12.3.24.23:23: GASPĀRDO LĪṢĀ CA
Last Monday I discovered Gaspard and Lisa, whose Sanskrit title might be
Gaspārdo Līṣā ca (Why -ārdo instead of -ard?* Why -īṣā instead of -isa?**)
with ca 'and' at the end. Another possible title is
Gaspārdaśca Līṣā ca (Why -aśca?***)
with two ca 'and'. Macdonell (151) considered medial ca 'and' to be "misplaced", but Monier-Williams (380) wrote that "in Ved[ic] and even in class[ical] Sanskrit [...], when the double च [ca] would generally be used , the second may occasionally be omitted": e.g.,
Indraśca Soma 'Indra and Soma' (Ṛgveda vii, 104, 25)
This made me wonder about the frequency of conjunction structures in languages:
CONJ A B
A CONJ B (e.g., Gaspard and Lisa)
A CONJ B AND (e.g., Gaspārdaśca Līṣā ca)
A B CONJ (e.g., Gaspārdo Līṣā ca)
A B (no conjunction)
Is the first structure ever attested?
According to WALS, the "obligatory use" of the fifth structure "is very rare": e.g.,
Awtuw Yowmen Yawur 'Yowmen and Yawur'
Does Awtuw have any conjunctions? The absence of 'and' may not rule out the existence of 'or'.
*3.25.4:37: The long vowel in Gaspārdo is carried over from ガスパール Gasupādo, the Japanization of 'Gaspard'.
5:00: I assigned Gaspārd to the masculine a-declension. Its nominative singular is Gaspārdas, and final -as becomes -o before a voiced consonant (e.g., the L- of Līṣā). I've never understood how -as became -o (which is phonetically long in spite of the absence of a macron). The process may have been something like
*-as > *-az > *-aẓ > *-av > *-aw > -ō = -o
ẓ is retroflex. A shift of ẓ to v is the voiced counterpart of the shift of voiceless ṣ to f that occurred in Xi'an: e.g.,
書 Xi'an fu : Standard Mandarin shu [ṣu]
Apparently word-internal -as had a different fate in pre-Sanskrit: Proto-Indo-Iranian *mazdhā- (< mn̩sdheʔ-) cf. Avestan Mazdā-) became Skt medhā 'intelligence' rather than modhā.
Newer word-internal -as became -o: e.g.,
manas 'mind' (cognate to maz- < *mn̩s) + dhātu 'element' = manodhātu- 'sphere of the mind'
**3.25.4:43: The first long vowel in Līṣā reflects the [i] in English Lisa [lisə]. Sanskrit Liṣā with a short i would imply an English Lissa [lɪsə].
Sanskrit s becomes retroflex ṣ between a non-a vowel and any vowel. I could have made an exception for a borrowed word, but I prefer my Sanskritizations to fit native phonology as closely as possible.
Although the final vowel of English Lisa [lisə] is closer to Sanskrit short -a than to Sanskrit long -ā, I Sanskritized the name with a final long -ā so it would belong to the feminine -ā declension. There are no Sanskrit feminine nouns ending in short -a.
***3.25.5:10: Final -s (see above) becomes palatal -ś before palatal c.
Sanskrit words are written without spaces between them unless word boundaries coincide with word-final vowels which may be nasalized or followed by aspiration: e.g., Līṣā ca (Līṣā ends in a vowel). Gaspārdaś does not end in a vowel, so it is written adjacent to ca: Gaspārdaśca. This practice can be ignored in romanization: e.g., Gaspārdaś ca.