[palistudy] meta-language

Dear Robert,

Sorry, I can't think of a good book that would help to explain the terms. In
Warder and also in Buddhadatta there are two meta-languages to understand
ie. with English terms (based on Latin grammars) and Pali terms (based on
native Pali grammars). Learning Pali includes learning to understand the
systems used to describe the language. I intend to utilize both systems but
I'd like to put more emphasis on the Indian linguistic system as that has
been the one used by the medieval Pali grammarians and by the commentators
in the atthakathaa-s, etc. in word explanations. Instead of using terms like
nom. acc., etc. as in Latin, Pali uses the terms pathamaa, dutiyaa, etc.
(first case, second case, etc.) which I think is better because it avoids
some misunderstanding. When we speak of the 3rd case (instrumental) it
is not just used to express the instrument but it has many other
applications including expressing the agent. There's quite a bit of
overlapping of the cases and we even saw recently where a so-called
nominative case was used in the sense of the instrumental (mahaa ca
raajaanubhaavena). When I posted the declensional table (naamikapadamaalaa
in Pali 'garland of nominal words') for 'aya.m', they were in numbered rows
1, 2, etc. which referred to pathamaa, dutiyaa, etc. I thought that without
giving some kind of interpretation with nom. acc. etc. people might not
understand which cases the rows referred to. Without knowing the Pali
meta-language it might be hard to figure out.

Best wishes,
Jim

>I have a sad confession. One of the biggest problems I have is
>with the English meta-language used to describe the grammar in
>pali. In New Zealand we don't study latin and thus all the words
>such as  nominative, accusative,
>instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, locative are  like a
>foreign language in themselves( I understand verbs, modals nouns
>etc).  I recently ordered a grammar book that explains some of
>these terms but if you can recommend others I will order those.
>It is the hardest thing I found with studying Warder.
>robert



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