Re: The "Continuative Participle" mystery solved?

> I think in the above it's doubtful that the term 'pubbakiriyaa' is
> being defined as a term for the absolutive.

I agree.  I only spent a few minutes doing the same thing you're doing now
  --i.e., staring at its various appearances in the etexts of the grammatical
literature-- but none of them seemed to use it as the "proper noun" we were
hoping for.  You see, this is the type of problem that arises when guys like
A.K. Warder just throw a term into parenthesis without supplying any
citation or source.  It could be that there's some source unknown to us that
really does stipulate this as a correct usage --but how would we know?  It
seems to me likely (especially given the use of 'pubbakaale', etc., in the
Kaccayana, from which the other passages all seem to be derived) that it is
simply being used in a descriptive way --which probably isn't even specific
to the context.  The same word may be used to describe other past-tense
forms as well --and to confirm or deny this would be quite a lot of work.

> It appears rather to be
> descriptive, explicating the term 'pubbakaale' in the rule.

Yes, precisely.  What a let-down.  Warder!

> Perhaps pubbakaaloti is a mistake for pubbakaal_e_ti? (e/o switches
> being easy mistakes to make in the Sinhalese alphabet)...

No, I doubt it --it appears too many times, in too many different texts.  I
still have checked the Balavataro's usage --I'll do that next.

> Another question is whether the term shows up in grammatical contexts
> in the atthakathaa or .tiika literature.

Yes, that's always a question; but it isn't a question that we're likely to
answer --unless you've got an indexed copy of the massive Heviratane
Endowment editions (I certainly don't) and you want the exercise of taking
each volume down off the shelf, and then putting it back up again.  Quite a
work out!

E.M.

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