>
>
>Dear all,
>
>Since I have not gotten a response to the above question, I am wondering
>if the way I have asked the question makes it unclear? If it is
>unclear, please let me know and I will rephrase it.
>

Hi Alan,

The question's clear. I can't speak for others, but the reason I haven't answered is that I don't know the answer.

I _believe_ that if by 'from the grammar alone' you mean explicitly formulated grammatical rules, then you are free to interpret it as you please. Or rather, that you need to let the context decide.

However if you did a study of compounds as they actually occur in practice, you might find that certain theoretically possible patterns are uncommon or never occur at all. This might suggest that there are 'rules' (either linguistic or stylistic) that only function subconsciously. These would have been picked up by Pali authors through their Pali reading, or from their native prakrits, and then applied unreflectively.

But to discover those sorts of things requires looking at a very large body of material.

As I said, I'm not certain that this isn't explicitly mentioned in a grammatical work somewhere, just that I suspect it. My reason for that is that in much Indian literature, multiple interpretative possibilities are considered an advantage not a fault. This is exploited, for example, in kaavya (court poetry) literature.

best regards,

/Rett