Vedic Sanskrit Grammar - Phonology

Phonology

Vedic Sanskrit differs from Classical Sanskrit to an extent comparable to the difference between Homeric Greek and Classical Greek. Tiwari ( 2005) lists the following principal differences between the two:

• Vedic Sanskrit had a voiceless bilabial fricative (, called upadhmānīya) and a voiceless velar fricative (, called jihvāmūlīya)—which used to occur when the breath visarga (अः) appeared before voiceless labial and velar consonants respectively. Both of them were lost in Classical Sanskrit to give way to the simple visarga - upadhmaniya occurs before p and ph, jihvamuliya before k and kh.

• Vedic Sanskrit had a retroflex lateral approximant as well as its aspirated counterpart (ळ्ह), which were lost in Classical Sanskrit, to be replaced with the corresponding plosives (ड) and (ढ). (Varies by region; vedic pronunciations are still in common use in some regions, e.g. southern India, including Maharashtra.)
  Vedic also had a separate symbol ळ for retroflex l, an intervocalic allophone of ḍ, transliterated as ḷ or ḷh. In order to disambiguate vocalic l from retroflex l, vocalic l is sometimes transliterated with a ring below the letter, l̥; when this is done, vocalic r is also represented with a ring, r̥, for consistency (c.f. ISO 15919).

• The pronunciations of syllabic (ऋ), (लृ) and their long counterparts no longer retained their pure pronunciations, but had started to be pronounced as short and long (रि) and (ल्रि). (Varies by region; vedic pronunciations are still in common use in some regions, e.g. southern India, including Maharashtra)

• The vowels e (ए) and o (ओ) were actually realized in Vedic Sanskrit as diphthongs and, but they became pure monophthongs and in Classical Sanskrit. In this article these diphthongs are written in the original pronunciation, i. e., ai and au.

• The vowels ai (ऐ) and au (औ) were actually realized in Vedic Sanskrit as long diphthongs (आइ) and (आउ), but they became short diphthongs (अइ) and (अउ) in Classical Sanskrit. In this article these diphthongs are written in the original pronunciation, i. e., āi and āu.

• The Prātishākhyas claim that the dental consonants were articulated from the root of the teeth (dantamūlīya), but they became pure dentals later. This included the, which later became retroflex.

• Vedic Sanskrit had a pitch accent which could even change the meaning of the words, and was still in use in Panini's time, as we can infer by his use of devices to indicate its position. At some latter time, this was replaced by a stress accent limited to the second to fourth syllables from the end. Today, the pitch accent can be heard only in the traditional Vedic chantings.
  Since a small number of words in the late pronunciation of Vedic carry the so-called "independent svarita" on a short vowel, one can argue that late Vedic was marginally a tonal language. Note however that in the metrically restored versions of the Rig Veda almost all of the syllables carrying an independent svarita must revert to a sequence of two syllables, the first of which carries an udātta and the second a (so called) dependent svarita. Early Vedic was thus definitely not a tone language but a pitch accent language. See Vedic accent.
  Pitch accent was not restricted to Vedic: early Sanskrit grammarian Panini gives (1) accent rules for the spoken language of his (post-Vedic) time and (2) the differences of Vedic accent. We have, however, no extant post-Vedic text with accents.

• The pluti vowels (trimoraic vowels) were on the verge of becoming phonological during middle Vedic, but disappeared again.

• Vedic Sanskrit often allowed two like vowels to come together without merger during Sandhi.