Re: Pali grammatical terms & abbreviations

Eisel,

Thanks for your suggested proposals but I have a feeling that most of
us here will find most of them just not suitable for our purposes
here. Sorry, if you're disappointed.

> 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?

1) We will often be coming across Pali grammatical terms during the
course of our study and having discussions about them. I think it is
wiser to still keep referring to and using their English counterparts.
2) It would be difficult to find an agreed-upon standard for
abbreviations of Pali grammatical terms and besides is there really a
need for one at this present time? We could just write the words out
in full and if it's a long one and used a lot in a message one could
just make up a temporary abbr. for the occasion.

> 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.

I suppose the "continuative participle" is another way of saying the
"present participle"? I haven't seen any Pali term for this either. I
think the ordinal terms for the imperative and the optative are very
old Indian terms predating Panini.

> 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.

I believe that glossary is available online at tipitaka.net.

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

Yes, I think so--for now anyway. I'm interested in a full list of
these grammatical terms and it would be good to have a dictionary of
such terms with good explanations. But this would be quite a big
project for anyone to take up. Not too long ago Rett and I were
discussing the term 'li"nga' and a few other related ones. In my ad
hoc research, I found the term got even more difficult to understand
and there seemed like there was no end to its study.

I don't think it would be very practical to have the abbreviations in
the Ashokan or Brahmi script. I don't know of any Pali book printed in
that script. Do you? I doubt PTS would be interested in printing any
of their books in anything other than the Roman script. For most
people who know only one script, learning and getting used to a new
one can take a long time.

Best wishes,
Jim