Visarga, ardhavisarga and anusvara -- combining marks or not?

From: Shriramana Sharma (samjnaa@gmail.com)
Date: Fri Aug 21 2009 - 07:33:50 CDT

  • Next message: Shriramana Sharma: "On adding svara marks to digits for the Rig Veda"

    Hello list.

    The visarga, jihvamuliya and upadhmaniya are three different phones
    (sounds) in Sanskrit, BOTH Vedic and Classical. All three are voiceless
    fricatives - glottal, velar and bilabial, respectively. Often the latter
    two are analysed as being allophones of the first. In any case, the
    existence of all three as mutally distinct sounds in contemporary usage
    of both Vedic and Classical Sanskrit is beyond question. Thus these are
    sounds in their own right, and they are not like "anunasika" (nasality)
    which is not a sound in its own right but merely a quality of other sounds.

    In Indic scripts, the visarga is usually written by two dots, whose
    actual realization varies slightly from script to script.

    [The Tamil Aytha Ezhuttu (ஆய்த எழுத்து) has been named Visarga for purpose
    of Unicode encoding, but the term visarga is not native to Tamil's
    grammar or phonology unlike in the other Indian languages and its
    function is also distinct from that of the visarga in other Indian
    languages. So I will not talk about it here.]

    The "ardhavisarga" is a sign (not a sound) written by two cup-like
    curves, with one cup open upwards and the other open downwards. It is
    used in Sanskrit texts to denote the jihvamuliya and upadhmaniya. Though
    it has been labeled a "Vedic" character and placed in the "Vedic
    Extensions block", its usage is not limited to Vedic Sanskrit, though it
    is limited to Sanskrit. (The Kannada signs for jihvamuliya and
    upadhmaniya are also used only for Sanskrit and not native Kannada.)

    The ardhavisarga is able to denote both the above sounds unambiguously
    from context because the jihvamuliya occurs only before [k] or [kh] and
    the upadhmaniya occurs only before [p] or [ph]. Sanskrit Grammatical
    rules (8.3.37, see http://wikisource.org/wiki/Aṣṭādhyāyī_8) say that the
    visarga *may* become a jihvamuliya or upadhmaniya *or not*, so there is
    a potential contrast between the visarga and ardhavisarga signs and
    hence a need to separately encode visarga and ardhavisarga signs in Unicode.

    Now with this background information, let us proceed.

    To my mind, a combining mark is *usually* (though not always) something
    that qualifies what is represented by a base character. Thus, if अ
    represents a vowel, the anunasika sign added to it qualified it and says
    "this sound is nasal" -> अँ. When a character does not qualify the sound
    represented by a preceding character but indicates a separate sound, it
    should not be considered a combining mark.

    Therefore, since the visarga is a separate phoneme in its own right, and
    does not "qualify" the preceding vowel in any way, I do not believe the
    visarga sign can be classified as a combining mark, though it is encoded
    in all the Indic script blocks (including Sinhala!) as Mc.

    I suspect that the visarga is considered a combining mark only because
    of the long-standing Indian tradition of appending aṃ and aḥ to the list
    of vowels. I will not pass judgment on the appropriateness of such a
    tradition here. I only point out that this causes the visarga sign to be
    considered as a combining mark (just like the marks for the other
    vowels), and by analogy, the ardhavisarga has also been considered a
    combining mark and hence 1CF2 is given category Mc.

    Now it may be asked -- what is your problem with giving visarga or
    ardhavisarga the category of Mc? After all, you get the glyph position
    correctly, to the right of the base character, so why not label it Mc?

    My answer is in the attachment. In some Vedic texts, like in the Sama
    Vedic text shown in the attachment, the visarga is visibly displaced
    from the base character. I ask you to consider how the text in the
    attached image will be properly encoded with the current classification
    as Mc.

    This is NOT a problem with rendering systems. Recently it was remarked
    on this list that the problem with displaying cases like आँः or आ॑ः
    properly is with the renderer, not with the encoding. Though that remark
    may be accepted given the reasonable expectation that the renderer
    should support the addition of more than one combining marks to a single
    base character, it cannot be said so in the present case of the attached
    text:

    क्रयाहुताऽ२३४५ः

    How can the maker of a rendering engine be expected to foresee this need
    for a visarga to be placed after a *digit*? Normally combining marks are
    used only for letters, so renderers will support only that.

    Creators of rendering engines cannot be expected to be Vedic scholars.
    It is up to those who encode these characters to research properly the
    behaviour of these characters and set the Unicode properties of the
    characters such that all valid renderings should be made possible.

    Further, keeping the visarga as Mc and applying it to digits is
    semantically meaningless. If at all the visarga is to be considered a
    combining mark, as for example
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayalam_script#Other_symbols which says:
    "adds voiceless breath after vowel", it semantically attaches only to a
    vowel (whether independent, or inherent in a consonant or displayed by a
    vowel sign). How can it meaningfully be attached to a digit? This is
    another reason why the visarga should have been encoded as Lo.

    If the visarga (in Devanagari and all other Indic scripts) had been
    given the category Lo, nothing would be lost. OTOH there is a gain that
    first of all the semantics of the visarga sign (that it actually
    represents an independent sound) is preserved, and stupidities like
    making it a combining mark attaching to a digit are avoided. Rendering
    engine makers will also easily cause the glyph of an Lo character to be
    displayed without worrying about the previous character, so that the
    given Sama Vedic text can be displayed properly without difficulties.

    IMHO a character must be called a combining mark only if it can NEVER be
    used independently. Barring strong evidence to support the surmise that
    a given character can NEVER be used independently, like is the case of
    most diacritics for the Latin script, or the Vedic accent signs, a
    character should not blindly be encoded as Mc.

    When a character has been attested as non-spacing or it is spacing but
    is reordrant or enclosing, it automatically means that it cannot be used
    separately from its base character. But in the case of characters which
    are alleged to be spacing combining marks which are displayed in logical
    order, the authorities should make all possible efforts to ensure that
    it can never be separated from its base character before encoding it as Mc.

    If the only issue here is preventing linebreaks before the visarga,
    which is a valid need, I admit, I wish to point out as precedent point 3
    of N3383, where the disallowing of linebreak is specified even while
    labeling the symbols as Lo. The same can be done for the visarga.

    So I strongly encourage the Unicode authorities to consider, if
    possible, the changing of the visarga in the Indian scripts to Lo. If it
    is not allowed under the stability principles, at least attach another
    annotation to the visarga characters (at least in Devanagari) indicating
    that sometimes the visarga needs to be placed after digits, so rendering
    engine makers are advised of the need to allow for that.

    I also provide a sample of the same Sama vedic text shown in Grantha
    script which also shows the visarga coming after the digits.

    On similar bases, the sign for the ardhavisarga proposed to be encoded
    at 1CF2 should either receive a category change, if possible at this
    stage of its Unicode proposal, or an annotation for this purpose. If at
    all any jihvamuliya or upadhmaniya characters are proposed in the
    future, they must be encoded as Lo, and not Mc, with linebreak being
    prevented before them.

    Again on a similar argument, the anusvara sign which also indicates a
    separate phoneme in Sanskrit should also have been encoded as Lo and not
    Mc, except in the cases of Devanagari (and any other script) where it is
    non-spacing. See the sample provided from the Grantha script where the
    anusvara is spacing and it is placed after a digit. Other samples can be
    provided where it is placed after an avagraha too. So it should also be
    ideally Lo in such scripts having a spacing anusvara, and if that is not
    possible, annotations should be added for the purpose.

    Shriramana Sharma


    independent-visarga-devanagari.jpg
    independent-anusvara-grantha.jpg
    independent-visarga-grantha.jpg

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