Interesting suggestion you have made, about compounding, Frank.

1. Not only Pali, all languages started as spoken "languages".
2. There was no "compounding" then.
3. Reason for compounding was 'sukhocchaarana'. Ease of pronounciation or easy-speaking.
4. For ease of speech, words that are adjacent were joined--In most cases, the last letter of the first word and the first letter of the second word.
5. In this process of joining these letters underwent many changes.
6. Even new letters came into the word.
7. In Pali texts, written for example in Sinhala characters, only the 'compunded word' appears.
8. There are not even punctuation marks. In speech, punctuation marks are absent.

10. Paali, is now a language. Originally it was the Buddha-word. What was spoken by the Buddha.
11. Paali as a lnguage was a later creation by people who were influenced by Sanskrit grammars.

I hope the above information would be useful to you.
 D. G. D. C. Wijeratna




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]