Following the terminology of Cairns and Feinstein (1982), these initial segments belong to a premargin, which in the case of Sanskrit is at most one segment which precedes the head of the onset. This construct serves as a locus of sonority sequencing violations, and also explains why three-letter sequences of segments that are legal pairwise might be illegal as a triplet, e.g., that there are no */sts-/, */tsp-/, etc.

There is some morphological evidence that this one-segment restriction is an active rule of Sanskrit phonology and not just a historical survival from the parent language. The s-aorists normally insert an /s/ between the stem and the personal ending (acchait-s-ma "we cut", anai-s-ta "ye led"), but this /s/ is not found if it would appear between two oral stops (acchait-ta "ye cut"). It would appear that syllabification attempts to build up the onset /tst/ on the basis of pairwise licensing (/t/ is permitted before /s/, /s/ is permitted before /t/), then notes the single-premargin violation and deletes the /s/, possibly because it is the locus of the sonority sequencing violation. A more oblique piece of evidence for the premargin and the /s/-deletion rule can be seen in verb reduplication, where /s/-stop clusters behave anomalously: unlike all other circumstances, including /s/-sonorant clusters, where the initial segment is copied, /s/-stop clusters apparently copy the stop: ta-sthau "stood" vs. sa-smaÌra "remembered". This was adduced by Kiparsky (1979:434-435) as evidence for structure within the onset, with reduplication copying the metrically weaker (less sonorous) part of the onset. It is also possible that the entire margin is copied at a deep level (*sta-sthau), which would agree with the Gothic evidence he presents (stai-staut "pushed", even though the usual reduplication in that language is also uniconsonantal, cf. gai-grot "wept"). But since the margin is almost always uniconsonantal, Sanskrit imposed a shape-invariant Ca- pattern on reduplication. Again, the first repair strategy when a cluster competes for that single slot is to delete the /s/, leaving the attested ta-sthau. This is congruent with the historical account suggested by Osthoff (1882).

Part of the problem with that argumentation is that it is motivated by a universal claim about sonority sequencing in syllables, but the Sanskrit facts are Indo-Aryan innovations that do not generalize to other languages. In several Indo-European languages, including the closely related Avestan, one always reduplicates the initial /s/, and in Gothic of course the entire margin is copied (Osthoff 1882). This also brings to mind Old English alliteration, which normally matches words that have the same single initial consonant, but which in the case of /s/-stop clusters requires both segments to match (Bright 1957:230); this would be very odd if the /s/ is not even part of the syllable. Furthermore, the same facts that rule out *acchaitsta should, if universal, rule out Eng. capstan. Since languages have so much variation in how /s/ is treated, much if not all of the simplicity Steriade gains by not having to give structure-sensitive rules (e.g., that reduplication copies the margin, not the edge, of the onset; or that /s/ itself is specifically liable to deletion) is lost by having to give language-specific conditions about how extrasyllabic /s/ is treated (it would end up getting licensed postlexically at the left margin of a word, but deleted elsewhere), and about the relative ordering of /s/ deletion and Bartholomae's Law (araudhsta > araudhta > arauddha, Whitney 1964:315).

Furthermore, it will be seen in the section on Morphological Evidence that the behaviour of stem-final sibilants in the morphology directly patterns with the predictions of my syllabification theory. If the ending is such that the sibilant can form an onset with it, the sibilant remains a sibilant, perhaps with some place assimilation; if the ending cannot form an onset, the sibilant is neutralized in ways paralleling the treatment at the end of utterances. For example, the stem aÌs- "sit" retains the /s/ in forms like aÌste "sits" and aÌsmahe "we sit", but makes it discontinuant in aÌddhve "ye sit". This agrees with the fact that there are words that begin with /st/ and /sm/ but not /sdh/, and can most directly be explained by differences in syllabification.

Finally but perhaps most crucially, it will be seen that the sandhi theory itself constitutes evidence for the syllabification of /s/. If I am correct in stating that sandhi effects are triggered by syllable structure, then sandhi such as /-s p- > -hÚ p-/ , contrasted with the persistence of word-internal /sp/ sequences, is to be explained by the fact that word-final /s/ are in syllable codas, but word-internally form onset clusters with /p/. If however /s/ before /p/ were always in a syllable coda, then the two cases could not be distinguished, and one would have to resort to invoking word boundaries in sandhi. I would argue that the evidence that all other sandhi is syllable-conditioned, as well as the indecisiveness of the evidence against /s/-stop onsets, should lead to the conclusion that the overall picture is simpler if one accepts these onsets.

An inventory of word-final codas would be a good deal harder to compile by thumbing through a dictionary, but fortunately the "doctrine of permitted finals" is a well-established part of Sanskrit grammar. Whitney (1964:49-53) teaches that for all practical purposes, a word on the surface can end in one of the sequences /(r)k/, /n /, /(r)tÛ/, /(r)t/, /n/, /(r)p/, /m/, /l/, or /hÚ/. An examination of the sandhi tables suggests that a few small changes need to be made to this inventory to account for deeper levels. Although it is traditional to describe sandhi in terms of the surface forms the input words have in isolation, most generative linguists agree that in some cases one needs to assume somewhat different forms feeding sandhi; these are added in parentheses in the charts. So it would appear from the evidence of word-final consonants that prior to the postlexical phonology, Sanskrit syllable codas can end in virtually any consonant other than a palatal, or /sÛ/, or a voiced or aspirated obstruent. Examination of the inventory of onsets suggests that the restrictions on palatals and laryngeal features apply to any stop not followed by a tautosyllabic sonorant. Some bisegmental clusters of descending sonority are allowed (glide before any non-glide, non-obstruent before obstruent).

(18) Word-internal deep codas plus onsets, sandhi applying vacuously: k-k; k-c; k-t(h); k-p; n -k; n k-t; n -g; nõ-c; nõ-ch; nõ-j; tÛ-k; tÛ-tÛ; nÚ-tÛ(h); nÚ-dÚ; nÚ-nÚ; nÚ-m; t-k; t-t(h); t-p(h); t-sth; n-t(h); n-d; n-dh; n-n; n-m; p-t; p-p; m-p(h); m-b(h); m-m; r-k(h); r-g(h); r-c(h); r-j; r-dÚ; r-t(h); rt-t; r-d(h); r-n; r-p(h); r-b(h); r-m; r-s ; r-sÛ; r-s; l-k; l-g; l-p; l-ph; l-b; l-m; l-l; s-s [Omitting extensions of onsets, such as /n-dr/ given /n-d/]

The theory that external sandhi applies at all syllable boundaries implies that the sandhi rules should apply to these, though vacuously. And such turns out to be the case. The only apparent problem is the case of /s-s/, where one would normally expect /hÚs/. This happens when an ending is added to an s-stem verb: aÌs- "sit" + -se "(pres. mid. 2nd sg.)" > aÌsse, not *aÌhÚse. The lexicon seems to turn the two /s/ in these verb forms into a geminate, which would protect the first /s/ from coda disarticulation because of geminate integrity. It is not surprising that the treatment of the coda would be exceptional here, since verbs usually have special coda neutralizations for sibilants, especially before /s/, as illustrated in 16b.

There are a few morphs that take different forms depending on what sound is adjacent in the sentence. sas "that" and its extension esÛas "this" drop the /s/ before consonants in Classical Sanskrit: sa putrahÚ "that son", not *sahÚ putrahÚ. On the other hand, the dual endings -ai (surface -e), -uÌ, -îÌ, and perhaps a few interjections, add a glide before vowels, resulting ultimately in hiatus (glide deletion and pause being the sources of hiatus in Sanskrit): phalaiy admi > phale admi "I eat two pieces of fruit", not *phaledmi. The word aum drops its /a/ after words ending in /-aÌÃ/: tava um > tavom "thine om", not *tavaum; this no doubt originated in an effort to ensure that the mystic syllable always surfaces as /om/. The words aÌ "to" and maÌ "not" add a /t/ before /ch/ in those dialects that have geminate /ch/ after all vowels word-internally, but word-initially normally a single consonant after long vowels and a geminate after short ones; this /t/ extension produces a geminate /ch/ as sandhi, and must have originated at a point when aÌ and maÌ were considered to form a prosodic word with the following verb, therefore causing gemination despite their long vowel: aÌt chaÌdaya "cover!" > aÌcchaÌdaya.

But these are fundamentally different from the sandhi I have been discussing. The rule of sas/sa alternation is not a phonological property of /s/ at word boundaries, but a lexical property of the word sas itself, which happens to be sensitive to its phonological environment. It is a matter of allomorphy, exactly comparable to the alternation an/a in English, where no one would claim there is a general synchronic rule deleting /n/ before consonants at word boundaries. Thus these effects -- the only actual word-juncture effects in Sanskrit -- satisfy Kaisse's (1985) requirement that they should key off of some lexical or syntactic property of the environment.

One answer is that the traditional grammar has always recognized a large overlap between the rules of external and internal sandhi. Many of the unhighlighted entries in the sandhi charts also apply word internally. Among these are the rules that Selkirk analyzed as domain-span rules (1980:125) and include Glide Formation, Vowel Contraction, Assimilation of /m/, Anusvara (disarticulation) of /m/, and Obstruent Voicing (before other obstruents, which case she must separate from their voicing word-finally). The outlook I am advocating obviates the need to distinguish external rules from rules that are both external and internal: the distinction is a matter of syllable boundaries. It is particularly easy to see that sandhi rules affecting word-final vowels before other vowels should also find the same syllabic conditions when vowels come into contact word-internally, and indeed there are many examples of Glide Formation and Vowel Contraction in the morphology: kaÌma-i "love (loc.)" > kaÌme; kaÌma-as "loves (nom.)" > kaÌmaÌhÚ; aÌsya-îÌ "two mouths" > aÌsye; gati-aÌ "gait (instr.)" > gatyaÌ; nadîÌ-aÌ "river (instr.)" > nadyaÌ; tanuÌ-e "body (dat.)" > tanve; jyaÌ-istham "old-est" > jyesÛtÛham; juhu-aÌthai "you two sacrifice (middle)" > juhvaÌthe; abhava-i "I was (imperf. mid.)" > abhave. Of course, when a vowel precedes a consonant, there is also a syllable boundary just as there is between words, but since the sandhi rules call for no change in this case, the congruence of internal and external sandhi is not particularly noticeable: kaÌma-bhyas "(dat./abl. pl.)" > kaÌmabhyahÚ.

The situation is slightly obscured for stem-final consonants because the most common case in the morphology is for that consonant to form an onset with the ending. This of course bleeds the sandhi rules, which are coda-sensitive, and has led to the false generalization that most sandhi rules for consonants as the prior elements are inoperative word-internally. Thus consonant-final noun stems are unchanged before a vowel ending: manas-aÌ > manasaÌ, not *manaaÌ. It turns out that the only noun endings beginning with a consonant are -bhyaÌm "(instr., dat., abl. dual)", -bhis "(instr. pl.)", -bhyas "(dat., abl. pl.)", and -su "(loc. pl.)". /bh/ cannot be the second element of any onset cluster, so a preceding consonant will always end up in a coda, leaving the appropriate environment for sandhi changes: yas as-bhis "fame (instr. pl.)" > yas obhihÚ. /s/ is the second element of an onset only after a tenuis (/k/, /p/, /t/, /tÛ/), so most of the time it too will close a syllable yas as-su > yas ahÚsu; and the tenuis + /s/ sequence does not undergo any change at word boundaries, so this case is indistinguishable from external sandhi. These facts led to the false conclusion that these suffixes themselves are specially marked as causing word-boundary sandhi changes, and so they are called pada suffixes (Sanskrit for "word"). It is of course troubling that inflectional endings that have no morphological unity should be given the status of separate words, especially since the suffixes otherwise behave as part of the word: the suffix -su is subject to the rule of Ruki, the /s/ becoming retroflex after sounds such as /k/ (vaÌc-su "voices"> vaÌk-su > vaÌksÛu), which change in the classical language never occurs between words; and stem-final /r/ does not become /hÚ/ before -su (dhur-su "yokes" > dhuÌrsÛu), though it would before another word. In this new accou nt, the suffixes do not need to be given any special marking, nor do they need to insert a dubious word boundary. The behaviour is completely predictable from the phonology of the syllable structure.

Verbal inflections are more probative, since suffixes beginning with consonants are not all such as occasion syllable boundaries. For example, with the verb dvisÛ- "hate" one finds the /sÛ/ surviving intact in inflections such as these present active forms: dvisÛvahÚ "(1st dual)", dvisÛmahÚ "(1st pl.)", dvisÛtÛhahÚ "(2nd dual)", dvisÛtÛahÚ "(3rd dual)", dvisÛanti "(3rd pl.)" -- that is, in forms where it can form an onset cluster with the following segment. But voiced obstruents cannot be part of onset clusters, so before suffixes beginning with /dh/, one does not get the expected *dvisÛdÚhve "(2nd pl. middle)" but rather dvidÚdÚhve. Similarly, before /s/ suffixes one gets not *dvisÛse "(2nd sg. mid.)" but dviksÛe (with Ruki), because onsets cannot be built from multiple fricatives either. Of course most of these segments rejected from the onset cannot occur in codas either, and so they are subject to certain neutralizations. As mentioned earlier, these neutralizations are partly idiosyncratic, though generally drawn from a very small set of possibilities. In the case of dvisÛ-, the coda neutralization to /tÛ/ (whence /dÚ/ by normal voicing assimilation) is regular, a simple dropping of +cont. The change to /k/ in dviksÛe is a subregularity, normal for continuants before verbal endings in /s-/.

The above example makes it clear that it is not simply the case that consonantal endings occasion external sandhi. But one could conclude that verbal suffixes in /dh-/ and /s-/ should simply be listed among the pada suffixes. However, verb stems ending in /h/, a placeless voiced aspirate (phonetically, a breathy h), pattern somewhat differently. duh- "milk", which is marked for conversion to velar in a coda (go-dhuk "cow-milker (nom. sg.)"), forms most inflections analogously to dvisÛ-: duhvahÚ, duhmahÚ, duhanti, and before s- suffixes one sees the expected conversion to /k/: dhuksÛe. But before t(h)- suffixes the situation is not analogous to dvisÛ-, because /h/, being voiced, cannot form an onset cluster with obstruents. The effect is obscured a bit by Bartholomae's Law, but the conversion of /h/ to a velar shows that coda neutralizations are taking place: dugdhahÚ for the 2nd and 3rd person dual. Before /t(h)/, an /h/ remains in a coda. In that position it must give up its laryngeal features, which dock on the following dental, and the /h/ must become articulated, which in this case means conversion to a velar.

The same principles are broadly true of derivation as well. For example, praÌc- "forward", which converts to a velar before the so-called pada suffixes, does so also before the comparative ending -tara-, since /ct/ is an impossible onset sequence: praÌktaram. However, the so-called taddhita suffixes -- those which are appended to derived stems rather than to bare roots -- are a more complicated story. Those beginning with vowels behave as expected, inducing no change in stem-final consonants, but those beginning with consonants have a marked tendency to combine by the rules of external sandhi. Thus manas-in "having a mind" > manasin, not *manain, but manas-mayam "mental" > manomayam. By and large it is clear that these are being combined by the rules of compounding (a final /r/ changes to /s/ in words like praÌtastanam "matutinal", which is strictly a word-margin effect, cf. kartanam "excision"), but the fact that only consonantal endings induce external sandhi raises the suspicion that syllabification is involved. Conceivably this treatment originated in a tendency to apply empty-onset filling rather than maximum-onset syllabification as the syllabification principle at the lexical stratum at which taddhita suffixes are adjoined. Since this would almost always give the same results as compounding, this could easily have led to a restructuring by which the common consonantal suffixes were reanalyzed as bound words that require compounding.

-aÌÃ	-îÌÃ	-uÌÃ	-r	-e (-ay)	-ai (-aÌy)	-o (-av)	-au (-aÌv)	Init
aÌ	ya	va	ra	e	aÌ a	o	aÌva	a-
aÌ	yaÌ	vaÌ	raÌ	a aÌ	aÌ aÌ	a aÌ	aÌvaÌ	aÌ-
e	îÌ	vi	ri	a i	aÌ i	a i	aÌvi	i-
e	îÌ	vîÌ	rîÌ	a îÌ	aÌ îÌ	a îÌ	aÌvîÌ	îÌ-
o	yu	uÌ	ru	a u	aÌ u	a u	aÌvu	u-
o	yuÌ	uÌ	ruÌ	a uÌ	aÌ uÌ	a uÌ	aÌvuÌ	uÌ-
ar	yr	vr	r Ì	a r	aÌ r	a r	aÌvr	r -
ai	ye	ve	re	a e	aÌ e	a e	aÌve	e- (ay-)
ai	yai	vai	rai	a ai	aÌ ai	a ai	aÌvau	ai- (aÌy-)
au	yo	vo	ro	a o	aÌ o	a o	aÌvo	o- (av-)
au	yau	vau	rau	a au	aÌ au	a au	aÌvau	au- (aÌv-)

Chart 2: Sandhi of final consonants. Multiple entries usually show options in free variation. The rare final /l/ neither suffers nor causes changes. /hÚ/ and /mÚ/ are disarticulated continuant and nasal, other inferior dots denote retroflexes. /n / is a velar nasal. /rå/ is a voiceless retroflex tap. /h/ is breathy-voiced as an independent segment; after a stop it marks aspiration. /s / and /nõ/ are palatal; /lÕ/ is nasal. ¹The nasal doubles only after short vowels. ²The fricative is optionally /-hÚ/ if the initial stop is followed by a sibilant. ³/hÚ/ is omissible if the sibilant is followed by an oral stop. ⁴The /-m/ may assimilate to a (sonorant) consonant following the /h-/.

As some characters may not be rendered properly by the user's operating system and browser, a file history follows:

This file was converted from an RTF (Rich Text Format) file by a whinging Word word-processor, which nasally most piteously said it was unable to match all the RTF tags with HTML tags. It declined to list the RTF code it was unable to convert.

Known conversions were these:

Original    MS-Word"s  choices          Final
RTF         High ASCII  Unicode    Qty  character
\'97        151  �                 1     - (hyphen, minus, ascii 45)
\'b4        180  �                 1     ' (apostrophe for an acute)
\'d5        213  �                 3     Õ
\'da        218  �                 129   Ú
\'db        219  �                 126   Û
\'c3                    Ã     4     Ã
\'cc                    Ì     152   Ì
\'e5                    å     2     å
\'ee                    î     13    î
\'f5                    õ     10    õ

END

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