Sound Synthesis in Indo European Indo Iranian and Sanskrit

Author(s): Satya Swarup Mishra
Publisher: Ashutosh Prakashan Sansthan

Page 19

CHAPTER I
INDO-EUROPEAN SOUND SYNTHESIS
1. Indo-European Sound Synthesis
Synthesis is used here as synonymous with the Sanskrit term Sandhi, which has been used in Sanskrit Grammars in the technical sense of combinatory sound changes pertaining to contact of sounds including contraction, diphthongization, change of a vowel to a consonant & of a consonant to a vowel etc. in vowel synthesis, and assimilation etc. in consonant synthesis. The Sanskrit term sandht (< IE som-dh-i > √dhë ‘put') is best rendered synthesis (cp Gk sun-thesis), which may be used as a technical term for sound synthesis.
There are sufficient evidences in the IE historical languages, to show that sandhi or sound synthesis is an inherited feature from the IE proto-speech. The evidences are also in favour of the assumption that external sandhi was less developed in IE than internal sandhi. It is probable that sandhi was extended from internal to external, through the intermediate stages of sandhi of upasargas with verb forms, and sandhi of compounds.
It may be pointed out, in this connection, that the western scholars normally classify sandhi as internal sandhi and external sandhi. But the traditional Indian grammarians describe four categories: (1) Sandhi within a word (= internal sandhi), e.g. Skt bhav-a-ti bho+