Dear John;

John said: "I had a quiet chuckle when I read in your recent email
below: "He's [i.e., referring to me!] probably memorized all these
grammatical tables but maybe he could provide a mental transcript of
what tables he would use if he had to."

I guess the Tipitakadhara Sayadaws of Burma must learn all the rules:
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/buddhism/tpdkdhra.htm
<http://web.ukonline.co.uk/buddhism/tpdkdhra.htm>

I quoted you on gambling:
http://www.readbangkokpost.com/business/social_policy/legalised_gambling\
_in_thailand.php
<http://www.readbangkokpost.com/business/social_policy/legalised_gamblin\
g_in_thailand.php>

Although Lisp would probably be a more elegant choice to do string
concatenations to generate Pali, I'm starting with Perl because I've
done a lot of programming with it.

I have some questions, if you don't mind:

1. Are compounds never included as words in dictionaries? Even the more
high frequency word-like compounds like "tappurisa" (name of compound) ?

2. Do grammar rules in grammars like Aggava.msa's Saddaniiti or the
Kaccaayana or Moggallaana's grammar have unique identifying numbers that
can be cited when the rule is invoked?

3. What are the names of the letters of the Pali alphabet? (the words
you use when you spell out a word verbally for a person?)

4. Is there a list of the verb roots in Pali.
In Sanskrit I read there are about 2000.
The rest of the verbs derived by prefixing and suffixing.

Makes my head spin when I start to read a comprehensive grammar like
Steven Collins grammar. Hopefully, a simple computer program will help
make the operation of the rules more transparent.

With metta;
Jon Fernquest




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