Dear Ong Yong Peng and Nina,

Thanks. Regarding ca: All dictionary meanings of a word are not applicable
in each and every instance, obviously. We must use the context to decide
which meanng is applicable.
The meaning of ca that's applicable here is the conjunctival meaning (i.e.
'and').
Happy Vesak to you and all others.

Mahinda

On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 3:38 AM, Ong Yong Peng <palismith@...> wrote:

>
>
> Dear Mahinda,
>
> thank you. This is a valuable lesson in Pali! Yes, I do now remember
> [dative]...[atthi] = has.
>
> I thought English being an IndoEuropean language may have/had similar
> syntax. I did a quick research, and sure it did.
>
> I quote from the Online Etymology Dictionary on the entry 'have':
>
> <OED> Sense of "possess, have at one's disposal" (I have a book) is a shift
> from older languages, where the thing possessed was made the subject and the
> possessor took the dative case (e.g. L. est mihi liber "I have a book," lit.
> "there is to me a book"). <OED>
>
> http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=have
>
> So, in our sentence, 'rakkhitar' is the subject, and the possessor took the
> dative case 'assa'.
>
> Can you also help Nina with her question on ca. Thanks.
>
>
> metta,
> Yong Peng.
>
> --- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, mahipal6 wrote:
>
> Now it is quite OK. As for the peculiar syntactical features you mention,
> it seems to me that using datives where English uses nominatives (/There is
> to me/ as against / I have/) -- this is a feature we find in Sanskrit, Pali,
> Sinhala and Tamil, and most probably in all South Asian languages.
>
> > Rendering this in more proper English structure, and including the
> emphatic particles, nanu, eva and naama:
>
> > "But surely for him, there is indeed no protector whosoever among mother,
> father, brother and others so, who (or what) protects him?"
>
>
>


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