पृष्ठम्:The Sanskrit Language (T.Burrow).djvu/११९

112 PHONOLOGY tfna - ( <*trnd -) is ' what pierces cf. trndtti) and it was the rule that such formations were suffixally accented. It is also very common in Sanskrit for nominalised adjectives to throw back the accent on to the first syllable. The application of the above accent rule in its full rigidity would allow only one guna syllable in any word. The words quoted are of that type, but the majority of Indo-European words, in any language, are not so. This is mainly due to two reasons. Firstly, when inconvenient or grammatically less clear forms would result, the elimination of the unaccented guna vowel was resisted, or if eliminated it was quickly restored. So we have as the gen. sg. of pad - ( foot 1 not *bdas which would have resulted from the rule, but padds with guna vowel in un- accented position. The existence of ddnt- * tooth ' (' eater cf. sdnt- ‘ being ’ : as-) beside ad ant- ' eating ' gives us one clear case where a guna vowel in unaccented position has been re- stored by analogy. Secondly the nature of the Indo-European accent underwent a change during the later Indo-European period. It had the power to reduce neighbouring unaccented syllables for a certain period of time, and then, in later Indo- European it ceased to have this effect. Consequently forms like those quoted above which show the full effects of apophony must be considered as belonging to the most ancient stratum of Indo-European. But after the accent ceased to have the effect of reducing adjacent syllables, Indo-European was creating new formations in abundance, a faculty retained by the indi- vidual languages particularly in their early stages. The very numerous formations of the type yajata- ' adorable dariatd- ' worth seeing devdsya ' of the god etc,, etc., had their origin in this later period when the accent had ceased to have the power to influence the vocalism of the surrounding syllables. §23. Qualitative Alternation: Metaphony There existed in Indo-European also a qualitative alterna- tion of the guna vowel, and this is well preserved in most branches of the family : e.g. Gk. Adytu ‘ I say 1 : Aoyos- ' word 1 ; Lat. lego ' I cover ' : toga * gown ' ; Russ, vezu 4 I carry * : voz 1 cart, load * ; Engl, sing : sang . The alternation affects both the guna vowel, as in the examples above and its vrddhied ex- tension (Gk, SoTrjp : Sturiop ' giver *). In Indo-Iranian this alternation has entirely disappeared owing to the confusion of