4: Grammar: Noun roles (`kāraka`)

Info

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

How this chapter fits

Chapter 1 gave the typical meanings of the endings in one table; this chapter deepens that table, with the uses from my translation of Kaccāyana’s Kārakakappa. 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 5, the first discourse.

kāraka means the “cause” or “participants” of actions, and the relationship between various words in a Pali sentence. The following are descriptions of various kāraka categories, and the typical vibhatti endings that are applied to words belonging to those categories.

The question to ask of every noun in a sentence is what it is doing there, and the answer picks the ending:

flowchart TD
  Q["what is this noun doing in the sentence?"]
  Q -->|"it acts"| K1["the doer: ① kattā"]
  Q -->|"it is acted on"| K2["the object: ② kamma"]
  Q -->|"by, with"| K3["the means: ③ karaṇa"]
  Q -->|"to, for"| K4["the recipient: ④ sampadāna"]
  Q -->|"from"| K5["the source: ⑤ apādāna"]
  Q -->|"of, whose"| K6["the owner: ⑥ sāmī"]
  Q -->|"in, at, on, when"| K7["the place or time: ⑦ okāsa"]
  Q -->|"it is spoken to"| K0["the one addressed: ⓪ ālapana"]

Kaccāyana first defines the seven kāraka {271}–{283}, in the order below, and then states which vibhatti ending each takes and the other senses each ending carries {284}–{315}. The chapter follows that order, one section for each kāraka, and ends with the two uses of the ① ending that name no kāraka.

Reading path

On a first reading take the first use or two of each section, the ones the diagram names, and their examples; the later uses of each ending are rarer, and every rule number links to the full rule in the Kaccāyana translation. Come back for the rest once the texts of chapters 3 and 5 and the bonus chapter have made the endings familiar.

section	kāraka	English name	usual ending	definition	uses of the ending
4.1	apādāna	ablative, “from”	⑤	{271}–{275}	{295}–{296}
4.2	sampadāna	dative, “to”, “for”	④	{276}–{277}	{293}–{294}, {311}
4.3	okāsa	locative, “in”, “at”, “on”	⑦	{278}	{302}, {310}, {312}–{315}
4.4	karaṇa	instrumental, “by”, “with”	③	{279}	{286}–{292}
4.5	kamma	accusative, the object	②	{280}	{297}–{300}, {306}–{307}
4.6	kattā, hetu	the agent and the causer	① (③ in the passive)	{281}–{282}	{284}, {288}
4.7	sāmī	genitive, “of”	⑥	{283}	{301}, {303}–{305}, {308}–{309}
4.8	liṅgattha, ālapana	nominative and vocative	①, ⓪	—	{284}–{285}