HistLing: Ben Fortson on "Reflections on retroflexion across word-boundary in the Rigveda: Knotty, naughty, and nutty nati."

Reflections on retroflexion across word-boundary in the Rigveda: Knotty, naughty, and nutty nati

Ben Fortson will present in today's meeting on HistLing. The title and abstract of his presentation are given below.

Reflections on retroflexion across word-boundary in the Rigveda: Knotty, naughty, and nutty nati

Certain Sanskrit sandhi rules that only apply word-internally in the Classical language frequently obtain also across word-boundary in the Rigveda, the earliest Sanskrit text. The data, however, are inconsistent and contradictory; thus delimiting the conditions under which these sandhi rules could apply in domains larger than the word has been problematic. This paper investigates one such rule, the retroflexion of n (called nati in the native grammatical tradition), and proposes a new way of looking at this material that might resolve some long-standing difficulties.