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The Dimensions of a Word: Bhartṛhari's and... : 97 phase obtains a characteristic: "impetuosity" (druta), “moderately" (madhyama) and slowness (vilambita) and is called vaikṛta-dhvani
Sabda is the tiniest particle of speech connected with a meaning. Sphota treats a sentence or a sequence as a whole. As a letter and a phoneme don't have constituents, a word or a sentence hase to be treated as indivisible entities". Sphota, a word located in mind (Sabdo buddhi-sthah), is revealed by sounds situated in a constant and regular order.
Bhartṛhari analyses three aspects of linguistic situation:
(1) an integral linguistic symbol, called sphota, that can be conventionally and typographically discriminated as for instance agni. It is not tantamount to a pronouncing sphota but its name"; (2) prakṛta-dhvani, agni, a phonological structure, a model of the norm's standard; or a name of the class which different moments are elements12;
(3) vaikṛta-dhvani, agni, an individual moment, grasped in pure phonetic terms".
Vijñāna Bhiksu formulates following questions: What is the nature of sphota-sabda? What is the cause of sphota? What is the proof for sphota? Sphota is the unitary whole expressed "word". A particular sound produced by an effort is the cause of it. The letters fail to convey the meaning individually and this also accomplishes the "sphota"".
Sphota väda became a very significant and important issue of philosophy of language.
"According to grammarians, sphota means 'Sphutati artho yasmat sa sphoṭaḥ'i.e. the eternal and imperceptible element of sounds and words and the real vehicle of the idea which bursts out or flashes on the mind when a sound or word is uttered is sphota. In other words on hearing the words or sentence, when the entire picture-unit of its meaning is presented before us, it is called sphota. Thus, sphota is a meaning bearing unit of language. It is an element to clean the meaning or denotation of a sentence or word. According to grammarians, the denotations of word or sentence is not determined by letter-sound or phoneme but on completion of those phonemes, it automatically appears. [...] Sphoța is the internal aspect of denotation".
Brough underlines, that in normal situation we do not consider it in the process of linguistic communication, because we receive it as series of sense-data, which are in detail elaborated by brain and interpreted by it as having a limited form.
Four Levels of Speech Origination
For Bharthari the process of producing speech is the fundamental and the essence of a consciousness and the means to different cognitive processes. In his philosophy particular levels of consciousness correspond with particular stages of language57. A mind or a wakeful consciousness relates to temporal sequences of language in two aspects: superficial speech (vaikhari) and inner speech or thought (madhyama). Pure consciousness concerns two higher stages of language beyond common experience: pasyanti i para. They constitute sound and semantic units deprived of temporal order and phenomenal differentiation. They are available respectively to temporal and stable experiences of the pure consciousness, the first one as "the differentiated unity" (savikalpa samadhi), the second one as "the unity free from differentiation" (nirvikalpa samādhi)".
