--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "gdbedell" <gdbedell@...> wrote:

>
> > please help me with the following sentence from Exercise 8:?
> > di.t.thaa bho satta jiivasi.?
>

<snip>

> Its meaning is honorific. Thus di.t.thaa bho
> satta jiivasi 'how wonderful that you are alive, honorable

creature!' Two problems: (i) In

> English it sounds quite bizarre to address anyone as 'creature'

('being' is just as bad). (ii)

> The English sounds like the addressee was thought to be dead, but I

doubt the Pali has

> this connotation.

Context is everything! This snippet comes from D.III.73 (paragraph 21
of DN 26) and in context it is clear that the addressee was thought to
be dead, so it does indeed make sense to express surprise about being
alive.
I also agree that addressing someone as 'creature' or 'being'
generally sounds weird in English, but in this sutta the Buddha is
talking about non-human beings from a different aeon, and so when
these beings address each other, it seems appropriate in context.

> According to Warder, the Pali present participle differs in meaning

from the gerund in its

> implied tense with respect to the main verb. The participle implies

the tenses coincide

> while the gerund implies that its tense precedes that of the main

verb. The sentence in

> Exercises 8 'having dressed, taking a bowl I entered the village' is

given as nivaasetvaa

> patta.m aadaaya gaama.m paavisi.m. Presumably this speaker took the

bowl before she

> entered the village, so the gerund (aadaaya) is used rather than the

present participle. In

> English both forms use the suffix '-ing' (which is called both

present participle and

> gerund; they were distinct in earlier English). The tense of the

(participial or gerundive)

> clause may be specified as preceding the main verb by using 'have':

'taking a bowl' vs.

> 'having taken a bowl'. Warder uses the simpler 'taking a bowl' in

this example; see his

> observation under aadaaya on p. 48. English seems to be rather more

flexible than Pali on

> this point.

Thanks for the useful discussion on gerunds and participles, George.
English is indeed quite flexible on ways to express this. E.g., in
your example above 'nivaasetvaa patta.m aadaaya gaama.m paavisi.m',
this could even be expressed in English with a string of active verbs
connected by 'and'. Thus: 'I dressed, took my bowl and entered the
village.'

With metta,
John