The

pitch accent A pitch-accent language is a type of language that, when spoken, has certain syllables in words or morphemes that are prominent, as indicated by a distinct contrasting pitch (music), pitch (tone (linguistics), linguistic tone) rather than by vol ...

Vedic Sanskrit Vedic Sanskrit, also simply referred as the Vedic language, is the most ancient known precursor to Sanskrit, a language in the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan subgroup of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. It is atteste ...

, or Vedic accent (Vedic: स्वराः svarāḥ) for brevity, is traditionally divided by

Sanskrit grammar The grammar of the Sanskrit language has a complex verbal system, rich nominal declension, and extensive use of compound nouns. It was studied and codified by Sanskrit grammarians from the later Vedic period (roughly 8th century BCE), culminatin ...

ians into three qualities, ''udātta'' "raised" (

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin alphabet, Latin, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabet, Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accen ...

, high pitch), ''anudātta'' "not raised" (unstressed, or low pitch,

grave accent The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan and many other Western European languages as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other ...

) and ''svarita'' "sounded" (high falling pitch, corresponds to the Greek

circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from "bent around"a translation of ...

accent). It is most similar to the

pitch-accent A pitch-accent language is a type of language that, when spoken, has certain syllables in words or morphemes that are prominent, as indicated by a distinct contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by volume or length, as in some other l ...

system of modern-day

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

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 Proto-Indo-European accent refers to the theoretical accentual ( stress) system of the Proto-Indo-European language. Description Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is usually reconstructed as having a "pitch accent" system where one syllable of each of ...

, which means it was ''free'' and so not phonologically predictable from the shape of the word. Some words (

finite verb A finite verb is a verb that contextually complements a subject, which can be either explicit (like in the English indicative) or implicit (like in null subject languages or the English imperative). A finite transitive verb or a finite intra ...

s of

main clause In traditional grammar, an independent clause (or main clause) is a clause that can stand by itself as a ''simple sentence''. An independent clause contains a subject and a predicate and makes sense by itself. Independent clauses can be joined ...

vocatives In linguistics, a vocative or vocative expression is a phrase used to identify the addressee of an utterance. The underlined phrases in each of the following English sentences are examples of vocatives: , your table is ready. I'm afraid, , that ...

that do not occur sentence initially, and certain pronouns and particles) do not have an accented syllable, consisting entirely 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. The falling tone in the post-tonic syllable is called ''svarita'' ("sounded"). For example, in the first pada of the

Rigveda The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' (, , from wikt:ऋच्, ऋच्, "praise" and wikt:वेद, वेद, "knowledge") is an ancient Indian Miscellany, collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canoni ...

, the transliteration :' (classical: ) :"

Agni Agni ( ) is the Deva (Hinduism), Hindu god of fire. As the Guardians of the directions#Aṣṭa-Dikpāla ("Guardians of Eight Directions"), guardian deity of the southeast direction, he is typically found in southeast corners of Hindu temples. ...

I praise, the

high priest The term "high priest" usually refers either to an individual who holds the office of ruler-priest, or to one who is the head of a religious organisation. Ancient Egypt In ancient Egypt, a high priest was the chief priest of any of the many god ...

." 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, : ' (classical: ) is a finite verb and thus has no ''udātta'', but its first

syllable A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

is ''svarita'' because the previous syllable is ''udātta''.

Vedic meter Vedic metre refers to the poetic metre in the Vedic literature. The study of Vedic metre, along with post-Vedic metre, is part of Chandas, one of the six Vedanga disciplines. Overview In addition to these seven, there are fourteen less frequen ...

is independent of Vedic accent and exclusively determined by syllable weight, so that metrically, the pada reads as : (the second half-pada is iambic). When the

Vedas FIle:Atharva-Veda samhita page 471 illustration.png, upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the ''Atharvaveda''. The Vedas ( or ; ), sometimes collectively called the Veda, are a large body of relig ...

were composed, ''svarita'' was not phonologically relevant. However, linguistic changes in

oral The word oral may refer to: Relating to the mouth * Relating to the mouth, the first portion of the alimentary canal that primarily receives food and liquid **Oral administration of medicines ** Oral examination (also known as an oral exam or ora ...

transmission of the

samhita Samhita (IAST: ''Saṃhitā'') literally means "put together, joined, union", a "collection", and "a methodical, rule-based combination of text or verses".

before it was written down, mostly by the loss of syllabicity of high vowels when followed by a vowel, the 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 Sandhi ( ; , ) is any of a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on nearby sounds or the grammatical function o ...

of adjacent vowels. There are four variants of it: *' (= "

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