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The pitch accent of Vedic Sanskrit, or Vedic accent for brevity, is traditionally divided by Sanskrit grammarians into three qualities, ''udātta'' "raised" (acute accent, high pitch), ''anudātta'' "not raised" (grave accent, low pitch) and ''svarita'' "sounded" (circumflex, high falling pitch). ==The accents== In Vedic Sanskrit, most of the words have one accented syllable which is traditionally called ''udātta'' ("raised") and written with an acute mark in the transcription. The position of that accent in inherited words generally reflects the position of Proto-Indo-European accent, which means it was ''free''; i.e. not phonologically predictable from the shape of the word. Some words (finite verbs of main clauses, vocatives that do not occur sentence-initially, certain pronouns and particles) do not have an accented syllable, and only consist of unaccented syllables. Unaccented syllables are called ''anudātta'' ("not raised") and are not marked in the transcription. Phonetically, accented Rigvedic syllable was characterized by height (rather than prominence) as a "high tone", immediately falling in the next syllable. This falling tone in the post-tonic syllable is called ''svarita'' ("sounded"). For example, in the first pada of the Rigveda, the transliteration :' :"Agni I praise, the high priest." means that the eight syllables have an intonation of :A-U-S-A-A-U-S-A (where A=anudātta, U=udātta, S=svarita), or iconically, :_¯\__¯\_ ' is a finite verb and thus has no ''udātta'', but its first syllable is ''svarita'' because the previous syllable is ''udātta''. Vedic meter is independent of Vedic accent and exclusively determined by syllable weight, so that metrically, the pada reads as :-.--.-.x (viz., the second half-pada is iambic). In the period when Vedas were composed, ''svarita'' was not phonologically relevant. However, due to linguistic changes in oral transmission of the samhita before it was written down, mostly due to the loss of syllabicity of high vowels when followed by a vowel, this tone has become relevant and is called an ''independent svarita''. In transcription it is written as a grave mark . Such ''svarita'' may follow an ''anudātta''. For example in RV 1.10.8c, :' :U-S-U-S-A-A-A-U :¯\¯\___¯ became :' :U-S-S-A-A-A-U :¯\\___¯ Independent svarita is caused by sandhi of adjacent vowels. There are four variants of it:- *' (= "innate") (due to changes within a word, as in ' for ', as in the example above (''u'' becomes ''v'' before a vowel) *' (= "caused by quickness") (''u'' becoming ''v'' or ''i'' becoming ''y'' where two words meet, as in ' for ') (''i'' becomes ''y'' before a vowel) *' (= "coalescence") (vowel contraction where two words meet, as in ' for ') *' (= "close contact") (prodelision with avagraha where two words meet, as in ' for '). Independent svarita occurs about 1300 times in the Rigveda, or in about 5% of padas. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Vedic accent」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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