Adverbial Accent Shift in Vedic Sanskrit
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ADVERBIAL ACCENT SHIFT IN VEDIC SANSKRIT A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Emily Laura Barth December 2018 © 2018 Emily Laura Barth ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ADVERBIAL ACCENT SHIFT IN VEDIC SANSKRIT Emily Laura Barth, Ph.D. Cornell University 2018 A hypothetical process of ‘adverbial shift of accent’ is universally assumed, e.g. by Grassmann (1873), Lanman (1880), Whitney (1889), and as recently as Gotō (2013), to explain the irregular accent of several dozen Vedic case-forms in adverbial use, which are differentiated from non- adverbial comparanda by a contrast in accent. The pool of affected forms is so morphologically wide-ranging and inconsistent that it is difficult to define the rules and distributional restrictions of the supposed process. For example, adv. dravát ‘at a run, quickly’ beside drávant- ‘running’ appears to show rightward accent shift to a suffix. But among numerous adverbial neuter accusative participles, only dravát (and possibly patayát ‘in flight’) shows any trace of abnormal accent. Likewise loc. sg. upāké ‘close by’ apparently shows adverbial accent shift onto a case ending, contrasting with several attested forms in a barytone stem úpāka- ‘neighboring(?)’. But adverbial accent shift cannot explain the oxytone accent of an unambiguously adnominal form upākáyos (RV I.81.4). Nor can it account for the semantic change that accompanies the leftward accent ‘shift’ from inst. sg. divā́ ‘through heaven’ to dívā ‘by day.’ Other forms show additional formal irregularities beyond the accent that must be explained before we may reasonably suppose that a shift of accent has occurred. In many individual cases, traditional analyses that rely on ‘adverbial accent shift’ have been rejected in favor of more concrete explanations, but this has not led to a systematic reappraisal of adverbial accent shift itself. In other cases, the persistent assumption that any adverbial case-form in the language may be targeted for a contrastive shift of accent—as if by a suppositious [+adverb] feature—has forestalled further morphological investigation into a number of formally ambiguous or problematic adverbs. In this dissertation I argue that the data does not support a generalized rule of adverbial accent shift that is either inherited or synchronically active in Vedic. The majority of purported examples are better explained as derived adverbs in accented suffixes, as old retentions that maintain the original accent of synchronically remodeled paradigms, or as analogical innovations based on accentually regular models. By providing alternative analyses for key cases I show that we must either eliminate ‘adverbial accent shift’ entirely, or at least severely limit its scope of application within the Vedic grammar to concrete analogical scenarios. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Emily Barth was born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania on June 8, 1987 and grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania. In May 2009, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Georgetown University with a double major in Linguistics and Classical Languages. She earned a Master’s degree in theological studies from Boston University in May 2012. In fall 2012 she began as a graduate student at Cornell University. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many thanks are owed to my committee, for their patient support as I changed the original premise of this dissertation entirely. To my chair, Michael Weiss, for shepherding me through the process with invaluable suggestions for improvement; to Alan Nussbaum, for helping me make sense of an overwhelming profusion of data in the early stages and directing me toward several key solutions; and to John Whitman, for his encouragement and accommodating spirit. I am also grateful to Stephanie Jamison, for suggesting several data points that I had missed and for providing thorough answers to my questions of interpretation and analysis. I am also grateful to my cohort crew, in particular to Robin Karlin for commiserating and celebrating during the final stretch. Thanks also to my fellow students of historial linguistics, Chelsea Sanker, Ryan Hearn, and Francesco Burroni, for keeping the enthusiasm alive. Many thanks to Cara DiGirolamo, for being a sounding board to my developing thoughts and theories, for lending a friendly ear throughout triumphs and setbacks, and for laughing with me over countless baffling verses about sacred cows and butter. And of course, eternal thanks to my parents, Larry and Linda Barth, for continually assuring me that they would still love me if I ever decided to give up on this project entirely and run for the hills. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch ................................................................................................................. ii Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ........................................................................................................................... vii List of Abbreviations ............................................................................................................... viii Preface ..................................................................................................................................... x Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1 1 The adverbial suffix -vát .................................................................................................... 8 1.1 The data: -vát adverbs in the Rigveda ........................................................................ 9 1.2 Formal properties of -vant- stems .............................................................................. 15 1.3 Semantics of ‘having x’ → ‘like x’ ............................................................................ 22 1.4 Routes of analogical extension ................................................................................... 28 1.5 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 32 2 Adverbial participles in -át ................................................................................................ 33 2.1 Adverbial nt-participles .............................................................................................. 34 2.2 dravát .......................................................................................................................... 42 2.2.1 Background ...................................................................................................... 42 2.2.2 dravát as an *-(E)t-stem abstract ..................................................................... 46 2.3 Analogical extension to patayát ................................................................................. 51 2.4 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 54 3 ‘Thematic’ adverbs in productive suffixes ........................................................................ 55 3.1 Adverbs in °ayā́ and °uyā́ ........................................................................................... 56 3.1.1 Background ...................................................................................................... 57 3.1.2 Alternative analyses ......................................................................................... 60 3.2 Adverbs in productive -tarám/-tarā́ m ........................................................................ 63 3.2.1 -tarám as an adverbial suffix ........................................................................... 65 3.2.2 Adverbial -tarā̆́m and -tamā̆́m .......................................................................... 68 3.2.3 prathamám and pratarám ................................................................................ 70 3.3 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 73 4 Adverbs in °cā́ and thematic °āká- .................................................................................... 74 iv 4.1 Adverbs in thematic °V̄ ká- stems ............................................................................... 74 4.1.1 Barytone úpāka- in context .............................................................................. 78 4.1.2 Barytone ápāka- in context .............................................................................. 81 4.2 Adverbs in instrumental °cā́ ....................................................................................... 86 4.2.1 Characteristics of -añc- stems .......................................................................... 87 4.2.2 Adverbial nīcā́ and prācā́ ................................................................................. 92 4.2.3 Accent remodeling in -añc- stems ................................................................... 96 4.2.4 Adverbs in -cā́ , -cā́ t, -caís ................................................................................ 98 4.3 Conclusion .................................................................................................................