Dear Rett,
Thanks for the informative response. I'm still a little fuzzy on the
concept of the adverbial function of the ablative having no
pertinence to subject or object, only to the verb.

However, as you pointed out, the whole business may have to await my
delving into canonical examples. Once I'm done with de Silva I'm
planning on working with Karunakillake's "New Pali Reader", which is
all canon-based. Hopefully that will de-fuzz my understanding.

Thanks again for your help, and please don't worry about tone. Crisp
is good. The fact that you're volunteering help tells me you're
friendly.

Best Regards,
-Brian J

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, rett <rett@...> wrote:
> I'd just like to add that my curt tone is just because I'm
answering
> a pile of e-mails, not that I wish to be unfriendly. (I just
noticed
> it could look like that, when I saw it pop up in my mailbox).
Thanks
> for the interesting questions. I suspect that de Silva's book can
> include some dodgy syntax, since there are a lot of sentences made
up
> from scratch which aren't based on real specimens (from the canon).