Learn Pali Language

In this post we will look at conjunctions and examine some types of clause in Pali. This post follows on from earlier posts about relative clauses and also adverbs in Pali . In its simplest form a sentence is just a single clause. If you remember, a clause consists of a subject (noun phrase) and a verb (verb phrase) or to use different lingo, a subject and a predicate . Conjunctions can be used to join clauses to form more complex sentences. clause noun verb John shouted   clause pronoun verb everybody waved conj and In English, Conjunctions are often grouped into three types: Coordinating conjunctions , used to join either words, phrases , or clauses . (eg. and, or, fo

In the last couple of posts I’ve been looking at verb participles . They are a verb form that although called past & present actually have little to do with tense/time and are mainly associated with verb aspect  – the extent to which an action is completed. When they are not playing in the role of main ( finite ) verb of a sentence they are called non-finite (or infinite) verbs as they aren't 'limited' by tense. In other words, a non-finite verb is any verb that is not the main tense marked verb of the sentence. As such they tend to act or function as verbal adjectives  and are thus often called 'Verbals'. Verbal adjectives act like verbs - in that they form a verb phrase, possibly taking objects and other dependents and modifiers of verbs - however that verb phrase then plays the role of an attributive adjective  in the larger sentence. In Pali they can be divided into two groups: declinable  & non- or indeclinable .  Participles form the decli

The last post looked at participle acting in passive sentences . In this post we'll continues with participles in active  Pali sentences, and specifically Present Participles. Just as a reminder, in an active sentence, the grammatic subject in nominative and the actor doing the action of the main verb will be the same ; and the verb will agree in gender & number with this agent/subject. A transitive  verb may also take an object  in accusative. Present Participles (Active) Present participles in English are easy to spot as they all end with ‘–ing’. Present participles are used in several ways: Adjective like: as verbal adjectives , (a modifier to a noun) The smiling girl..., the bouncing ball... as subject complements , (with copula) The girl is smiling ..., the ball is bouncing ... in subordinate clauses , the girl walked along, bouncing the ball Verb like: in periphrasis  - combination with other auxiliary verbs to create aspect , The girl will be

In the last post we looked at passive sentence construction . Now we can move on to take a look at participles  in Pali. If you're not familiar with participle use already, they can seem a little perpelexing. So we'll work through them slowly. Whereas English has only past & present participle forms, participles in Pali have distinct past, present & also future/potential forms. In Pali its common to identify six kinds of participles: Past Active Participles, Past Passive Participles, Present Active participles, Present Passive Participles, Absolutive / Indeclinable Participles, Future Passive / Gerundive / Potential Participles

The topic of passive sentences naturally leads onto participles . As such the next two post form a unit and should be read together. Now so far on this blog, we have dealt only with active sentences – where subject performs an action on some target object. With a passive  sentence (sometimes called the passive voice) the grammatical subject   gets something done to them! Compare:       Active voice   Passive voice Semantic : agent   patient   patient   agent Grammatic : subject transitive object   subject intransitive instrument   The dog chases the cat   The cat is chased by the dog

First let’s look at what a clause is and explain some terminology. Learning this terminology helps when reading grammar guides like Warder . Clauses - an overview Previously I said that sentence consisted in a noun phrase + a verb phrase. Strictly this is the description of a clause . A sentence can involve one or more clauses joined by conjunctions . clause noun verb John shouted   clause pronoun verb everybody waved conj and

Whereas adjectives qualify nouns, Pronouns represent them. Pronouns are words which substitute for other nouns and often refer back to someone or something mentioned earlier (the antecedent). In Western grammar they are divide into several types. Here's a quick link table for navigation: Personal pronouns I, you, him, her, them Table: 1 Demonstrative pronouns this, that, these those Table: 2 , Table: 3 , Table: 4 , Table: 5  Possessive pronouns  mine, yours, his, hers Interrogative pronouns who? what? which? Table: 6 Indefinite pronouns anyone, anything, someone Table: 7 Reflexive pronouns myself, yourself, himself Relative pronouns he who, which, that Table: 8 The declension of pronouns in Pali is very irregular. Many grammar guides include tables of their various forms ( Bomhard , Duroiselle ). I'll only present an edited selection in the sections below, but they are tabled out at the end of this post - links above. A

In the previous posts we've looked at ways attributes are used to modify nouns. In similar fashion in Pali, the genitive (possessive) case is also used to qualify nouns to indicate that someone has something. Strangely, Pāli does not have a verb meaning ‘to have’. Instead, it uses the genitive case to denote 'belonging to' or 'being part of'. First let's remind ourselves of the genitive declensions. SINGULAR   PLURAL stem: Masc. & Neut. Feminine   Masc. & Neut. & Fem. a, ā -assa -āya   -ānaṃ i, ī -issa -ino -iyā   -īnaṃ u, ū -ussa -uno -uyā   -ūnaṃ The genitive case operates much like an apostrophe (’s) or 'of' in English. For instance

Following on from the last post discussing Noun Attributes in Pali , we can now look at adjectives specifically, as well as Comparatives & Superlatives. Adjectives as Attributes An adjective is a word that describes, or qualifies a noun and describes a quality or characteristic. They are often termed 'describing' words:  red, quiet, obedient, cold, new etc. For instance: adj adj adj adj adj setā rasmiyo setā patodalaṭṭhi setaṃ chattaṃ setaṃ uṇhīsaṃ setāni vatthāni nom pl fem nom pl fem nom sgl fem nom sgl fem nom sgl neut nom sgl neut   nom sgl neut nom sgl neut nom pl neut nom pl neut   white reins a white driver’s stick a white parasol a white turban white clothes Actually technically, in the phrase 'the white reins' both 'white' & 'reins' are each nouns, but 'white' is being used as an attributive adjective because it is qualifying another noun, while 'reins' is terme

Usually in Pali, words referring to the same thing are in the same case & number . This is especially true of nominative & accusative cases. In this post we're going to look at common examples when two or more nouns occur together in Nominative or Accusative cases. Pali Noun Attributes Most commonly, several nouns occurring in the nominative (& sometimes in accusative) case are probably attributes to a similar substantive noun. (Note: substantive is a loose term meaning something of substance, an entity, which can stand by itself, in distinction to an adjective). Noun attributes describe or qualify a noun. They add a characteristic or specify quality. For instance: a big book a blue book a sad book We've seen this already in our previous example ( SN8.6 ): sāriputt o mahāpaññ o dhammaṃ deseti bhikkhunaṃ Nom Nom Acc Pres, Act Dat/Gen

Declension is the addition to the Noun stems of suffixes which indicate grammatical information, such as: case, number & gender. In this post we're going to look at different ways to identify these suffixes. I haven’t found a simple way of achieving this. (But that's part of the fun). As a result I tend to use a combination of tools and methods. However the arrival of the Digital Pāḷi Dictionary (DPD) has made this much easier. Anyway check out my 5 ways to analyse an inflected Pali word. Rote table look-up Search the Dictionary SuttaCentral Use a Reader's in-built Dictionary The Digital Pāḷi Dictionary Noun stems in Pāli are regularly grouped into two divisions, those that end in: Vowels: -a, -ā, -i, -ī, -u, -ū, (o) Consonants, -ar, -ī/in, -an, -at/ant, -as & -us By far the most end in vowels I'm going to concentrate on these, in this post although the methods below encompass them all. 1 Rote table look-up The tradition method of te