Pali grammatical terms & abbreviations

Re:
> My "p.p.a" should be ppr. (PED).  Cone abbreviates: part.pr.

I've noticed a few recent interchanges in which the abbreviations for
grammatical terms cause confusion.

Actually, the full names for grammatical terms cause their share of
confusion as well.

My question is: couldn't we all (provisionally) standardize usage by (1)
relying on the actual Pali grammatical terms, and (2) abbreviating the Pali
term, rather than the English?

This would probably be beneficial for those whose first language isn't
English.

It will be at once complained that the Pali terms themselves are
problematic, inconsistent between authors, etc. (Malalasekhera has a table
comparing the terminology of the commentaries to that of Kaccayana); but,
howeverso provisionally or arbitrarily, we should surely try to adopt one
set of terms or another (or an agreed-upon mix from a few sources) instead
of English grammatical terms --which are derived from Greek and Latin
grammars in the first place.

I'm still wondering what the Pali term for "Continuative Participle" is; and
I don't know if I'd recognise it in Kaccayana if I saw it.  There may be no
such term; likewise, I have never found a term other than an ordinal number
for the imperative.

The terms set down by Bodhi (based on Nyanamoli's manuscript) in his
_Glossary of Pali Technical Terms_ is not without errors or omissions, but
it is a good starting point --and I had to lean upon that little book a
great deal while trying to sort out the terms for my present work on
Kaccayana.

Would it be too technical or exasperating to begin discussing a full list of
such terms and proposals for Pali-based abbreviations?

Of course, ideally, these abbreviated forms should also be in the Ashokan
script, rather than Roman text, so that they are truly "international".  But
I do not think this Ashokan Brahmi font would carry so well over the Yahoo
e-mail server.  While it is true that "almost no-one" reads Pali in Ashokan,
one could quickly learn to recognise a grammatical abbreviation in that
script (were a dictionary printed this way) just as one learns to recognise
symbols that have no language at all.

I dare say I would think more highly of the PTS had they resolved to print
in Ashokan text only, rather than Roman, on the basis of the same arguments
they put forth against using either Burmese or Sinhala.

E.M.


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