Mahavira Jain Vidyalay Suvarna Mahotsav Granth Part 1

Author(s): Mahavir Jain Vidyalaya Mumbai
Publisher: Mahavir Jain Vidyalay

Page 661

192 : SHRI MAHAVIRA JAINA VIDYALAYA GOLDEN JUBILEE VOLUME
the initial stress-the Aufton of Jacobi-to be more responsible for the loss of the final vowel of a word; because, as it is easy to understand, excessive stress on the initial syllable would very easily condition the laxity of pronunciation in the final syllable of a word, which would ultimately lead to its weakening or disappearance. Be it the initial stress or the penultimate stress—that the heavy stress accent on any syllable other than the final was responsible for the elision of the final vowel in a vocable seems to be clear from all the fore-going statements.
Now it is to be considered that in an inflected word as the terminational element appeared at the end being affixed to the stem it is the endings which suffered most from phonetic decay or elision. The stem element was successful in resisting considerably the onslaught of phonetic reduction due to its privileged position--namely of its constituting the fore-part of a word. This has been very categorically asserted by Turner in his paper "The phonetic weaknesses in the terminational Elements in Indo-Aryan” (JRAS 1927, pp. 227 ff.). Now in this process of final weakening it is easy to comprehend that some weak endings would give way and suffer from total elision. But this fate was not in store for all the terminations. Because there were surely some, which were stronger and could stem the rushing tide of disintegration, which seemed to sweep away the old phonetic system coming down traditionally from a long time. It would be clarified by a reference to the history of the Aryan speech during the later period particularly at the time of the New Indo-Aryans.
The history of the Aryan speech shows that during the days of the New Indo-Aryan only two case forms remained. The one was the direct, which was the descendant of the old nom. and the other the oblique, which was the surviving form of any of the cases like gen., dat., loc. or inst. On account of its being the only surviving form
Vol. 47, p. 581. [Trans. : From the double forms it is possible to infer that the rising accent (Aufton) has suppressed the wordaccent (i. e.) penultimate stress), when the latter has remained on the second syllable and betrayed a tendency to shift altogether in such cases the word-accent upon the initial syllable. The shifting of the accent from the second to the first makes itself known by the shortening of the second syllable. (1) The first syllable is long : anita becomes in Pāli and Pkt. anita and aniya respectively, durnita becomes changed to dunniya in Pkt.......... (2) The first syllable is short : In Pkt. mostly or often alika becomes changed to alīya, karisha to karisha....]