Dear Nina, Yong Peng

Thanks a lot for your appreciative responses. I have some comments.

Nina wrote:

>This is very interesting. Such a short sentence with a great deal of grammar.
>
>

Yes, Nina. And a long and complex sentence won't necessarily be more
complicated than this short one. It would also be analyzed into several
pairs of words mutually related, and if each word-to-word relationship
makes sense grammatically and contextually, the content of the whole
sentence would be easily understood.

What I wish to point out here is the different approach used in the
Burmese tradition of Pali study. Given a Pali text more or less
homogenous in the level of difficulty, the first paragraph or page is
the most difficult for a typical Burmese student. You see, all concepts
of RG might be exhausted before a paragraph is finished.

If you can understand a paragraph with a teacher's help, you are
expected to deal with the rest on your own. The teacher would tend to
give only occasional corrections and explanations.

Yong Peng wrote:

>But, please help me once again if the following is better than the one I posted earlier:
>
>Ajja etena maggena mayaa gantabba.m.
>today / by this / by road / by me / should be gone
>I should be gone by this path today. (paraphrased)
>

Before giving my opinion, I need to digress. I should remind you that I
have said Absolute voice is also possible with gantabba.m. You have
already seen the format of Absolute voice in RG. What matters here is
the actual usage.

When do we use Active voice, and when do we use Passive voice? If we
wish to emphasize on the agent of the verb, we use Active voice. On the
contrary, if we wish to emphasize on the object, we use Passive voice.
(This is correct for Pali and I think it is the same for English; please
correct me if not)

We use Absolute voice when we wish to emphasize neither on the subject
nor on the object but on the verb itself.

With Absolute voice, the object, if there is one, would be inactive. So:

Raajagaha.m ---> gantabba.m (IOV - See the Inactive Object - Verb
relation in RG - 7)

Other relationships would remain the same. Then the literal translation
would be:
"(Raajagaha) should be gone (to) by this road by me" (You see, I still
have to use Passive voice because English has no Absolute Voice)

The new translation of yours represents Absolute voice better, for no
particular destination is mentioned nor cared for. With Passive voice,
on the contrary, the destination must be expressed, or understood and
given in translation.

with metta

Ven. Pandita