Dear Rett and friends,

thanks for bringing this up. The English does make sense, and is
grammatically correct. So, "The farmers do not dwell in the villages
everyday." can be the meaning of the Pali. But, as you said, the Pali
can mean something else. In the first place, I doubt the author would
expect an answer that is more complex than what the book has covered
up to this point. But again, the author himself may have made a
syntax error here.

However, I am thinking, to retain the meaning of "The farmers do not
dwell in the villages everyday.", and put 'na' to the front, the
English will become "The farmers dwell in the villages but not
everyday", and the Pali may become "Kassakaa na ca sabbadaa gaamesu
vasanti.".

The Pali you have given "Kassakaa na sabbadaa gaamesu vasanti." may
mean the same as the original sentence, since for this case the
meaning does not seem to be obscured by the placement of 'na'.
Furthermore, I am thinking, whether "na sabbadaa" would appears as a
compound rather than two separate words.

Similarly, I would appreciate if other members can offer their
insight to this matter.


metta,
Yong Peng

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, rett wrote:
This is another one where I wonder if word order might be
significant. Any help/input on this would be appreciated.

>9. Kassakaa sabbadaa gaamesu na vasanti.
> farmers / everyday / in villages / do not dwell
> The farmers do not dwell in the villages everyday.

I might have chosen the word order:

Kassakaa na sabbadaa gaamesu vasanti.

Basically I want the negative particle 'na' to be adjacent to
'sabbadaa', to make it clear that they don't always dwell in the
villages (but sometimes do). The original quoted above sounds to me
like it says 'The farmers always do not dwell in the villages' i.e.
that they never dwell in the villages. But this is just an impression
and I have no evidence to back it up. Comments?