74: lectures

overview of flat and bentmmmmmmmmm ^ M- C+ 1507

The affixes that replace tenses can mean the doer or not.

When they do not mean the doer, they are always bent, by bhAva;karmaNoH.

When they mean the doer, it depends on the root --

There are flatty roots like car, whose kartari endings are always flat --

carati "moves"

and bendy roots like plu, that take only bent endings --

plavate "jumps"

and flattybendy roots like yudh, that may take both with no change of meaning --

yudhyati "fights"

yudhyate "fights"

and there are a lot of grammar rules that explain which roots are flatty, which are bendy, and which are flattybendy.

Or, at least, that is what the grammar rules say. Please be warned that lots of authors in the last three thousand years either never heard of those rules, or unapologetically ignored them. So, don't panic when you find a plavati or a carate written somewhere. This happens quite a lot in the epics, often metri causa --

tiSThate hi suhRd yatra na bandhus tatra tiSThati "where there's a friend (in need) there's (often) no friend (nearby)"

Here the tiSThate, with bent ta, sux, and has the exact same meaning as the tiSThati, with flat tip. But don't fix it, because doing so will screw up the verse rythm.

rules that should be studied firstmmmmmmmmm ^ M- C- 1508

Usually, language tutorials assume that the reader will study the book starting at lesson 1, then do the exercises, then go on to lesson 2. Lesson 2 is written in such a way that to understand it you need to have studied lesson 1, but you don't need to know anything in lessons 3, 4 etc.

We are used to that plan because most textbooks teaching anything follow it.

The pANini grammar does not follow that plan at all. It is a tangled ball of string. The rules appear to be in a random order. They are divided in 32 chapters numbered 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 3.1... until 8.4, but they don't follow a teaching order -- to understand any rule you need to know other rules, and any rule in lesson 1.1 can be subject to exceptions that are not taught until 6.3. Also there are no exercises and no examples. Quoting one of my students -- this is a minefield.

pANini's grammar does not follow the traditional tutorial order because is not a tutorial. Students are not supposed to have it in a book and study it by themselves. In fact the students aren't even supposed to have notebooks and the teacher does not have a blackboard. The grammar is not a guide for students, but a guide for teachers, organized so that all teachers can eventually commit all of it to memory and, this way, all teachers will know exactly what to teach.

But the work itself does not say which parts have to be taught first. Every teacher decides that.

Tradition tells us that the first thing the students have to do is learning to chant the zivasUtra from memory. After that they are taught the Adirantyena rule -- "if the zivasUtra have ha ya va raT laN, then the word yaN means the letters y v r l" so that they know that the zivasUtra is used to make names of groups of letters. After this, they are shown rule adeGguNaH "the letters a e o are called guNa letters" and they learn that ad means a (by rule tapara) and eG means e o (by rule Adirantyena). After this, every teacher can teach rules in any order they wish.

Many teachers did not even try to teach any rules until they were teaching something where the rule was useful. For instance, suppose the teacher was helping the students to learn the bhg. When getting to verse 30 of chapter 1, to the words zaknomy avasthAtum, the teacher might say that i of zaknomi changed into y before a, and that every i and I change into y whenever rule ikoyaNaci says so. That would be a good moment to explain what rule ikoyaNaci means. A bit later, when getting to bhramatIva in the same verse, the teacher will explain that i plus i makes I, and also might want to explain that in this case rule ikoyaNaci does not work, because its exception akassa does. This also might be a good moment to teach what the word apavAda "exception" means.

So, if you are just curious about the grammar, and don't have a teacher to feed you drops of it in appropriate moments, where should you start?

My advice --

start with the zivasUtra

learn about the uses of cases in rules

then do some examples of GyApprA

then do some examples of kartarizap with zapclass roots.

choose- tiG rulesmmmmmmmmm ^ C- 1509

Rule lasya says that every tense affix, after we add it after a root, must be replaced with one of the eighteen tiG affixes. How do we know which affix to choose? There are many rules teaching which one.

The most important rule is laHkarmaNi. This says, among other things, that we may choose an affix that has the same number and person as the doer of the root. For instance, if we want to say that the hens cross, or crossed, or will cross the road, then the doer of the root tRR "cross" will be the hens, and those are third person and plural. So, whatever tense we add aftertRR, we will have to replace it with a tiG that is third person and plural.

(We know that we must use a plural affix because rule bahuSubahu teaches so, and we need a third person affix because rule zeSeprathamaH says so.)

Now, rule tiGastrINi teaches that six of the tiG affixes are third person, namely tiptasjhi and tAtAJjha.

Then, rule tAnyeka tells us that the third affix of each group of three is plural. So only the affixes jhi and jha are third person and plural.

Of those two, jhi is flat and jha is bent. We will use jhi unless some rule says that we must or may use the bent.

So the verb we need will be made by replacing any tense with jhi. For instance, to mean present time, we add laT to the root, then replace laT with jhi --

tRR + laT →lasya tRR + jhi → tRR + zap + jhi →hardsoft tar + a + jhi →jhontaH tara + anti''' →atoguNe taranti "they cross"

To express past time, we may use laG or other tenses. when we add laG and replace it with jhi we get --

tRR + laG →lasya tRR + jhi → tRR + zap + jhi →hardsoft tar + a + jhi →luGlaG atara + jhi → atara + anti''' →itazca atara + ant''' →atoguNe atarant →saMyogAnta ataran "they crossed"

wordfinal sandhi rulesmmmmmmmmm ^ 1513

TURTLE TURTLE TURTLE

... very lame, needs total rewrite

The wordfinal sandhi rules are the rules that affect the last letter of a word when it is before pause, or in saMhitA before another word.

Let me show some examples of the effects of these rules.

(A) when a word ends in i or I, and the next starts with any other vowel, the i or I turns into y.

admi + odanam → admyodanam "I'm eating boiled rice"

(B) when a word ends in i or I, and the next starts with i or I, both letters are replaced with one I.

dadhi + icchati → dadhIcchati "wants curds"

atra + punar + @pause → atrapunaH "here again"

punar + atra + @pause → punaratra "here again"

There are one or two hundred such rules. Please DO NOT PANIC. You do not have to study them or memorize them before you get used to do what they say. And you don't have to do that afterwards either.

QRAQRAQRA

TURTLE TURTLE TURTLE

...

QRA QRA QRA

Different kinds of nothing.mmmmmmmmm ^ M+ C+ 1514

The pANini rules never say "delete" or "erase". Instead of "delete a", they say "replace a with nothing". An example is rule atolopaH. The first word atas means "replace short a", the second word lopas means "with nothing".

There are different kinds of nothing --

(1) Replacing something with lopa deletes one letter. When rule saMyogAnta commands "replace piturs with lopa", piturs turns into pitur.

(2) luk is a more destructive sort of nothing. When SaDbhyoluk teaches "replace zas with luk", that turns the whole zas into nothingness. So paJca- + zas turns into paJca "five".

Not only that. If adding an affix made changes to its stem, replacing that affix with luk will roll back those changes.

(3) replacing an affix with lup has the same effects that luk has, and it also rolls back the changes that the original affix made to the gender and number of its stem.

(4) zlu is a sort of nothing that, when added after a root, makes the root reduplicate (see zlau).

chunk 74: lectures

overview of flat and bentmmmmmmmmm ^ M- C+ 1507

rules that should be studied firstmmmmmmmmm ^ M- C- 1508

choose- tiG rulesmmmmmmmmm ^ C- 1509

change- tiG rulesmmmmmmmmm ^ 1510

choose- sup rulesmmmmmmmmm ^ 1511

change- sup rulesmmmmmmmmm ^ 1512

wordfinal sandhi rulesmmmmmmmmm ^ 1513

Different kinds of nothing.mmmmmmmmm ^ M+ C+ 1514

chunk 74: lectures