Sound Synthesis in Indo European Indo Iranian and Sanskrit

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

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SOUND SYNTHESIS IN IE, IIR & SANSKRIT
129.5); cp Av aat (Haoma yast, verso 2) for at (=Vd at), adverb but originally abl sg of pronoun a-. Separation of bhis, bhyas etc. with avagraha in RV padapātha (e. g. afvabhiḥ as ašva-bhiḥ etc) just like two members of a. compound (e.g. aśva-dah) is also a pointer to the fact that, the endings were not fully treated as internal part of a word for a considerable period. Thus for some length of time, they might have had optional sandhi.
The fourth type of sandhi or the pure external sandhi, might have first of all started in IE, in combinations of one accented form with an unaccented form like a proclitic. or enclitic, where from the accentual treatment, the unaccénted form came to be treated as a part of the accented form. In other words, the two words were treated like one compound word from accentual point of view.
To sum up : Sound Synthesis first of all started in proto Indo-European with some forms and gradually spread to others in course of time. The above analysis shows that sound-synthesis was absent in an earliest stage of proto Indo-European, say in the 1st stage?. In the next stage (i.e. the 2nd stage) internal sandhi first of all started with a root + affix to form stems. Then (in the 3rd stage) there was sandhi of stems + case-endings and side by side also verb stems+personal endings. In the next (i.e. 4th) stage there was sandhi of upasargas with verb forms. In the next (i.e. 5th stage ) sandhi was extended to compound forms. Towards the end of this (last) stage of proto Indo-European, sandhi was cxtended
1. Vide Fresh Light on Indo-European Classification &
Chronology for details of the distribution of the five stages of proto Indo-European (pp. 50-62).