Hi Alan,

You're pushing me to the limits of what I have a grasp of, so the following is a bit speculative and tentative. I could probably give you a better answer after a few hours of studying and looking up stuff in books, so if/when I get more definitive answers I'll get back to you with it. Until then I'm very happy for corrections.

>
>Would it then be possible to analyze this compound as accusative,
>locative, or genitive?

I believe it happens quite often that one could provide several possible explanations for compunds. The key is that it's an oblique case relation, and this is what makes it a tappurisa. Not surprisingly, as the Middle Indian dialects developed, the variety of oblique cases tended to collapse into a single catch-all oblique ending.

Coulson mentions this with regards to door-stop, it could be dative 'a stop for doors', accusative 'it stops doors' or genitive 'a door's stop'. It's a bit academic. Part of the trouble is to what degree you read the verbal idea 'stopping' into the noun 'a stop' This 'stop' could just as well have an entirely different name, a 'gibligghi'. It would refer to exactly the same physical object, that little rubber-tipped doohicky you screw into the wall, but you'd never think of the idea of 'stopping' because of the form of the word. Does the analysis of the compound therefore change, when the noun lacks verb associations that would provide 'slots' into which you could insert various kaaraka relationships?

Take sky-flower. Is it a flower _in_ the sky, or a flower _of_ the sky or in some narrative contexts a flower _from_ the sky? I'm really inclined to just analyze it as a flower _pertaining to_ the sky and call it a genitive relationship or general oblique relation between nouns. Then you leave the exact reading up to the reader. The only time I'd get more specific is when the second member clearly expresses a verbal action (as in a participle). Sariputta-bhaasita, spoken _by_ sariputta, tp3, kaaraka relationship of agency; dukkha-virujjhamaana, destroying suffering tp2, kaaraka relationship of object or patient.

So my preference would be to treat compounded nominal items as freestanding nouns without verbal connotations, unless they are participles. In practice this means preferring tp6 (genitive) readings. But there really isn't a hard and fast line here in Pali/Sanskrit, since nouns are so often derived from verbal roots though various procedures such as adding suffixes. Even that, though, is at times artifical, and grammarians have adduced such 'derivations' to so-called desa-words that almost certainly were borrowed into Sanskrit/Pali from indigenous languages, and have no etymological relationship to Indo-aryan roots at all.

>
>
>Speaking of the accusative case relation in compounds, if I understand
>things correctly, then accusative is used when someone is being spoken
>"to" rather than dative. In this case, would a compound such as
>"sariputtasutta.m" meaning "The discourse to Sariputta" be considered to
>have an accusative case relation then?

As I've said, I'd rather see the verbal action explicitly expressed within the compound (for instance in participal form) before I'd want to analyse according to kaaraka relationships such as object. (An example would be sariputta-bhaasita-sutta.m, though the most natural reading of that would be sariputtena bhaasita.m sutta.m) Nirodha, in your previous question, could at least be associated with the root rudh, but sutta in the sense of 'discourse' doesn't convey the idea of telling or speaking in any way. (unless you read it as sa + ukta, well-spoken, but even there the point is that it's a well-spoken piece of text, and it doesn't have a 'slot' for a direct object). In any case this isn't a hard and fast rule, so maybe you could read it like that.

What I'd recommend in cases like this is writing Pali analyses of the compounds in commentarial style, like I tried in my last post to you. If you can contrive a plausible one using a particular case relationship, then it will support that reading.

There are a lot of detailed rules of case syntax for various verbs and situations which I don't know by heart. This is another case where Sanskrit teaching materials could help, such as Speijer's Sanskrit Syntax, or Kale's Higher Sanskrit Grammar (based on Panini) but both use Devanagari script.

best regards,

/Rett