पृष्ठम्:The Sanskrit Language (T.Burrow).djvu/११५

IC-f w ' 108 PHONOLOGY the laryngeal theory go back to and h 3 followed by the guna vowel which was in itself undifferentiated (h gnU 4 front Hit t. haul Gk. etc., u^est- 4 bone Hitt, hcistai , Gk. otrreW, etc.). Thus we are reduced to a single original guna vowel, conventionally written which is the state of affairs to which Indo-Iranian again returned at a later period as a result of special developments of its own, A few words of caution should be added in illustration of the fact that the laryngeal theory has not yet acquired a completely satisfactory form. It is never possible to be certain for instance that the vowel o is original, since alternating e- forms may be missing by accident. Furthermore there exist some oja alterna- tions which the theory does not altogether account for. As re- gards original a the absence of any h in forms like Hitt, appa ' away ' can only be explained away by making the theory un- comfortably complicated. It must be admitted in such a case that the actual evidence available does not allow us to go any further than IE apo. (iii) IE i r u have in all cases developed out of Hi, rm. The special developments of r, /, n, m followed by h have already been outlined. In this way the old reconstructions of long sonant liquids and nasals can be dispensed with. These simplifications effected, the IE vowel system is reduced to very few primitive elements. There is only one purely vocali c element t o begin with, which may be written e . The develop- ment of three varieties [e, a , o) and of the corresponding long vowels can be explained on the basis of the effect of laryngeals and of vocalic alternation. In addition there are six elements which may under certain conditions (between consonants, initi- ally before, and finally after consonants) function as vowels — t, «, f , /, 19, ip — but elsewhere (between vowels, etc.) function as consonants — -y, v, r, l ,n, m. As regards diphthongs it should be noted that the second element is consonantal, and that from the point of view of Indo-European it would be more consistent to write eyti 4 goes gews - 4 taste etc. §22. Quantitative Alternation: Apophony The purely vocalic element (Skt. a, IE a, e> o) was subject to a quantitative gradation of the following type. It could be elided in any syllable, radical or suffixal, or alternatively it could be K* c-y* --w 1