Hellp all. I am using Narada Thera's book to learn Pali. Since I am
studying alone and the explanations/examples are rather terse (and
there don't seem to be as many answers in the back of the book as I
would like) I hope that those you know more about the Pali grammar
may help me when I get stuck. I've only gotten through Lesson V, so
I'm just starting out with this.
My first question is simply about word order. How important is it?
I know that in German (which also uses noun cases), except for the
placement of the verb, word order can almost seem random. So far I
have been pretty consistent in using a subject - direct object -
indirect object - action verb order. But what about the other noun
cases and the indeclinables like here, now, everyday, etc? Do they
have set places?
Another question I have is about possession. The examples listed on
page 12 use the gentive + nominative to indicate possession -
ex. 'matulassa aramo'. Following the example, I constructed the
sentence 'Mayam matulassa asso aruhama.' The answer to exercise 3B,
however, uses gentive + accusative ('Mayam matulassa assam
aruhama'). Does this mean that the case is dependent on the object's
function in the sentence? (The examples given are just phrases so I
can only assume that they refer to the subject of the sentence.)
Sorry to not always use the names of the cases... it really does akes
more sense to me to learn the cases by their functions first and then
go back and pick up the lables.... I haven't assimilated them all
yet!