User talk:Pulimaiyi

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Pali āhacca

What is your objection to showing the structure of āhacca as being composed of the Pali root har (soon to appear) plus the suffix cca?. (The suffix is listed as 'tya' in Duroiselle's Practical Grammar of the Pali Language.) --RichardW57 (talk) 15:17, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

@RichardW57: The analysis har +‎ -cca is considered valid if 1) -cca is a productive suffix occuring in cases where the word is fully synchronic and non-inherited; and 2) har + -cca can convincingly give hacca in any other synchronic non-inherited formations. If you have such examples, please bring them. Svārtava (tɕ) 17:45, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

@RichardW57: Exactly what @Svartava: said. Deriving hacca from हृत्य (hṛtya)/हत्य (hatya) makes a lot more sense than claiming it was synchronically coined from har + "-cca". -- 𝘗𝘶𝘭𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘺𝘪^{(𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬)} 02:30, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

@Svartava The solution to that is to use |se=1 with {{pi-root}}, which is much easier for uses of suffixes that were falling out of use but were interpretable. I've put that in the page, after the assertion of inheritance from presumably Vedic Sanskrit, so the reader sees the connection with Sanskrit and then can see how one goes about interpreting it as other than a suppletive memory item. --RichardW57 (talk) 09:04, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

@RichardW57 As above, the question is about the validity of the analysis har + -cca giving hacca, which needs to be verified by other examples or innovations within Pali, otherwise there is no convincing reason to believe that har + -cca will become hacca and not anything else. (Pali sources mentioning har + -cca = hacca don't count as they just mean to provide an explanation for the term rather than accurate historic and phonological analysis and Wiktionary is not forced to follow other sources when they are wrong, similar to how Sanskrit पीत (pīta) is not analysed as पा (pā) + -त (-ta).) Svārtava (tɕ) 11:38, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

@Svartava: But surface analysis is meant to show how the term is/was understood, not the history of the term! Moreover, in Pali terms -hacca is har + t + ya, but the presence of -t- is now lexically determined. One could also offer a more abstract analysis as har + ya, but that has several possible outcomes. Note that hacca seems to be a different formation. On a phonological level, there is ablaut going on, which the template doesn't handle, and the ablaut causes the final consonant to drop (and sometimes the vowel to change), which is why we get -acca- and not -añca- from the root han. --RichardW57 (talk) 17:00, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure that rejecting that analysis of पीत (pīta) is correct; one problem is that there is more behind the root than the citation form. --RichardW57 (talk) 17:00, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

@RichardW57: how the term is/was understood is generally not the correct approach if we intend to provide historically and phonologically accurate etymologies unlike Pali-only sources (like PTS, etc.) may be giving. Adding surface analysis of har + -cca for hacca is equivalent to writing kar + -ta for kaṭa and kata < कृत (kṛta), which is agreeably a very bad idea and also finishes the importance of surface analysis: here also one can argue that kar + -ta is how the term kata is/was understood - and that it is, because of it's meaning as the past participle. Svārtava (tɕ) 20:05, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

But Template:surf is not intended to provide historically accurate etymologies. Now {{pi-root|har|cca|sa=हृ|se=1}} displays By surface analysis, har (root) +‎ -cca and {{surf|pi|har|-cca|pos1=root}} also displays as By surface analysis, har (root) +‎ -cca. The former also categorises. As the latter is valid, I see no reason not to succinctly use a single call to {{pi-root}} rather than invoking both. Or do you repent of the parameter |se=?

@Svartava: For kar + ta, it's a question of how we choose to handle allomorphs and sporadic sound changes. In this formation, retroflexion is a sporadic sound change, and the reduction of the root to zero grade is a suffix-dependent rule, with a rather vague rule for the resultant vowel. The form -cca warns the hearer (or at least, the reader) that a final resonant may have been elided, just as final -tta in a past participle announces an unspecified voiceless stop in the root. --RichardW57 (talk) 11:49, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

@RichardW57: The template or display text is not the issue, the issue is the validity of the surface analysis. Retroflexion is not a sporadic sound change, it is due to the ṛ in कृत (kṛta) (similar to how r in प्रति (prati) gives paṭi-) and a result of non-surface-analysable inheritance.

The well defined system of roots in various grades works well in most cases in Sanskrit and even if some aspects of it are inherited into Pali, it may not work in all cases. For example, कृ (kṛ) explains कृत (kṛta) (zero grade using suffix -त (-ta)), कर्तव्य (kartavya) (first grade using suffix -तव्य (-tavya)) but I don't think it can be said that Pali root kar can explain either kata/kaṭa or kattabba, due to language degradation over time, though it continues to explain karaṇa where the surface analysis can be legitimate. Where the surface analysis is not able to adequately explain the word, it should not be given. You can still argue saying that zero grade of kar is ka and -tabba is a suffix that "sporadically" geminates the first t when the original root drops it consonants or so on define rules to fit all known formations, but this is just unuseful fictious stuff. Svārtava (tɕ) 13:42, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

The retroflexion of dentals to retroflex under the influence of /r/ or /r̩/ in Pali, where not shared with Sanskrit, is 'sporadic', even if common. There seems to be no phonetic rule for it to definitely happen, though there may be some morphological conditions. You may recall that, contrary to the Young Grammarians' belief, a sound change tends to spread through a language word by word. If it stops spreading before affecting most of the vocabulary, it is 'sporadic' by definition.

Much of the Pali verb systems seems to have undergone rapid changes, and a very common verb like karoti seems to have preserved a lot of the stages. The grammarians list many forms not attested in the texts. I'm strongly attracted to the view that Pali is demagadhised Magadhi, which process invites a lot of variants. In the case of kattabba v. kātabba, we're looking at rather an abandonment of zero grading in the first case and I think a change of root in the second. Sanskrit करोति (karoti) is already a bit of a mess. As you point out, the root system was breaking down in Pali, and the present stem increasingly replaces the root as the basis of verb forms outside the present tense system, though for the later material we are no longer looking at native speakers' productions in any sense.

@Svartava: I think {{T:pi-root}} could be carefully enhanced with a note of the 'grade' where different from that of the root, for which we should find a good account of the Pali root rather than invent our own. It doesn't help that only Pali phonemes are used in the Western names of Pali roots, which is why some grammars and dictionaries give up and resort to the equivalent Sanskrit roots. (Pali names are further constrained to follow Pali phonology.) --RichardW57 (talk) 23:17, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

@RichardW57:

I am unsure of how to make this clearer to you without practically echoing what @Svartava: has said, but let me try.

Surface analysis may be acceptable, to a degree. For instance, for Pali haraṇa, I would write the etymology as the term being inherited from Sanskrit (Old Indo-Aryan), but then would throw in the surface analysis of har + -ana.

Next, in a term like gata, although by rights, an inheritance from OIA is the only legitimate explanation, I could *still* probably be convinced to include a synchronic analysis as gam- + -ta, as roots with nasals losing them in the zero grade is well understood in Sanskrit, and therefore, I assume, in Pali.

But here, ha is not the zero-grade of har. It exists in that shape because its earlier form was हृत्य. Adding that surface analysis in such situations is misleading. -- 𝘗𝘶𝘭𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘺𝘪^{(𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬)} 07:21, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

@Pulimaiyi: Why not? The zero grade in Sanskrit is hṛ, and the regular Pali reflex of that is ha. Now, the correspondence of Sanskrit ṛ to Middle Indic may be disturbed by neighbouring sounds, but this is not such a case. Looking at the table of principal parts in Warder, which has pruned rare alternatives, for roots in -ar, I see this as the general pattern for past participles formed by adjoining -ta to the root. There are some exceptions with labial initials, where the reflex of ṛ is u, and a probably trumping complex process whereby initial 'va(r)' instead yields 'vu', e.g. vuta from var and vuttha from vas. --RichardW57 (talk) 14:02, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

I see this as the general pattern for past participles formed by adjoining -ta to the root.

There is of course a pattern because of inheritance from neatly patterned formations in Sanskrit. That doesn't merit surface analysis by itself.

Finally, trying to surface-analyse Pali terms when they are clearly not analysable like that is very unfruitful. Sanskrit and Pali are very close once a reader understands the patterns of sound changes (that are generally consistent) that take place. I would say it is nearly impossible to be able to study Pali grammar independently in an effective way without studying/knowing Sanskrit grammar system, at least in the aspect of roots and their derivatives.

Claiming that ha can be said as the zero-grade form of har is a fringe statement. There is observable pattern, and that is because of the Sanskrit connection between zero grade and first grade, not because Pali had a well-developed grammatical understanding of this, as you yourself pointed out, the past participle of var is vuta, a perfectly understandable term when you put it beside Sanskrit वृत (vṛta), but analysed as "exception" within Pali. Svārtava (tɕ) 15:54, 5 January 2025 (UTC)