Historical Phonology of Old Indo-Aryan Consonants

Цитата:
Historical Phonology of Old Indo-Aryan Consonants. By MASATO KOBAYASHI. Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa Monograph Series, no. 42. Tokyo: Research Institute for LANGUAGES AND CULTURES OF ASIA AND AFRICA, TOKYO UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES, 2004. Pp. vi 234.

Since the discovery of Sanskrit by the West and its subsequent link to other Indo-European (IE) languages, the phonology of Sanskrit has always been viewed as remarkably archaic. For this reason, the production of works devoted to the historical phonology of Sanskrit has been steady and fruitful. With such a seemingly straightforward derivational history from the proto-language and the abundance of scholarship on the topic to date, it may seem that yet another treatment of the historical phonology of Sanskrit would be unproductive, if not completely redundant. However, Masato Kobayashi's Historical Phonology of Old Indo-Aryan Consonants, a revised version of his University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. dissertation, proves that such a statement could not be further from the truth.

Kobayashi's goals for this book are ambitious. He intends to "reexamine the whole of Indo-Aryan historical phonology from subsegmental and microscopic viewpoints" (p. 3). Although at times this vantage point affords only a reaffirmation of the communis opinio, it frequently provides fresh insight into standing problems and addresses situations previously unknown to scholars. Ultimately, the success of this book is rooted in the author's ability to integrate three separate (and often mutually unintelligible) realms of scholarship--Indology, Indo-European linguistics, and generative phonology. He treats each problem judiciously and frequently refers to the writings of Sanskrit grammarians for insight into the true phonetic nature of the data.

What sets Kobayashi's book apart from previous works, however, is his use of modern phonological theories such as suprasegmental phonology and the most widely used constraint-based theory within phonology, optimality theory (OT). Kobayashi demonstrates that these theories can give much insight into the Sanskrit data where rule-based phonology cannot, especially in situations where rules "conspire" together to satisfy a single constraint. He also makes use of typology, finding many comparanda in both IE and non-IE languages to bolster his analysis of Sanskrit. Of course, because his work is at heart devoted to the historical phonology of the Indo-Aryan languages, he frequently discusses the position of Sanskrit vis-a-vis Proto-Indo-European and the other IE dialects, when relevant.

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