Dear Nina and friends,

thanks. Taking it just one step further: the Pali gerunds can also be
used to express an action preceing the action of the main verb of a
clause in a sentence.

metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Nina van Gorkom wrote:

thank you for the info, it is clear.

> In Pali, verbs taking the endings -tvaa are called gerund or
indeclinable past participles. But, they are really neither gerunds nor
participles in the English sense. I am not sure if Absolutive is a
better name. But, these verbs are used to express an action preceding
the action of the main verb of a sentence.