Hello students of Pali. And welcome back
to this companion to A.K.
Warder's grammar guide 'An introduction to
Pali'.
Today it's lesson 23,
where we examine agent nouns and we look
at Sandhi in Pali.
This is Pali Studies, on the Learn
Pali channel.
In this lesson we begin with the
declension of nouns
ending with -ar.
This is the last of the consonantal
stems. And, in Pali, there are two types of noun
that have a stem ending -ar.
That is, agent nouns. (And these are words
like 'teacher, speaker, assessor'
And are often formed in English by
adding -er
or -or to a verb. And this
indicates the doer of such action, - a
teacher is someone who teaches.) And the other
is nouns expressing family relationships,
such as, 'mother, father, daughter, brother'.
And similar to English, both types of noun
in Pali, are formed by adding the suffix
-tar,
to a verbal root. Agent nouns take a
strong form of this suffix.
And verb stems of the 7th conjugation,
that is, those that end in
-e and causative verbs, form agent nouns
on the present stem, rather than on the
verbal root.
Warder uses the noun 'satthar',
teacher, as a paradigm. And this is formed
from the junction
of the root sās, 'to teach',
and -tar, where the -t- sound assimilates
to create a double '-tth' . And we've seen
this type of assimilation before.
Now, although these are nouns, since they
express an
action, they often take an object.
English tends to use the genitive form
for this object, 'a giver of gifts'. But
in Pali, the object can be either in
genitive,
or take the accusative.
Similar to these are relationship nouns,
at least in declension.
Except they differ from agent nouns
being formed by the weaker grade of the
suffix. This is 'pitar', father, and
'mātar', mother, is similar. And these words
for family members are good examples of
the commonalities between
Indo-European languages. For instance,
pitar in latin, becomes pater -
where we get the English word paternal.
And mātar becomes mater in latin -
where we get the word maternal.
And dhitar and bhātar, in Pali,
are daughter and brother in English.
Now, as the section on sandhi is quite
long,
- and I think we can ignore the next
section on the bahubbīhi compound -
so i'm going to skip over it, and move
straight on to
Sandhi. This is a large and technical area.
And I want to stress right at the
beginning that Ii am not
an expert on this1 But before we leap in,
I think it's worth establishing some
context.
Sandhi, which means junction or union,
can be described as the change that
occurs when two sounds come together.
This is usually for euphony, which means
to ease vocalization due to the
mechanics of the mouth.
For instance, in English 'fish and chips'
is actually said 'fish un chips'.
'cats and dogs' is 'cats an dogz'.
And we normally ignore these subtle
sound changes when writing.
But as Pali is a phonetic language, it's
written as it sounds.
And sound changes are reflected by
spelling changes.
So, sandhi is the natural blending of
sounds that occurs,
due mainly to the mechanics of our vocal
apparatus -
though many grammar guides tend to list
them like formal grammatical rules.
The sound changes may
be internal - that is, inside a word.
For instance, when a suffix joins a root.
Or, external - between words.
Which can result from the forming of
compounds;
adding prefixes;
or, as Pali was originally written as an
uninterrupted string of sounds,
it can result from the simple coming
together of words.
Thus, a word may alter in form, especially
its final or initial sound, due to the
word which
follows or precedes it. And this is
mainly seen with
pronouns and indeclinable particles.
Occasionally, also with nouns in the
vocative case.
Sandhi then is a catch-all term for these
internal and external sound changes.
And it can also be broken down into
several different types of effect.
Like: root strengthening; assimilation -
which is the fusion of sounds into a new
one;
metathesis - which is the swapping or
reversing of sounds;
elision - when a sound is dropped;
contraction - when two similar sounds
become one
and usually lengthened; and insertion -
when a sound is
inserted. If you've been following this
series, you'll recognize the first
three, as Warder has introduced them
as we've looked at the specific internal
inflections.
And this is where Pali Sandhi is closest
to Sanskrit. in Sanskrit, the rules of Sandhi
are consistent, mechanical, almost a
scientific discipline.
And you'll find tables and calculators
online.
But here in this section, Warder is only
focusing on external Sandhi. And in this field,
Pali varies widely from Sanskrit.
Any rules, if you can call them that, are
general, inconsistent, and often arbitrary.
Another area where Pali varies from
Sanskrit
is in the general characteristics of its
words.
For instance, Pali words start with a
single vowel or consonant.
In fact, vowels usually occur singularly.
A short vowel is followed by no more
than two consonants. And a long vowel
by only one. Thus at most, you'll only
find
a cluster of two consonants. And
an aspirated consonant can't be the
first in a cluster. Finally, Pali words
end in a vowel. Which is either: long or
short,
or is nasalized by a niggahīta -ṃ.
There are some exceptions, but these are
mainly loan words from Sanskrit.
Anyway, given that a word
ends in a vowel or niggahīta, and begins
with a vowel or consonant. 
When two words come together,
two vowels can meet  -and the rules for
these sound changes
are called vowel sandhi; 
a combination of vowel and consonant
- and this is usually called mixed sandhi; or
a niggahīta and a vowel or consonant
- and this is generally called niggahīta
sandhi.
Some guides strip out the consonants
into a separate grouping.
And the arrangement of rules varies
greatly between guides.
So here I'm going to stick with this
format, which is followed by Warder.
Right, time to dive in.
When two vowels meet, most often,
the first vowel is a elided - which
means that it's dropped.
The remaining vowel is often lengthened.
And this is the usual case when the
vowels are similar.
Although, if it's followed by a consonant
cluster - that is,
two consonants or a niggahīta - any
long vowel is shortened.
And, as Warder points out, there are some
rare exceptions to this -
especially in the formation of compounds.
Also, sometimes a long or short
a/ā followed by a long or short i/ī,
or u/ū becomes -e
and -o respectively.
And also, sometimes, an i/ī or u/ū
followed by a dissimilar vowel changes
into its semivowel -
which then may itself assimilate to any
preceding consonant.
And often, especially with compounds, a
consonant
is inserted between the two words.
This can be the restoration of an older
vedic spelling. Of these, the most
frequent
are 'y, v, d, r & m'.
Occasionally, if the second vowel is
an -a, this can be a elided.
And this is especially true after an -e
and an -o.
In fact, -o usually replaces
any following vowel. And you may also
find that a short vowel followed by an
-a results in a semivowel,
a y or v, and a long -ā sound. This sometimes occurs
when the short vowel is followed by a
long ā
or an e.
And very rarely, we find what's called
'hiatus', when no sound change occurs and the two
vowels remain in place.
Moving on to mixed Sandhi. A vowel
followed by a consonant usually remains
the same.
However, they are lengthened before
particles ti and pi. And, as already mentioned, they're
shortened before a consonant cluster.
In some cases, an old vedic consonant is
restored.
And this is especially true of prefixes.
And this restored consonant may then
assimilate...
And at this point, it's worth adding, that
a double
-vv- sound becomes -bb-
in Pali, which is the basis for the word
'nibbana'.
Finally, a niggahīta followed by a consonant
may remain unchanged, or transform
into a nasal of the same articulation
group as that consonant. And this is
always true when followed by the
particles
ti and ca.
Or if followed by a vowel, it may simply
change
to an 'm'. Or rarely, be elided.
In a few cases, it's replaced by an older
Vedic consonant.
And if a niggahīta is followed by the
particle
'eva', a semivowel 'y-' may be inserted.
And a niggahīta and a 'y' sound, in turn,
assimilate to a double palatal -ññ-.
But note, dictionaries tend to keep the
'ṃy' spelling.
And similarly a niggahīta followed by
the semivowel 'l', produces a double -ll-.
Well, that's a succinct summary of
external sandhi.
As I said, it's quite a technical area.
But being aware of the general patterns
will help you understand how words and prefixes are
put together.
And so we can break them apart again
when we're translating.
For another couple of takes on sandhi
in Pali, I've put some links down in the
description below.
So check those out.
Okay, that was lesson 23.
As always, Warder now loads on the vocab.
And there are a couple of passages to
translate.
For solutions, see the links below.
And next week, we look at the pronoun
'amu', a few more bahubbīhi compounds,
a variation on the future verb infix,
and, importantly, auxiliary verbs and verb
tense...
In the meantime, don't forget my other
tutorials. And of course
my blog!
