(i) Jim's note on "kiriya.m akkhaayati" raises some interesting issues.
He takes akkhaayati as an active form meaning 'tells about' and considers
why it looks like a passive. He doesn't consider what the relation might be
between the following pairs of forms.

khyaa khaa root 'tell'
aakhyaati akkhaati 3s present '(it) tells'
aakhyaata akkhata past participle 'told'

It appears to me that the forms on the right are in fact Sanskrit,
corresponding to Pali forms on the left. I haven't done an elaborate
search, but the fact that aakhyaati and aakhyaata are not listed in the PTS
dictionary suggests that they are not found in early Pali. Akkhaati and
akkhaata are listed (p.2) though no technical meaning for akkhaata is
given. The differences are simplification of khy to kh with gemination of
kh to kkh and concomitant shortening of the prefix aa. The borrowing
by Pali grammarians of the Sanskrit term aakhyaata 'finite verb' clearly
caused some confusion, and it isn't clear (from what has been translated
so far) how far Aggava.msa was aware of it.

(ii) Jim explains his parsing of "kiriya.m akkhaayati", but doesn't discuss
the remainder of the line: aakhyaata.m kiriyaapada.m. Judging from his
translation he takes them to be conjoined predicate nouns 'verb and word
for action'. It seems to me possible to construe them as a reduced clause
of which aakhyaata.m is the subject: 'a verb is an action word'. If that is
reasonable, the line might be translated as:

Aakhyaata means action word, because it 'tells about the action'.

(iii) If indeed Aggava.msa intends to define aakhyaata as 'action word', it
must be pointed out that he has given a bad definition. Because, like all
other languages we know of, Pali has many verbs which do not mean any
kind of action (e. g. bhavati). The alternative is to give a morphological
definition, something like Panini's sup-ti"nanta.m padam, 'a word is what
ends in sup (an acronym for the case/number suffixes) or ti"n (an acronym
for the person/number suffixes)'.

George Bedell

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "Jim Anderson" <jimanderson.on@...> wrote:
>
> [Saddaniiti XXV: aakhyaatakappo : introduction, p. 811,15-18]
>
> XXV.
>
> ito para.m pavakkhaami saddhamme buddhabhaasite
> kosallatthaaya sotuuna.m kappamaakhyaatasavhaya.m.
>
> From here on I will expound the Chapter, called the Verb,
> to listeners for the sake of proficiency in the True Dhamma,
> in the Buddha's speech.
>
> Note: alternatively, "spoken by the Buddha" instead of ".., in
> the Buddha's speech".
>
> tattha kiriya.m akkhaayatiiti aakhyaata.m kiriyaapada.m.
>
> Therein, it tells about the action, thus (it is) the verb, the word
> for the action.
>
> Notes:
> 1) "tattha" (therein) refers to the preceeding verse.
> 2) "kiriya.m akkhaayati" is understood here as an active sentence
> with 'kiriya.m' as the object (kamma) of the transitive verb
> 'akkhaayati'. The regular active form is 'akkhaati' (aa + khaa + a +
> ti) and the passive form is 'akkhaayati' (aa + khaa + a + ya + ti).
> Cone (DOP I 5f) gives 'akkhaayati' as both a passive and as an
> alternative form for 'akkhaati'. How then does one account for
> the -ya- in the active form? One solution could be to take -y- as an
> inserted letter (aagama) to prevent the following vikara.na -a- from
> disappearing but this seems unlikely. At Sadd II 326 both verbal roots
> /khaa/ and /khyaa/ are given together in the sense of pakathana
> (pakathana.m aacikkhana.m desana.m vaa). The form 'akkhaayati' is
> given there in the passive only. I think 'akkhaayati' can also be a
> causative (aa + khaa + ?a + .naya + ti) and perhaps the impersonal or
> stative has the same form too. It's an ambjguos verb.
> 3) "aakhyaata.m" -- the (finite) verb -- is an agent-noun in the
> neuter as far as I can tell. It can be resolved into the prefix 'aa' +
> the root /khyaa/ + the past participle suffix 'ta' + the vibhatti
> suffix 'si' for the nom. sing. Sd 1144 (Sadd III 850) explains the use
> of 'ta' to denote the agent as in 'buddho'. For other etymologies we
> have at Sadd II 326,23: "kiriya.m aakhyaati kathetiiti aakhyaata.m".
> And, at Ruup p. 257 (Be), there is "kriya.m aacikkhatiiti aakhyaata.m
> kriyaapada.m".
>
> Jim Anderson, 31 August 2009
>