{"pk":63829,"title":"Mind if I Join You? Some Aspects of Vowel-Vowel Sandhi in the Rigveda","subtitle":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper explores the prosody of the Rigvedic clause against the backdrop of two phenomena: (1) the treatment of vowel-vowel junctures at the word boundary (in particular whether such sequences show hiatus or contraction) and (2) the caesura in trimeter (11- and 12-syllable) lines. The behavior, with respect to these phenomena, of a variety of functional elements in the language of the Rigveda is investigated, leading to the conclusion that (1) and (2) provide critical evidence for the natural language prosody of that language. A sharp contrast is drawn with approaches that assume that the relevant processes reflect “poetic license” or arise <em>metri causa</em>.</p>","language":"eng","license":{"name":"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0","short_name":"CC BY 4.0","text":"Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.\n\nNo additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0"},"keywords":[{"word":"Vedic"},{"word":"rigveda"},{"word":"sandhi"},{"word":"caesura"},{"word":"trimeter"},{"word":"prosody"}],"section":"Paper","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/39t1r1c5","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Mark","middle_name":"","last_name":"Hale","name_suffix":"","institution":"Concordia University","department":"Classics, Modern Languages and Linguistics","country":"Canada"}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":"2025-11-19T09:36:00+06:00","date_published":"2026-03-06T03:07:00+06:00","render_galley":{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/weciec/article/63829/galley/49008/download/"},"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/weciec/article/63829/galley/49008/download/"}]}