Paninian Studies

Pa?ini’s grammar is the oldest surviving grammar of Sanskrit, dating back to the fifth century BCE. In its completeness of coverage of linguistic elements and its theoretical and analytical sophistication, Pa?ini’s grammar is surprisingly modern. It has long provided inspiration for many ideas in modern linguistics, and continues to attract scholars’ attention in the fields of Sanskrit and linguistics. Pa?inian Studies collects seventeen essays on Pa?inian linguistics in a single volume dedicated to Professor S. D. Joshi, a stalwart scholar of Pa?inian grammar. The contributors, all scholors of international acclaim and students and friends of Professor Joshi, include Ashok Aklujkar, Pandit V. B. Bhagwat, Saroja Bhate, Gopikamohan Bhattacharya, Johannes Bronkhorst, George Cardona, Achyutananda Dash, Madhav M. Deshpande, Peter Edwin Hook, Daniel H. H. Ingalls, V. N. Jha, Dinabandhu Kar, Paul Kiparsky, Bimal Krishna Matilal, G. B. Palsule, K. Kunjunni Raja, and J. A. F. Roodbergen. Taken together, their contributions encompass the wide range of interests and specializations within the field of Pa?inian studies

Improvement of Electronic Governance and Mobile Governance in Multilingual Countries with Digital Etymology using Sanskrit Grammar

With huge improvement of digital connectivity (Wifi,3G,4G) and digital devices access to internet has reached in the remotest corners now a days. Rural people can easily access web or apps from PDAs, laptops, smartphones etc. This is an opportunity of the Government to reach to the citizen in large number, get their feedback, associate them in policy decision with e governance without deploying huge man, material or resourses.But the Government of multilingual countries face a lot of problem in successful implementation of Government to Citizen (G2C) and Citizen to Government (C2G) governance as the rural people tend and prefer to interact in their native languages. Presenting equal experience over web or app to different language group of speakers is a real challenge. In this research we have sorted out the problems faced by Indo Aryan speaking netizens which is in general also applicable to any language family groups or subgroups.Then we have tried to give probable solutions using Etymology.Etymology is used to correlate the words using their ROOT forms.In 5th century BC Panini wrote Astadhyayi where he depicted sutras or rules- how a word is changed according to person,tense,gender,number etc.Later this book was followed in Western countries also to derive their grammar of comparatively new languages.We have trained our system for automatic root extraction from the surface level or morphed form of words using Panian Gramatical rules.We have tested our system over 10000 bengali Verbs and extracted the root form with 98% accuracy.We are now working to extend the program to successfully lemmatize any words of any language and correlate them by applying those rule sets in Artificial Neural Network

A Comparative Study of English and Gujarati Phonological Systems

Not availabl

A study of attitudes towards mlecchas and other outsiders in Northern India (c. A.D. 600).

This study attempts to elucidate the meaning of the word mleccha in its comprehensive sense and examine how it was applied as a designation for outsiders in the period before c, A.D. 600 in northern India. The first chapter discusses early Indian society and some of the concepts on which it was founded. The notion of the mleccha was part of the moral and social framework of this society which believed in its inherent cultural superiority. We further discuss the various source materials that have been utilized as far as they bear on our study. The first outstanding problem, studied in the second chapter, is the origin of the Sanskrit term mleccha and its relation with the Pali variant milakkha. This chapter is largely concerned with the varied implications of the theories on the etymology of these terms. The theories advocating either an Indo-European or a non-Indo-European origin of mleccha/milakkha produce inconclusive results which prevents us from placing our ideas on the concept of the mleccha on a firm linguistic basis. The reasons why mleccha first occured in the context of speech are presented in Chapter III. Both in this chapter and in the next we are concerned with the distinction on the basis of speech and the area of habitation which set the mlecchas apart. The Buddhist, Brahmanic and Jaina texts all emphasize these differences. At the same time we are able to show that there were changes in the attitudes towards mlecchas. We are, however, unable to define speech or area of habitation as the ultimate reasons for the separate existence of mlecchas in ancient Indian society. In the first half of Chapter V, we discuss the reasons why the mlecchas and outside groups were tolerated on a political level despite the fact that Indian monarchs worked within the brahmanical system. In the second half of the same chapter we consider the pejorative implications of the cultural discrimination of the mlecchas. However, the basic prejudice against the mlecchas had. to be modified in the face of historical changes. Finally, in Chapters VI and VII, we examine the flexibility in the treatment and categorization of the various outside groups. In Chapter VI the focus is on tribes and indigenous peoples designated as mlecchas. The comparison of the term mleccha with dasyu and with the names of individual tribes such as Kirata, Nisada, and Pulinda, which are often used to denote less developed tribes, is undertaken here. The subsequent chapter surveys the foreigners associated with ancient India as conquerors and rulers and the manner in which the brahmana literary writers viewed such invasions. The ambiguity in the use of the term mleccha in brahmanical writing has to be explained in the light of the political and economic status acquired by certain outside groups

Length vacillation -iiy-//-iy- and related phenomena in Vedic

Historische fonologie en morfologie van het Indo-Europee

The principle of least effort within the hierarchy of linguistic preferences: external evidence from English

The thesis is an investigation of the principle of least effort (Zipf 1949 [1972]). The principle is simple (all effort should be least) and universal (it governs the totality of human behavior). Since the principle is also functional, the thesis adopts a functional theory of language as its theoretical framework, i.e. Natural Linguistics. The explanatory system of Natural Linguistics posits that higher principles govern preferences, which, in turn, manifest themselves as concrete, specific processes in a given language. Therefore, the thesis’ aim is to investigate the principle of least effort on the basis of external evidence from English. The investigation falls into the three following strands: the investigation of the principle itself, the investigation of its application in articulatory effort and the investigation of its application in phonological processes. The structure of the thesis reflects the division of its broad aims. The first part of the thesis presents its theoretical background (Chapter One and Chapter Two), the second part of the thesis deals with application of least effort in articulatory effort (Chapter Three and Chapter Four), whereas the third part discusses the principle of least effort in phonological processes (Chapter Five and Chapter Six). Chapter One serves as an introduction, examining various aspects of the principle of least effort such as its history, literature, operation and motivation. It overviews various names which denote least effort, explains the origins of the principle and reviews the literature devoted to the principle of least effort in a chronological order. The chapter also discusses the nature and operation of the principle, providing numerous examples of the principle at work. It emphasizes the universal character of the principle from the linguistic field (low-level phonetic processes and language universals) and the non-linguistic ones (physics, biology, psychology and cognitive sciences), proving that the principle governs human behavior and choices. Chapter Two provides the theoretical background of the thesis in terms of its theoretical framework and discusses the terms used in the thesis’ title, i.e. hierarchy and preference. It justifies the selection of Natural Linguistics as the thesis’ theoretical framework by outlining its major assumptions and demonstrating its explanatory power. As far as the concepts of hierarchy and preference are concerned, the chapter provides their definitions and reviews their various understandings via decision theories and linguistic preference-based theories. Since the thesis investigates the principle of least effort in language and speech, Chapter Three considers the articulatory aspect of effort. It reviews the notion of easy and difficult sounds and discusses the concept of articulatory effort, overviewing its literature as well as various understandings in a chronological fashion. The chapter also presents the concept of articulatory gestures within the framework of Articulatory Phonology. The thesis’ aim is to investigate the principle of least effort on the basis of external evidence, therefore Chapters Four and Six provide evidence in terms of three experiments, text message studies (Chapter Four) and phonological processes in English (Chapter Six). Chapter Four contains evidence for the principle of least effort in articulation on the basis of experiments. It describes the experiments in terms of their predictions and methodology. In particular, it discusses the adopted measure of effort established by means of the effort parameters as well as their status. The statistical methods of the experiments are also clarified. The chapter reports on the results of the experiments, presenting them in a graphical way and discusses their relation to the tested predictions. Chapter Four establishes a hierarchy of speakers’ preferences with reference to articulatory effort (Figures 30, 31). The thesis investigates the principle of least effort in phonological processes, thus Chapter Five is devoted to the discussion of phonological processes in Natural Phonology. The chapter explains the general nature and motivation of processes as well as the development of processes in child language. It also discusses the organization of processes in terms of their typology as well as the order in which processes apply. The chapter characterizes the semantic properties of processes and overviews Luschützky’s (1997) contribution to NP with respect to processes in terms of their typology and incorporation of articulatory gestures in the concept of a process. Chapter Six investigates phonological processes. In particular, it identifies the issues of lenition/fortition definition and process typology by presenting the current approaches to process definitions and their typology. Since the chapter concludes that no coherent definition of lenition/fortition exists, it develops alternative lenition/fortition definitions. The chapter also revises the typology of phonological processes under effort management, which is an extended version of the principle of least effort. Chapter Seven concludes the thesis with a list of the concepts discussed in the thesis, enumerates the proposals made by the thesis in discussing the concepts and presents some questions for future research which have emerged in the course of investigation. The chapter also specifies the extent to which the investigation of the principle of least effort is a meaningful contribution to phonology

Tradition and dissent in ancient Kashmir (A.D. 6th to 12th century).

NADigital copy of Ph.D thesis.University of Kashmir