This workbook presents the phonological development from Proto-Indo-European to Sanskrit and the phonological processes within Sanskrit. The user experiences the evolution of the words step by step according to systematic rules. Learning Sanskrit historical phonology is easy with this book.
This book uses modern methods of adult education in the field of Sanskrit historical linguistics. It presents a variety of tasks, easy-to-understand exercises and work instructions as well as clear tables and precise descriptions of the development of the Sanskrit language. Step by step the user is introduced deeper into the complicated developments of the Sanskrit language. By applying the structures of language development over and over again the user learns the matter by doing it. The exercises, in which Sanskrit word are deduced from their Indo-European pre-forms, are structured as puzzles that must be solved. The single-step method allows the user to analyze each derivation step exactly as a number always refers to an index of all the Sanskrit sound laws which can be found at the end of the book.
In each teaching unit the left page contains the explanations and descriptions of Sanskrit sound laws and the right page offers exercises to train the learning matter. Sound laws, which are explained in other units, are additionally given on the exercise pages. Answers to all the exercises are included in the book. The comprehensive index includes all Sanskrit sound laws and is referred to in every step of a phonological derivation as well as in all the explanations. The index can be used for reference as well.
The structure of the book is intentionally identical to the books "Latin Historical Phonology Workbook" and “Greek – Historical Phonology Workbook” which are also published in the Reichert Verlag. In this way, not only the parallelism of many developments can be compared with each other at first glance but the user can start working with the book directly without having to deal with any new types of tasks.
The book is suitable for use in university courses but can easily be used for self-study as well based on the existing solutions in the book. The language is plain, intelligible and presents complex developments in a simple way so that non-specialists can work with the book. Previous knowledge of Sanskrit is not needed.
Malte Liesner (*1979) works as a German teacher in educational institutions. He studied Indo-European languages, Indology and Computational Linguistics at the Universities of Cologne and Würzburg in Germany.
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