Indian Influence on Early Arab Phonetics – or Coincidence?

Abstract

The borrowing of isolated details along with a foreign system is historically well attested, whereas the borrowing of a system without any of the details on which it rests is almost unknown. Yet this is precisely what is alleged in recent works on the question of Indian influence in Arab phonetics, by Wild. The sounds of Sanskrit are discussed in detail in the pratifakhyas, treatises on applied phonetics compiled during the first mulennium B.C. and designed to accompany one or another of the collections of Vedic hymns. The opposition between sthana and karana was supplemented in Indian phonetics by a series of binary oppositions between voiced and voiceless, aspirated and unaspirated, nasal and non-nasal, superimposed upon one another as the vertical axis of a grid defined horizontally by sthana. Whereas Sibawayhi incoiporates both fricatives and weak consonants into his articulatory system, in the Sanskrit alphabet fricatives and semivowels are treated as separate categories.