George wrote:

> (i) Jim's note on "kiriya.m akkhaayati" raises some interesting

issues.

> He takes akkhaayati as an active form meaning 'tells about' and

considers

> why it looks like a passive. He doesn't consider what the relation

might be

> between the following pairs of forms.
>
> khyaa khaa root 'tell'
> aakhyaati akkhaati 3s present '(it) tells'
> aakhyaata akkhata past participle 'told'
>
> It appears to me that the forms on the right are in fact Sanskrit,
> corresponding to Pali forms on the left. I haven't done an

elaborate

> search, but the fact that aakhyaati and aakhyaata are not listed in

the PTS

> dictionary suggests that they are not found in early Pali. Akkhaati

and

> akkhaata are listed (p.2) though no technical meaning for akkhaata

is

> given. The differences are simplification of khy to kh with

gemination of

> kh to kkh and concomitant shortening of the prefix aa. The

borrowing

> by Pali grammarians of the Sanskrit term aakhyaata 'finite verb'

clearly

> caused some confusion, and it isn't clear (from what has been

translated

> so far) how far Aggava.msa was aware of it.

You will find 'aakhyaati' and 'aakhyaata' both listed at DOP I 280
(Cone). The Pali grammarians take 'khaa' and 'khyaa' as two separate
roots but give them both as a pair under one meaning (pakathane or
kathane). It is not uncommon for Pali and Sanskrit to have identical
forms. 'aakhyaati' is a Pali as well as a Sanskrit verb. 'aakhyaata'
can be found in the Tipitaka in 'svaakhyaata' (su + aakhyaata --
well-proclaimed) along with the other form 'svaakkhaata'. I think it
would be hard to determine with certainty which is the older one.

> (ii) Jim explains his parsing of "kiriya.m akkhaayati", but doesn't

discuss

> the remainder of the line: aakhyaata.m kiriyaapada.m. Judging from

his

> translation he takes them to be conjoined predicate nouns 'verb and

word

> for action'. It seems to me possible to construe them as a reduced

clause

> of which aakhyaata.m is the subject: 'a verb is an action word'. If

that is

> reasonable, the line might be translated as:
>
> Aakhyaata means action word, because it 'tells about the action'.

That is certainly a possible alternative. I was reading
'kiriyaapada.m' as a gloss or synonym for 'aakhyaata.m' and thought of
'aakhyaatapada.m' and 'aakhyaatikapada.m'. I wonder if kiriyaapada.m
might be a more general term that could include participles,
infinitives, absolutives. and action-nouns. Cone on p. 690 gives the
meanings: a verbal form, a verb.

> (iii) If indeed Aggava.msa intends to define aakhyaata as 'action

word', it

> must be pointed out that he has given a bad definition. Because,

like all

> other languages we know of, Pali has many verbs which do not mean

any

> kind of action (e. g. bhavati). The alternative is to give a

morphological

> definition, something like Panini's sup-ti"nanta.m padam, 'a word is

what

> ends in sup (an acronym for the case/number suffixes) or ti"n (an

acronym

> for the person/number suffixes)'.

Would 'activity' be a better translation for 'kiriyaa'? I think
'kiriyaa' includes the meaning of 'bhaava' (state).

Best wishes,
Jim