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TWO NOTES ON INTERNAL RECONSTRUCTION
BY M. A. MEAENDALE, Poona.
(1) Reconsideration of. Hoenigswald's Rulc of Internal Reconstruction.
HOENIGSWALD in his paper on Sound Change and Linguistic Structure observes: "compulsory alternation between restricted / xl and free / y/ in a paradigm indicates a previous conditional sound change from / x / to /y/ in the position from which it is now excluded."" To illustrate his point, Hoenigswald gives an instance from modern German where voiced stops do not occur in syllable-final position. This gives an alternation/d/~/t/ in a paradigm / Bunde/ but / Buntl. Since in this position /d/ is restricted in comparison to It I. the above rule permits us to reconstruct syllable final /t/ as /d/ and imagine a conditioned sound change of al to t in that position in the history of modern German.
HOENIGSWALD's rule works very well in cases where for a given alternation the pertinent environments are only two as in the above case. The rule also works satisfactorily in some cases where the cnvironments concerned are more than two. This can be illustrated with the paradigm of Sanskrit Sarad: sarad-a and surad. bhyām, surat and sarat-su. The restriction and freedoin of occurrence of the alternating phonemes in the Sanskrit language can be shown in tlie following way :
2
Before a vowel
Before a voiced stop
3 Word final
Before an Unvoiced
fricative
dV
X
tv x V
Since in the environments which are pertinent for this alternation d is more restricted, we reconstruct it as the phoneme of the proto-stage and explain the alternation as a result of the phonetic change d > t in the environments concerned.
1. Readings in Linguistics, p. 140.
Madhu Vidya/359
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