Dear Yifer and friends,

thanks for the question. I am not a language expert, but I shall share
with you what I know. Please forgive you if I can answer all of your
questions. For instance, I have no idea what you mean by an "adverb
declinable". There can be instances where participles function
adverbially, but their main role is different from that of an adverb.

To start with, as with all languages, the mastery of Pali depends on
how familiar you are with the language, I call it a length and breath
test. By 'length', it means how much of contact and exposure you have.
The more exposure you have the better you will be. By 'breadth', it
means how many usages and styles you know. Again, the more the better.

Let us start with nouns. All nouns has a gender, and are declined
according to case and number. Unlike nouns, pronouns do not take any
gender, so they are declined according to gender, case and number. An
adjective describes a noun or pronoun, it can be put before any noun of
any gender. So, adjectives are declined according to gender, case and
number. In summary, nouns, pronouns and adjectives are declinable.
By 'declinable', we mean 'must be declined' for the sentence to make
any sense, not 'can be declined'.

Let's move on to verbs. Verbs are inflected according to a different
set of rules. We call the process conjugation. Verbs are conjugated
according to number, tense, mood and voice. Participles are auxiliary
verbs that can be used as adjectives. That is why participles are
declined according to gender, case and number, just as adjectives. Note
that in Pali, there is a type of Past Indeclinable Participles, e.g.
pacati > pacitvaa. An adverb qualifies a verb, and it makes sense that
they are indeclinable. In summary, verbs are conjugated, participles
(with one exception) are declined, and adverbs are indeclinable.

As for prepositions, they are generally indeclinable.

What I have written is a simple overview of Pali grammar. For greater
details, please refer to a good Pali grammar text. A great way to
become familiar with grammar is to work through a Pali text you are
comfortable with. Check this out:
http://www.tipitaka.net/pali/pali.php?course=lesson01

Hope that helps.

metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, yifertw wrote:

I found I know nothing about words classified as "indeclinable". Could
you help me out of it? How can I tell this word
is "indeclinable", "preposition", "participle" or sometimes so-
called "adverb declinable"? [...sip] Is "declinable" used
as "adjective", "adverb" or "preposition" ?