Re: elementary Sanskrit blunder by Harvard professor

On Sep 14, 9:14 pm, analys...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Sep 14, 9:05 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:





On Sep 14, 8:38 pm, analys...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

On Sep 14, 6:21 pm, "Richard Wordingham" <jrw0...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

<analys...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 14, 8:19 am, "Richard Wordingham" <jrw0...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<analys...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
There is no evidence that the cardinal 1 was ever called anything
other than "eka" by Sanskrit speakers or that they changed it to "eka"
from an earlier form.

I will agree that the change did not occur in Sanskrit - I would say it
occurred somewhere between Proto-Indo-Iranian and Proto-Indic.

PIIr never existed.

Proto-Indic is what the West calls PIE (or at least the Indian dialect
of it).  Sanskrit used proto-Prakrit or Proto-Indic as a source of
vocabulary but any sound changes were deliberate, designed for euphony
and stability of the language.

That 'eika' changes to 'eka' at any stage is pure spreculation with no
evidence for it.

 Does _aika_ or its compounds occur in the
Rigveda? A glance through Monier-Williams suggests that it does not.
Witzel *may* have argued:
1) Vedic or earlier, so no _aika_ (form with long diphthiong).
2) [ai] not [e], so pre-Vedic.
You seem to be ascribing circular reasoning to Witzel.  He is using
linguistics to place the Mitanni material and the Veda in time
relative to each other - so your (1) has to be a conclusion and not an
assumption.

He can deduce 'Vedic or earlier' from <bi-ir-ia-ma-as'-da>, so the reasoning
is not circular.

only by focusing on the sd and not the v to b which is a Sanskrit to -
MIA change which he handwaves away by claiming that Mitanni doesn't
allow initial v and generally claims that "exigencies in cuneiform
writing and Hurrite pronunciation found in the Mit. realm" have
affected the forms (why couldn't the 'zd' be an artifact?).

Okay, smarty-pants, how would _you_ write /v/ in cuneiform?

(Oops, I just gave you some of the information you did not know: the
Mittani material is recorded in Mesopotamian cuneiform.)

What does he have to say about the following names taken from SS
Misra's analysis?  Also the gods mentioned are clearly Vedic.

Which is how we know that the Mittani material is specifically Indic
and not general Indo-Iranian.

Mitt  Sansk

Sutarna  sutarna or sutrana
Parsasatar prasastra
Sussatar    sasastra or sausastra
Artadama   rtadhama
Tusratha tushratha
Mativaza  Mativaja

Yes, those are six of the 80 Indo-Aryan names as analyzed by Dumont
apud O'Callaghan. So what?

I don't know if anybody has raised an issue about 'Mativaza' - after
all Sanskrit does not have 'z'.

What kind of "issue" should be raised? If you had bothered to find out
what the Mittani materials are, you might have learned that cuneiform
doesn't have <j>.

But then "satta" instead of "sapta" suggests MIA.

And I do wonder how probative the non-assimilation of -zd- is.  In Indian
Indic, *nizda 'nest' not only gives Sanskrit _nIDa_ but also Pali _niDDha_.
(Which is the typical 'native' form in Pali - _niDDha_ or _nILa_?  L =
retroflex lateral - I'm guessing at the HK transliteration.)  Andrew
Glasses's MA thesis quotes, in Section 3.3.16, a Kharoshthi akshara SDhi -
Syllable 234 in Boyer, Rapson and Senart's  'The Kharoṣṭhī Alphabet of
Chinese Turkestān'.  Unfortunately, that's all I know about this cluster, so
it may not be evidence of the late retention of the -zd- cluster in, for
instance, Gandhari Prakrit.  (I don't have the resources to quickly demolish
this hypothesis.)

However, what can we say about the retention of stop clusters in the Mitanni
material?  Is this the only example we have?

You cannot, of course, notate a cluster of more than two consonants in
cuneiform.-

alright - it turns out that you seem to have relevant information in
this regard - why did you act like a *** and wait this long to
present it?

Anyone who knew the slightest thing about the Mittani materials would
know that.

At any rate none of this addresses eka-aika- the only matter I
originally wanted to discuss.-

You obviously have no idea what this is about, so you have no business
pontificating on "eka-aika."
.

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