2: Grammar: Nouns and more (`nāma`, `sandhi`)

Info

Part of “A Beginner (Non-Linguist) Guide to Learning Pali”

How this chapter fits

Chapter 1 introduced nouns, pronouns, numbers, prefixes and particles in a few pages each; this chapter deepens them, with the forms from my translation of Kaccāyana’s Nāmakappa and Sandhikappa. Its examples and exercises are sentences from the texts of chapters 3, 5, 7 and 9 and the bonus chapter. The text that follows it is chapter 3, the Buddha’s account of his awakening.

Chapter 1 set out the parts of a Pāḷi sentence and, at its end, the master table of endings. This chapter is about the words that carry noun endings, the nouns (nāma), and the words that stand beside them without changing: the pronouns and their relatives (sabbanāma), the numbers (saṅkhyā), the prefixes (upasagga) and the particles (nipāta). Verbs are chapter 8’s, compounds chapter 6’s and derived words chapter 10’s; the chart places them all. It is not about how Kaccāyana derives each form, which fills two hundred of his rules; it is about recognising a form when it comes, which is what reading needs.

flowchart LR
  W["a word in a sentence"] --> A["abyaya: never changes"]
  W --> N["nāma: carries a noun ending ①…⑦ ⓪, ⨀ or ⨂"]
  W --> V["ākhyāta: carries a verb ending (chapter 8)"]
  A --> A1["upasagga: a prefix (2.6)"]
  A --> A2["nipāta: a particle (2.7)"]
  A --> A3["an absolutive -tvā or an infinitive -tuṁ (8.8)"]
  N --> N1["a noun or an adjective (2.2, 2.3)"]
  N --> N2["sabbanāma: a pronoun (2.4)"]
  N --> N3["saṅkhyā: a number (2.5)"]
  N --> N4["samāsa: a compound (chapter 6)"]
  N --> N5["taddhita, kita, uṇādi: a derived word (chapter 10)"]
  N --> N6["a participle -ta, -anta, -māna, -tabba (8.8)"]

Reading a Pāḷi word is a fixed sequence of four questions, and the sections of this chapter follow it:

flowchart TD
  S1["1. Is it two words joined? split them (2.1)"] --> S2["2. What is the ending, and so the number and the job? (2.2, 2.3)"]
  S2 --> S3["3. What is the lemma? look it up"]
  S3 --> S4["4. What is the word doing in the sentence? chapter 4"]

section	covers	Kaccāyana	appendix
2.1	sandhi: the joins a reader meets on every line, and how to undo them	{12}–{51}	E
2.2	gender, number and the eight endings; the major inflection tables in one view, purisa, aggi, bhikkhu, kaññā, ratti, nadī, citta, aṭṭhi, cakkhu; adjectives agree	{55}–{119}, {215}–{245}	G
2.3	the irregular inflections: rājā, attā, satthā, bhagavā, kamma, mano	{126}–{138}, {181}–{214}, {243}	G
2.4	sabbanāma: so, ayaṁ, yo, ko, sabba, ahaṁ, tvaṁ, and the adverbs made from them	{139}–{151}, {161}–{177}, {247}–{260}, {398}–{399}	L
2.5	saṅkhyā: one to a hundred thousand, and the ordinals	{67}–{90}, {131}–{134}, {205}, {373}–{394}	H
2.6	upasagga: the twenty prefixes and what they do to a word	{221}, {12}–{50}	F
2.7	nipāta: the particles that join, stress, negate, quote and ask	{221}, {248}–{259}, {398}–{399}	—

Every section is built the same way: a short explanation, a table of the shapes to recognise with the rule that makes each, a few worked examples from the texts of chapters 3 and 5 and the bonus chapter, and one block of exercises on sentences from those texts. Kaccāyana’s own account of each form, the derivation, stays behind the rule number, which links to it.

Reading path

On a first reading take 2.1, 2.2, 2.4 and 2.7: splitting words, the common endings, the pronouns and the particles are what every sentence of chapter 3 needs. The other sections are for looking up a shape when it comes.