Reconstruction talk:Ashokan Prakrit/𑀕𑀼𑀧𑁆𑀨𑀸

Language

@Bhagadatta, is this not a Proto-Indo-Aryan word? The headwords in Turner's work are all in Old Indo-Aryan, with the Middle Indo-Aryan (& New Indo-Aryan) forms being given within each entry. — inqilābī ^{[ inqilāb zindabād ]} 13:14, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

@Bhagadatta: Also, since Dardic is not descended from Ashokan Prakrit, it is better that we show the language as Proto-Indo-Aryan in order to include the Kashmiri word as one of the descendants. — inqilābī ^{[ inqilāb zindabād ]} 16:51, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

@Inqilābī: Sorry for the late reply. Well, originally all Turner-reconstructions were considered to be Proto-Indo-Aryan until there was a discussion (in multiple places I think... I'll try to find those discussions) which concluded that these actually are Proto-Middle Indic terms and not Proto-Indo-Aryan. (As a matter of fact, Turner reconstructs them as unattested Sanskrit terms, not PIA or Proto-MIA). This is why *choṭṭa was moved from PIA to Ashokan as well. This is because the structure of these words (including *guppha) look a lot like Middle-Indic, with geminated stops and all, whereas actual PIA was very archaic, even older than Vedic Sanskrit. Plus, there seems to be the involvement of the noun गुहा (guhā, “cave”) and the root गुप् (gup, “to cover, conceal, hide”); both the root and its meaning have likely been innovated by Sanskrit, from गो (go, “cow”) + पा (pā, “to protect”, root) , with the following semantic development: "to protect cows --> to protect, defend --> to conceal, hide". Also, the meaning "to protect" was attested in the Rigveda but the related meaning "to conceal, hide" is from later, suggesting a Middle Indic innovation. In case of गुहा (guhā), the root is गुह् (guh, “to conceal”) and the noun is from late Vedic Sanskrit.

I moved the entry when I was going through the category Hindi terms derived from PIA as it contains many entries that should instead be at Hindi terms derived from Ashokan. The existence of a Dardic cognate could suggest that this word existed in late Old Indo-Aryan/early MIA: this is precisely why initially a code for "Proto MIA" was proposed so that Pali and Dardic could be included; but that idea did not garner much support and we had to settle for Ashokan Prakrit instead, which albeit quite pervasive, unfortunately does not extend to Pali and Dardic. -- Bhagadatta^(talk) 04:25, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Form & etymology

@Bhagadatta, Chatterji constructs the MIA form as *goppha- and derives it from OIA गुम्फा (gumphā) ({{R:ODBL|1|329}}). This could be explained by the fact that the OIA close vowels i, ī, u, ū became lowered to ĕ, ŏ in MIA before a consonant cluster. (Anyway, what is the hyphen in the reconstruction supposed to indicate?) And गुम्फा (gumphā) is somehow related to गुहा (guhā) per {{R:ODBL|1|512}}. So, is this merely a variant form or an alternative reconstruction? And what do you think of the etymology? ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 15:51, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Inqilābī: Authors use a hyphen after nouns and adjectives to indicate that the noun/adjective is in the stem form and not in the nominative singular.

An OIA/ early MIA term of the form gumpʰa- would not lose the nasalisation in later MIA/NIA. The term गुम्फ, meaning "tying/stringing (of a garland)", would be semantically challenging to tie with the NIA forms. Turner considers the derivation from gumpʰa to be very doubtful. The current etymology, also proposed by Turner, seems to be the most plausible explanation of the word's structure; however, given that the true etymology cannot be certainly known, Chatterji's etymology can also be mentioned. -- 𝓑𝓱𝓪𝓰𝓪𝓭𝓪𝓽𝓽𝓪^{(𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓴)} 02:22, 3 August 2021 (UTC)