciting insights into language evolution and historical linguistics.

Lels have a profound impact on Sanskrit morphology. They account for numerous irregular forms, such as why certain vowels lengthen or why an 'e' might mysteriously appear in some places. By understanding lels, Sanskrit learners can better grasp the language's underlying structures, making learning more intuitive and less reliant on rote memorization.

For enthusiasts and learners alike, this investigation into lels doesn't just stop at Sanskrit. It's a fascinating journey that uncovers common threads across Indo-European languages. The study of lels provides a window into the past, showcasing how ancient linguistic systems shaped the languages we know today. Whether for academic pursuit or personal interest, delving into lels offers a beautiful confluence of history and language.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 10:00: Redundant Forms Explained by Laryngeal Theory The chapter titled 'Redundant Forms Explained by Laryngeal Theory' discusses the complexity of learning Sanskrit, particularly focusing on the concept of 'lels', which are responsible for the various irregular or unsystematic forms in the language. The speaker emphasizes understanding Sanskrit by examining its underlying systems or basic structures, despite the apparent randomness.
• 10:00 - 20:00: Historical and Comparative Linguistics of Laryngeals The chapter discusses the ease of understanding linguistic systems through studying their background rather than memorizing seemingly irregular forms. It emphasizes that many aspects of language become clear when one learns about their historical context. The effects of linguistic phenomena, such as lenition, are also part of this understanding. The chapter introduces the Ral theory, although more details on this theory are not provided in the excerpt.
• 20:00 - 30:00: Sanskrit Examples of Laryngeal Effects The chapter discusses the concept of laryngeal effects in Proto-Indo-European, a common ancestor of many languages including Sanskrit. It explains that there were three specific sounds in Proto-Indo-European, referred to as 'laryngeals', which eventually vanished. Despite disappearing, these sounds left traces that allow linguists to identify their past existence. The summary might explore the nature of these traces and how they influenced the development of descendant languages such as Sanskrit.
• 30:00 - 40:00: Broader Implications and Unsystematic Forms The chapter discusses the concept of environmental sounds, both those preceding and following a particular event or 'lenel.' It emphasizes the theory's foundation in data from various Indo-European languages, addressing perceived irregularities within these languages. The focus is on explaining these irregularities without resorting to speculative or unverified methodologies.
• 40:00 - 50:00: Simplifications and Regularization of Forms The chapter discusses the concept of simplifications and regularizations within linguistic forms, particularly focusing on verb forms, noun forms, nominal composition, and verbal composition before related suffixes. It introduces the lenal theory, which aligns with the principle of Occam's Razor, suggesting that the simplest explanation for linguistic oddities is often the correct one.
• 50:00 - 59:00: Conclusion and Resources for Further Study The chapter discusses the 'lingel' theory, which posits that place names in different languages can be traced back to a single root phenomenon. This theory was developed in the 19th century and gained further support with the deciphering of Hittite, the oldest attested Indo-European language.

Laryngeal Traces in Sanskrit Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 lels why should I care about them if all I want to do is learn Sanskrit in a nutshell lels are the reason for various irregular unsystematic or apparently random forms in Sanskrit and if you've ever taken a course with me you know that I like to try and understand things by turning to underlying systems or basic structures uh simply because I find it
• 00:30 - 01:00 much easier to understand those systems than to wrote memorize or otherwise sufficiently familiarize myself with lots of apparently irregular forms and uh so many things in language make sense and can be understood if you just uh bother learning about their background and the effects of lenel I think are very much in that category now for a little bit of background the Ral theory in its most
• 01:00 - 01:30 generally accepted form says that Proto indoeuropean the language that Sanskrit and various other languages developed from had three sounds that later disappeared but when they disappeared they left traces linguists ended up calling these sounds lels and the exact nature of the traces left by the lenel dependent on their
• 01:30 - 02:00 environment that is the sounds around them so the sound before the supposed lenel and the sound behind it now just to make sure you don't think this is someone pulling a rabbit out of a hat explaining one set of oddities with another supposed reconstructed set of oddities this theory is actually Based on data from a variety of Indo-European languages and basically it was noticed that apparent irregularities turned up
• 02:00 - 02:30 in the same places in several languages I.E in related verb forms or in related noun forms or in nominal composition before related suffixes or also in verbal composition before related suffixes and the lenal theory basically follows oam's razor um all other things being equal the simplest explanation tends to be the right one and it says that all these Oddities in the same
• 02:30 - 03:00 places in different languages can be explained by one root phenomenon namely lenel that once stood in the places where we now see said Oddities the lingel theory was first developed in the 19th century and it was corroborated when hittite the Indo European language with the oldest attested texts was deciphered
• 03:00 - 03:30 in the early 20th century and sounds were found attested in exactly those places where the lenal theory postulates the one-time existence of those lenal so let's look at the main lenal traces in Sanskrit in different langu languages the lels left different traces but as this channel is all about Sanskrit that's what we're going to focus on
• 03:30 - 04:00 now if a lingel originally stood between consonants between two consonants and then it disappeared it left as its trace a short e the vowel short e if a lingel disappeared from behind a vowel the trace that it left is that it would lengthen that vowel the vowel r vocalic r is an exception here um the trace that a lenel Le when it disappears from behind that
• 04:00 - 04:30 is as ear or or and if lenel originally stood before a vowel and then disappeared it left no Trace in Sanskrit so let's look at some specific Sanskrit examples of this to make this all a little bit less theoretical and Abstract we'll start with E between consonants because that is something
• 04:30 - 05:00 that we find very very frequent uh very very frequently all throughout Sanskrit for example whenever a verbal root ends in a consonant and we add a suffix that begins with a consonant an e may appear between the two or it may not this is what I meant when I earlier said the rals explain apparently random phenomena so for example
• 05:00 - 05:30 if you take a look at the upper row the upper table in this you'll see forms of the verb Yu to link to join and let me see whether I can activate the laser pointer here we go and so we have the T participle um which involves the use of the suffix T the absolutive which involves TW the infinitive which involves tum the gerundive which which involves davya now
• 05:30 - 06:00 in front of these suffixes the root appears not as y but as yuk that's completely standard internal SII and so I have the top participle Yuka having been linked absolutive yukwa having linked infinitive Yokum to link gerundive yava having to be linked and so on but then let's look at the bottom table where you have the exact same forms of the verb P to fall to fly but
• 06:00 - 06:30 here we don't find these suffixes just added straight to the verbal root no we have an e appearing between the root and the suffix so we have and so on so a different form apparently but with the same um with the same meanings so yum to linkum
• 06:30 - 07:00 fall um yti he she or it will link PTI he she or it will fall or will fly now the lenal theory explains this as follows it says that actually the root put originally ended in a lenel now when you see these forms down here which have an asterisk in front of them that indicates that they are reconstru ConEd
• 07:00 - 07:30 we don't ever have them attested as such in in any text but we assume that they existed at some earlier point in the language and here we have the root path which originally ended in a lingel which I'm here um representing by means of an uppercase X and this lenal when it stood between two consonants for example because we added a suffix that begins with a consonant to this root then it
• 07:30 - 08:00 appeared it left the trace of short e and that's how we have p and so on but remember that the lingel theory also says that lenel leave no Trace if they uh disappear from before a vowel at least that's what they do in Sanskrit no Trace if they disappear from before a vowel V and so given that p is a Class
• 08:00 - 08:30 one verb a thematic verb which takes the Thematic vowel a and adds that to the verbal root in order to for the to form the present tense stem we then have our reconstructed root P plus the lenel and the lingel stands before the Thematic vowel which is ah in the first persons and a in the second and third persons so P LEL Army leli and so on simply become
• 08:30 - 09:00 pami and so on now this short e that appeared between consonants was of course noticed already by the ancient Indian grammarians um more than 2,500 years ago and um they weren't so interested in explaining phenomena uh they were just interested in describing them and so their description of this is that they called some Roots where this e this e
• 09:00 - 09:30 did not appear they called them an which means without e and it is the is the technical term for the sound e and The Roots where it did appear they called s it with E and S it becomes um uh sued into s now from a historical from a comparative point of view nowadays we know that this e is the trace that the
• 09:30 - 10:00 interc consonantal lingel had left when it disappeared let's look at some other examples if I go for example to man to think let's start here with the infinitive to think having to be S Manti which through sui becomes um he sure it will think and so on
• 10:00 - 10:30 compare that to J to be born to come to be where we have j j j which through internal SII becomes jti and so on and so we assume okay probably Jan originally ended in a lenel now let's look at the left hand side of these tables in the case of the top participle in the absolutive of man to think we have mat and matwa in the case of the absolutive happens to not actually
• 10:30 - 11:00 be attested but the T participle is now what happened here why do we get J A lenel that stands behind a vowel so the lenal theory says lengthens that vowel if I have a verb such as H to kill or man to think or gum to go then the T participle of these roots that all end
• 11:00 - 11:30 in nasals look as follows in order to form a regular T participle you have to take the verbal root in zero grade zero grade means zero a so instead of H we have H instead of man we have M instead of gum we have gum but these T participles don't appear as G but rather and this is a change
• 11:30 - 12:00 that we find very regularly happening throughout Sanskrit a nasal that stands between two consonants doesn't stand doesn't remain as a nasal but rather it changes into an A and so we have mat G but remember Jan gave us J so what's happening here well apparently the lingel which I'm here again representing as a capital x um had consonant Al properties it acted like a consonant it
• 12:00 - 12:30 was a consonant and so the Jun zero grade of jun has a nasal that stood between two consonants J and the lenal and so this nasal changed into an A and then when the lenel Disappeared it disappeared from behind a vowel and so the trace that it left was that it lengthened that vowel then there are other instances say where we find um lals disappearing from
• 12:30 - 13:00 behind a vowel and lengthening that vowel for example take verbal roots that display v like a where the rules require Guna a what do I mean by that so roots are a brilliant concept used by the ancient Indian grammarians a root or or datu as they called it isn't something that is actually found in a text but
• 13:00 - 13:30 it's what's left over when we remove all affixes and all endings from all the different forms that a verb has um and the root that we're left with is um the the smallest common denominator if you will and because it's meant to be this this smallest this minimal form it's usually cited in its shortest in its minimal version IE in the zero grade so here y to link to carry to to lead um
• 13:30 - 14:00 these are all zero grade Roots they all have zero grade vowels U or E sometimes however we have Roots cited in Guna gum or watch gum to go watch to speak we can tell that these are not in zero grade because zero grade means zero a and here we do have a we have our Guna vowel a we have gum and we have what and we find this when ever the zero grade of a root for a variety of
• 14:00 - 14:30 reasons does not allow us to infer what the Guna and the ver of that root would be and so rather than citing these roots in their minimal in the zero grade they are cited in the Guna in the full grade but then we've also got a number of roots that are cited with a long a so with a ver vowel da ma which going on
• 14:30 - 15:00 here this ah is actually AA a that's been lengthened by the lenel that once followed it so to stand to put ma to measure originally we assume were plus a lenel d plus a lenel ma plus a lenel and this lenel when it disappeared from behind that vowel from behind behind that g
• 15:00 - 15:30 what did it do it lengthened that a to an a which basically looks like a ver vowel star da ma if on the other hand we use these roots in the zero grade then what do we find we have um the zero grade of the root which means zero a so instead of St plus the Lal we have plus the lenal now if I take the T participle of that that is I add T to to this root I have my
• 15:30 - 16:00 lingal standing between two consonants and what does a lingal do when it disappears from between two consonants it leaves a trace namely short e and so the T participle of St is the sorry the participle of ma is ma now in the case of the top participle of D to put we actually have some have a further change it's not da but in instead it's h um this is also a regular
• 16:00 - 16:30 um development from a voiced aspirated sound um that is weakened just to an aspiration to the H but at any rate we've got the same vowel interchange from an ah in the Guna to an e in the zero grade or reconstructed from a plus LEL in the Guna and just the lenal the interc consonantal lenal in the zero grade now now we just looked at verbs
• 16:30 - 17:00 where we had combined traces of lingal namely um an e if the lingel Disappeared between consonants and an a if it disappeared from a Guna form so behind an A but we find similar combined traces for example in class nine verbs now class nine verbs are athematic verbs and athematic verbs have two stems in the active singular they have a
• 17:00 - 17:30 strong stem with a specific element in Guna and everywhere else they have a so-called weak stem which has that same specific element in the zero grade I.E without a because zero grade means zero a for example class five up to reach to get class five verbs add add the suffix no
• 17:30 - 18:00 to the root in the strong stem and new to the root in the weak stem no let me reactivate my laser pointer here we go nor is the suffix that we find in the active singular in the Str strong stem and new is what we find basically everywhere else and the third plural we find it with a little bit of internal sui O is a g vowel it's what you get when you add an A in front of an U so becomes o no and new is a zerog grade
• 18:00 - 18:30 vowel and so we have a completely regular phenomenon we have this variable element in the Guna in the strong stem and in the zero grade in the weak stem then class two verbs also regular verbs sorry also athematic verbs I mean so here what what varies is not some suffix it is the root itself the root e to go appears as e e is the Guna of e in
• 18:30 - 19:00 the singular where we expect the strong stem and it appears as e which is just the regular zero grade in the weak stem and again in the third person plural we get it with a little bit of internal sunde e in front of an a becomes y so we have e in the strong stems that's the Guna of e and we have e in the weak stems and E is just the zero grade of E another example class seven verbs such
• 19:00 - 19:30 as yuj to link form their present tense stem not by adding a suffix behind the root so to the right of this J but instead they add an infix into the root before the consonant that stands at the end of that root so before this J and the suffix sorry the infix that they add is na in the strong forms and just n just an n in
• 19:30 - 20:00 the weak forms so zero grade means zero a Thea the full uh the strong form that we find is n the weak form the zero grade has zero a so it's just an n and this n then changes through internal STI depending on um the consonant that follows uh where we have the J appearing as a j so as a palatal the N appears as a palal n where we have the J appearing as a okay so as a v the N appears as a v
• 20:00 - 20:30 n so that's just regular internal sui but what interests us here is that usual contrast between na the Guna suffix I keep saying suffix apologies the Guna infix and N the zero grade infix so that was three examples of how athematic verbs are meant to work the strong stem has an element appearing in Guna and the
• 20:30 - 21:00 weak stem has that same element appearing in zero grade so now let's finally come to class nine verbs such as Ash to eat what happens here to form the strong stem in the singular we have the suffix na which doesn't really look like Guna but okay and then to form the weak stem we have the suffix KN and now KN doesn't look like the zero grade of Na and
• 21:00 - 21:30 furthermore in the third person plural you know we have but then in the third person plural we have just n so what is going on here class nine verbs actually are class seven verbs but they're class seven verbs whose final consonant and yes apparently it was a consonant is a lenal
• 21:30 - 22:00 let's just very quickly remind ourselves y had the strong stem and the weak stem Y which then s to with a pallet L class nine on the other hand Ash to eat we can reconstruct you can here see the the asterisk that indicates this is in a reconstructed form we can reconstruct as having ended in lenel here once again represented as capital x
• 22:00 - 22:30 and so the strong stem would have would have added n before this lenel and the weak stem would have added n before that lenel what does that give us in the third singular we have the lenel standing behind this infix na behind this a so behind a vowel and whenever a
• 22:30 - 23:00 lingal disappears from behind a vowel what's the trace that it leaves it lengthens that vowel and that's how we get as so how we get na instead of na na simply is na plus lingel and then when the lingel Disappeared it lengthens the N to na we'll skip the third dual for just one second in the third plural we have the weak stem so we don't have Ash plus na but instead we have Ash Plus n plus the lingel at the end of the verbal
• 23:00 - 23:30 root so what happens the lingel disappears from the position of standing before a vowel the um ending in the third plural even in athematic verbs is anti so it begins with a vowel the lingel disappears from in front of a vowel which means it leaves no trace and this is how we arrive at Ash plus n which is our weak infix and then the lingal appears and we have just anti and
• 23:30 - 24:00 that's how we get Ashanti now let's look up one line up to the uh third duel there we're actually not quite sure exactly what happened um what we can see is that the lenel left as a trace a long e and there actually is a lot of discussion whether this would have been an a a regular development of some kind or whether we wouldn't have have actually expected this lenel to have
• 24:00 - 24:30 turned into an e because as you can see the lingel again represented by a capital x would have stood between two consonants the n and uh of the infix and the T of the T of the ending and a lenal in between two consonants when it disappears leaves as a trace a short e so we might have expected presumably and we're not quite sure how this long e originated one the says that perhaps it's an analogy with
• 24:30 - 25:00 this n in the long uh sorry in the strong stem uh that they then had n strong KNE weak we're not quite sure notice also that when we have the citation forms of class n verbs such as po to clean to purify we cite these as po because what we've got there is a verbal root po Plus lingel and this PO plus lenal turns into po
• 25:00 - 25:30 because when the lenal disappears from behind a vowel it leaves as its trace the lengthening of that vowel so po plus lingel becomes po but compare the actual um inflected forms punti pun punti what's happening there well if you take a look let me reactivate my trusty laser pointer if you take a look the lingel that originally lengthened the U to
• 25:30 - 26:00 become po now doesn't stand behind that U anymore it stands behind this behind this a and so it leaves as its Trace when it disappears a lengthening of this a not of this U and so we have the root po but the third singular present tense with a short U and again in the other forms in the third dual and the third plural the lenel doesn't stand stand right behind this U anymore of the
• 26:00 - 26:30 root but we've got this n in between and so the lingel doesn't interact with the U it interacts with either the two consonants that it stands between or with the vowel in front of which it stands then an example of the trace that lingel leave if they disappear from behind a vocalic r take a verb such as per class n bti again long r butti with a short R to
• 26:30 - 27:00 fill which has as it's it doesn't have a t participle regularly but it has a na participle which is basically the same thing except that it uses a uh T sorry it uses a n instead of a t has POA this is p plus r plus lingel plus n so the lingel disappearing behind um a vocalic r leaves us this Trace of now if you look at other verbs such
• 27:00 - 27:30 as stir dur T and there's a number of others um you will find that their T participles are also Na participles and they become stea from stir from dur we get from we get and it seems that in all of these cases we have the trace of a lenel following a vocalic r but if would precede is a p a sound where you touch
• 27:30 - 28:00 the lips or you have the lips touch one another you find the vowel that results when the lingel disappears not being an e but a vowel with lip rounding an ooh SOA whereas after a dental for example you don't have any any um interaction of the lips happening and the vowel that results is an e so we have stea DEA Anda note by the way that these
• 28:00 - 28:30 roots are also listed with short vowels because we don't actually find a form where this long vocalic R is visible so if you look at the present tense forms you have per Nati you have S D Nati uh is a Class one verb mainly so we have tarti um uh and so you don't have a form where this actually this dur s is attested as such and that's why
• 28:30 - 29:00 you find these cited differently in different reference works now those were a number of things where we find the systematic um traces of of lenel in systematic parts of the verbal system so in class nine verbs in t participles in other present tense forms but there's also many little non systematic um uh forms where the uh the
• 29:00 - 29:30 traces of lingel can be witnessed and I just want to give you one example the word suara which you get in viic literature and it means of good strength or of good life force and therefore glad now thisara is actually a bah consisting of su meaning good which I'm sure you've seen in lots and lots of compounds and the word which In classical Sanskrit you mostly
• 29:30 - 30:00 encounter with the meaning of man but um especially earlier you also find it with the meaning of of manly Force manly strength so if this bah is a combination of su plus Nara then why do we find suara and not suara well you may have guessed it the answer is once again a lenel but how well we know from other languages that that this word for man or manly strength
• 30:00 - 30:30 actually used to begin with a lenel and for example in Greek a lenel that stands at the beginning of a word so word initially before a consonant leaves a trace and it leaves as its trace a vowel um in Sanskrit a lingel standing at the beginning of a word before another consonant leaves no no trace and that's why we get pairs such as Sanskrit Nar or Nar and Greek a which means man
• 30:30 - 31:00 or Sanskrit but Greek which means name and so this a Anda these are the traces that original World sorry not World initial that would be great word initial lenel uh left in Greek but in Sanskrit they don't leave a trace and that's why we get Nan and Nara
• 31:00 - 31:30 but when we find this compound of Nara this which is an old compound we find it attested in the oldest texts in VC apparently what is what we get here is a reflex of a situation when the lenel here once again represented as an uppercase X was still there at the beginning of Nara and so if you have Su plus this word for Nara that began with a consonant the lenel stood behind a
• 31:30 - 32:00 vowel namely short U and what Trace does a lingel leave when it appears from behind from when it disappears from behind a vowel it lengthens that vowel and that's how we get Su Nara rather than suara but we can actually also find uh lingel um explaining other phenomena beyond the ones that we've already mentioned so for example the reason why
• 32:00 - 32:30 we have perfect forms such as first singular but third singular with a long vowel the answer behind that is lenel why we have causative forms without a long vowel in the initial syllable so GTI as opposed to perhaps expected gayi in parallel with with bayti and other s verbs um but to understand these lenal
• 32:30 - 33:00 traces we need to take a step back and we need to understand something called bugman's law so let's look at bugman's law now we know that the Proto indoan vowels a E and O let me reactivate my laser pointer the vowels a E and O which remain as a e o separate vowels in other languages we know that they all became a
• 33:00 - 33:30 in Sanskrit and we also know that the Proto induran vowels a a and o all became Sanskrit a so for example and there's there's lots and lots of examples I've just picked a couple so the word nort which we get in Latin to mean nephew or grandson and which we get in English nepotism appears in Sanskrit as naad R which is the root behind the Latin word for King where we for example
• 33:30 - 34:00 get English Regal from in Sanskrit appears as raj Penta which is the Greek word for five which is where we get for example the English Pentagon from appear um corresponds to srit bcha so two e corresponds to two as genu which is the Latin word for n which we get in English genu flect to bend your knee um appears in Sanskrit as Janu so that just as a couple of examples out of many many many
• 34:00 - 34:30 hundreds that um the vowels that in IND European Were A and A O um and and stayed as such in many other languages in Sanskrit all became a and that's kind of the reason why in Sanskrit you have so many A's and you have words like Mahabharata and ramayana and Maharaja and so on but short or in an open syllable becomes long a and that's what bugman's law says
• 34:30 - 35:00 so a normally all become a but short or in an open syllable becomes a long a let's remind ourselves an open syllable means that this is a syllable that ends in a vowel how does a syllable end in a vowel well it ends in a vowel whenever we have a vowel that is followed by only one consonant and this one consonant then counts a standing at the beginning of
• 35:00 - 35:30 the following syllable so bharti can be syllabified as ra and so for example this ah here stands at the beginning of the middle syllable and that means this syllable ends in a vowel it ends in an A and that's why we call it an open syllable ra also an open syllable T also an open syllable likewise with ra so we have only one consonant between vowels we only have have one consonant
• 35:30 - 36:00 following each vowel and so these consonants the m and the Y and the and the N count as standing at the beginning of their syllables ra ma y n but contrast that with for example Dharma where you have two consonants following after a vowel and so we split this up as Dar and so Dar is a syllable that ends ends in a consonant and that would be a closed syllable likewise with Mantra we
• 36:00 - 36:30 have not one not two but three consonants after this a and so we count the first vowel sorry the first consonant is standing at the end of the first syllable man and we count the other consonants as standing at the beginning of the next syllable and so we get man dra and again man is a syllable that ends in a consonant and so it counts as closed so open syllable ends
• 36:30 - 37:00 in a vowel closed syllable ends in a consonant why is that relevant for us for example if you have the first uh if you have uh thematic verbs where you have in the first persons so but in the second and third persons you don't have a long ey but you've got a short a so you
• 37:00 - 37:30 have and so on what's actually happening is that this barami this long ah goes back to a thematic vowel o whereas in the second and third P third person the Thematic vowel was an e how do we know this well we see it as o versus e in other languages where o and E remain separate and in Sanskrit the E just becomes an A
• 37:30 - 38:00 but the O that stands in an open syllable this o becomes a long A bugman's law is also the reason why we get the third singular perfect form Anda and and all of these other verbal forms where you have in the third singular the verbal root standing in apparently ver What's Happening Here
• 38:00 - 38:30 originally this form would have been so in the perfect the root appears with an original o and when we split this up into syllables we get be and so this um uh this this this o stands at the end of an open syllable and according to brookman's law it becomes a long r likewise with causatives such as and so
• 38:30 - 39:00 on the reason why we have in the causative the um uh a rather than AA in this case is because again this originally would have been a b this would have the the root would have had o as a vowel we add our suffix a and this originally would have been b or B plus a a suffix a plus our ending T this would have been
• 39:00 - 39:30 syllabified as and so again the B would have stood at the end of sorry the O would have stood at the end of an open syllable and an O at the end of this of an open syllable develops into an ah in Sanskrit that's brookman's law and so that's why we get in these forms now we know about these oz so in in in for example because
• 39:30 - 40:00 they're there in parallel forms and related languages such as Latin and Greek where or remained separate okay nice but what's that got to do with lenal the ending of the first singular active perfect would have been lingel plus a even earlier it would have been lingel a
• 40:00 - 40:30 that gives us a first singular that would have been plus Lal a and a third singular be bor plus actually just the ending a now why is that relevant if we cabify these forms then we have here a consonant cluster we have two consonants a lenal apparently at one point behaved as a consonant so we have or plus two consonants and that means that the r the
• 40:30 - 41:00 first consonant in this cluster stands at the end of the first syllable and the lenel stands at the beginning of the next one so we would have had be lingel a and this would have thus been a closed syllable ending in a consonant and therefore the o just developed changed into a short a whereas in the third singular where the ending originally would have been an A or even earlier it would have been an
• 41:00 - 41:30 e um if we if we cabify this we then have be as our first syllable b as our second syllable ra as our third syllable there's only one consonant and if you only have one consonant it counts as standing at the beginning of the syllable and so B here is uh standing in an in an open syllable and if you have an a at the end of an open syllable according to brookman's law it becomes a long a so we
• 41:30 - 42:00 had an ending lingal a for the first person singular that means that this form would originally have been syllabified differently this syllable would have been Bor it would have been a closed sorry closed syllable and the O in a closed syllable simply becomes a short a whereas down here the syllabification would have made this a an open syllable and an O at the end of an open syllable um becomes an a
• 42:00 - 42:30 according to bugman's law and so that's why we get Babar in the third singular but babara in the first singular that's also the reason for this long ah in all of these other forms like AA which I'm sure all of you have heard that you find in all these other uh third singular perfect active forms now what happened to the lenal well the position that the lenal stood in was before a vowel when the lingel disappears from before a vowel in Sanskrit it leaves no trace and
• 42:30 - 43:00 so that's why we get plus a B plus a it looks like the ending is identical and we just have you know weird things happening in the stem but no the ending now is identical but originally it wasn't originally we had lingel plus a or even earlier uh and here we had just a or even earlier uh and that means that here we have an open syllable which leads to a long R whereas here we had a
• 43:00 - 43:30 closed syllable which meant that the short o simply developed into a short a then if you look at causatives a regular causatives uh sorry a regular causitive would also have had its verbal root with an o in it and again we know this because we find it like that in many other in in other related languages and so we would have had the root Bor plus our our suffix a which is what we can reconstruct a as being and so we
• 43:30 - 44:00 would have had which we um cabify as the single consonants all stand at the beginning of their syllable and so B is an open syllable with an a at its end and that then develops into a long a according to bergman's law but some causatives have a Guna root not a verty root and those are
• 44:00 - 44:30 causatives that uh are formed of roots that originally ended in a lenel so Jun to be born to to come to be which we were looking at earlier originally would have had a lenel again here represented as a capital x and so I would have had my root Jun with the vowel appearing as an O and then I would have had my lenel and then I would have had my Aya and my T for the third singular for example and so this means that I have the N plus the
• 44:30 - 45:00 lenal I have a consonant cluster which means that the first consonant stands at the end of the first syllable and this first syllable would have thus been J the second one LEL then Y and then T and so this would have been a closed syllable and the O in a closed syllable just becomes a regular a there's no um uh there's there's no Factor there's nothing that would make it turn into into a long a it is not subject to brookman's law because brookman's law
• 45:00 - 45:30 only affects or at the end of open syllables same with other verbs such as uh chal or Char which means to move and and and various others where we find chti orti that again is because Char originally ended in a lenel and thus once again we have this verbal root um which would appear as as chore plus the lenel um giving us a closed syllable the r stands at the end of the first
• 45:30 - 46:00 syllable the second consonant the lenal stands at the beginning of the next syllable and so we don't have but we've got L and so this is a closed syllable and this o is not subject to bergman's law and thus it's not lengthened and we get CH a or CH R later CH with a short a so we've been looking at all of these
• 46:00 - 46:30 irregularities and in languages you sometimes have irregularities that are surprisingly constant that go on existing for a good long time um but sometimes irregularities are evened out in various ways and given that lingel had disappeared by the time the earliest sansex the rig Vader was composed the the traces that the lorals left when they dis appeared must have appeared random to speakers of the
• 46:30 - 47:00 language even back then and as happens often across languages many apparently unmotivated irregularities are evened out as time goes by and so once the rals had disappeared and it wasn't clear anymore where those apparently long uh these apparently random long vowels came from um for example class nine verbs were regularized so we have the verb cre um
• 47:00 - 47:30 with the present tense form creti rather than Nati where we have this long I regularized perhaps an analogy with forms such as the top participle the um absolutive and so on in ver class n verti to choose we get a short a everywhere so in ver inverta in um perhaps in analogy with the present
• 47:30 - 48:00 tense forms where the short is regular and expected because the lenel in those present tense forms doesn't lengthen the r but rather it lengthens the a in the in the so that's why we get then we have instances of perfect forms regularized so um in many many verbal paradigms the first singular of
• 48:00 - 48:30 the perfect and the third singular of the perfect are identical so when you have the verb wish to enter you have a first singular and a third singular perfect indicative active we Wisher much to three first singular and third singular perfect indicative active M then we have those verbs where in the third singular because of brookman's law we have this um lengthened we have this this apparent verti route so we
• 48:30 - 49:00 havea and um the first singular form which has this regular form regular because the um ending originally contained a lingel which prevented bugman's law from applying so originally we had first singular Wata and third singular AA and then we have in the first singular a possible alternative form developing AA which has the result that first singular and third singular
• 49:00 - 49:30 again are identical and then we have more regularizations in perfect forms in verbs that ended originally in consonant plus lenal which therefore should not have this um ver of the root which would have been caused um by an O and in an open syllable that through bugman's law then gave gave as an A but that should theoretically just have been an a
• 49:30 - 50:00 because if you have for example per to fill that would have had P poor so the root appears with a vowel o um then we've got a r sorry plus the lenel um the cluster of R and lenel means that this syllable is not open because it ends in a consonant and therefore the O should have just changed into an A and not into an a according to brookman's law because brookman's law only applies to O at the end of open
• 50:00 - 50:30 syllables but that there once was a lenal in here um apparently you know knowledge of that did not survive how should it have and so we then find the quote unquote regular form of a verbal root such as this where we have a third singular papara rather than papara and here also we then find as an alternative form for the first singular papara so simply because it's in parallel with this third singular papara so first
• 50:30 - 51:00 singular and third singular are identical or can be identical and we get this with other verbs dur we have a perfect third singular D we have Tara P we have papata and so on even though in all of these um this may seem regular but it's not what we would have originally expected then like likewise in causatives we have various verbs that add the regular form to the original but
• 51:00 - 51:30 now apparently irregular form so CH or to move adds a form and in addition to chti adds in addition toay there we go P fall to fly adds PTI in addition to payti and so on also rather than displaying this irregular combination of Guna and zero
• 51:30 - 52:00 grade we talked about that earlier for example in the verb which then had the zero great e in a form such as s a number of verbs only ever display this Guna a so a plus lingel which becomes a for example class two verbs that end in ah only have a strong stem so only have a plus LEL becoming a so y to go has a third singular yti as we would expect but also a third plural
• 52:00 - 52:30 Yanti verbs like C to eat only ever have this form card with that long a so we have the top participle cardita we have the stem chard in the perfect throughout the perfect so no change between strong and weak stem we just have the strong stem which has this G that's been lengthened to are by lenel verbs such as to know have a t participle where we simply have the gar root sorry G root plus T in this
• 52:30 - 53:00 participle where regularly we would expect the zero grade of the root but the zero grade of the root would look weird in combination with this root and so we just find the root used for Gata then in the perfect um of all Sanskrit verbs we have an e a short vowel e appearing whenever a perfect stem ends in a consonant and the endings begin
• 53:00 - 53:30 with a consonant so for example in the second singular we wish plus the ending T we have we in the first duel we have we wish we have in the first plural we wish so whenever the perfect stem ends in a consonant and the ending begins with a consonant we have an e appearing between the two and presumably this e would have originated in verbs that once ended in the lingal
• 53:30 - 54:00 and the interc consonantal lingal between the consonant at the end of the root and the consonant at the beginning of the ending um this interc consonantal arel would have left an e as its regular trace and apparently from verbs where the lingel would originally have existed this this e was extended to verbs that didn't originally have it and this regularization across perfect verb forms had the effect that there is no internal
• 54:00 - 54:30 consonant sui in perfect forms which just is you know quite useful sometimes it seems like the language went even further and made active use of these lenal traces so if you had um the the impression that to form a t participle can be done by adding TA or by adding ITA or an infinitive can be done by adding tum or adding itum then you make use of this apparently free variation and so
• 54:30 - 55:00 inserting an e the lingal trace from originally between two consonants inserting an e between a verbal root and a suffix beginning with a consonant can for example remove the need for internal sui and thus keep paradigms more unified so for example lab to take La did originally not end in a lenel and so the original future that we find in the brahmanas so in viic texts is LA or
• 55:00 - 55:30 Lati and so we have regular internal SII of the B the voed aspirated label losing its voice losing its aspiration in front of the S of the future M and therefore becoming Lati In classical Sanskrit we then get laish with this isia the future suffix originally from verbs that ended in lenel um apparently avoiding the need to
• 55:30 - 56:00 change that b at the end of the root through internal sui and actually we have many verbs without an original lingel um having a future in in is rather than so of G we have G we have Kish is to to want present tense we have a future just easier no need for internal sui of any kind mind and sometimes inserting an e
• 56:00 - 56:30 between a verbal root and a suffix that begins with a consonant creates a metrical variant and perhaps that was helpful in a language that is regularly used in metrical texts so for example of gumo we find the we find a desiderative jamish and jti of T to abandon we find a future jti and a future of to cross we find infinitives
• 56:30 - 57:00 tum and tarum of brah to wonder we find Absol atives brah or BR and so on and so on there are lots of examples so to wrap up a final nutshell the rals once existed and then they disappeared and when they disappeared they left different traces for example a short e between
• 57:00 - 57:30 consonants behind a vowel they lengthened that vowel before a vowel they disappeared Without a Trace these traces often seemed irregular or or random because you know people didn't know what the reason behind those traces was the orals were gone after all many of these traces existed throughout the history of Sanskrit some of them were regularized away and sometimes actually lenal traces
• 57:30 - 58:00 were used to create Alternative forms in verbs in verbal roots that never had a lenal to begin with now this video was meant to be practical rather than scholarly I'm sure that I have or I know that I have simplified a number number of things and I haven't gone into all the details that might have been relevant but that's simply because I would like this video to be useful for people who just want to
• 58:00 - 58:30 know or just want to learn Sanskrit if however you belong to those who would like to know more um and who have a uh the interest of a a scholar of comparative or historical Linguistics rather than just in quotation marks and interest in learning Sanskrit there is a lot of interesting literature um on lenel and the Wikipedia media entry on the lenal Theory actually is a very good point for for starting um your studies
• 58:30 - 59:00 because it has cross references to pretty much all the standard literature on lenel um it has more details on the development of the lenel theory and it also has lots of material on the lenel as they appear in languages other than Sanskrit I hope you've enjoyed this video take care