Is Pāṇini’s grammar prescriptive or descriptive, or perhaps both at the same time? The answer determines, among many other things, how we should render vā and vibhāṣā in his optional rules. If the grammar is prescriptive, these terms can mean “preferably” and “marginally”. If it is purely descriptive, then only “frequently” and “rarely” are appropriate translations. In Pāṇini as a Variationist (henceforth PV )I suggested that both translations are equally valid, on the grounds that the Aṣṭādhyāyī is at the same (...) time a faithful record of the usage of a community of śiṣṭas, and part of a project to canonize that usage as correct, meant to be binding on all users of the language. Devasthali (1983), however, objected that the idea of “better” or “worse” usage is “foreign to the ancient Sanskrit grammatical works and grammarians”, because they do not deal with incorrect apaśabdas, only with sādhusabdas – the correct words of the divine language. (shrink)

Pāṇini's fourth century BC Sanskrit grammar uses rewrite rules utilizing an explicit formal language defined through a semi-formal metalanguage. The grammar is generative, meaning that it is capable of expressing a potential infinity of well-formed Sanskrit sentences starting from a finite symbolic inventory. The grammar's operational rules involve extensive use of auxiliary markers, in the form of Sanskrit phonemes, to control grammatical derivations. Pāṇini's rules often utilize a generic context-sensitive format to identify terms used in replacement, modification or deletion operations. (...) The context-sensitive rule format is itself defined using Pāṇini's more general method of auxiliary markers, the latter used to define many dozens of linguistic categories and rules controlling derivations of Sanskrit sentences through the manipulation of ‘non-terminal’ and ‘terminal’ symbols. This technique for controlling formal derivations was rediscovered by Emil Post in the 1920s and later shown by him to be ca... (shrink)

Ugaritische Grammatik. Zweite, stark überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage. By Josef Tropper. Alter Orient und Altes Testament, vol. 273. Münster: ugarit-Verlag, 2012. Pp. xxii + 1068. €100.

In Pninis grammar of Sanskrit one finds the ivastras, a table which defines the natural classes of phonological segments in Sanskrit by intervals. We present a formal argument which shows that, using his representation method, Pninis way of ordering the phonological segments to represent the natural classes is optimal. The argument is based on a strictly set-theoretical point of view depending only on the set of natural classes and does not explicitly take into account the phonological features of the segments, (...) which are, however, implicitly given in the way a language clusters its phonological inventory. The key idea is to link the graph of the Hasse-diagram of the set of natural classes closed under intersection to ivastra-style representations of the classes. Moreover, the argument is so general that it allows one to decide for each set of sets whether it can be represented with Pninis method. Actually, Pnini had to modify the set of natural classes to define it by the ivastras (the segment h plays a special role). We show that this modification was necessary and, in fact, the best possible modification. We discuss how every set of classes can be modified in such a way that it can be defined in a ivastra-style representation.1. (shrink)

The German linguist and mythologist Heymann Steinthal taught at the University of Berlin and was especially engaged with Wilhelm von Humboldt and his linguistic works. He was a co-founder of the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte. This innovatory volume, published in 1855, draws a connection between the disciplines of linguistics and psychology, and further relates them to the issue of logic. The three parts of the book deal with the nature of grammar, its relation to logic and the (...) connection of grammar and linguistics to cognitive behaviour. Finally Steinthal discusses the idea of linguistics as ethnopsychology. Pursuing this concept, he, with his brother-in-law Moritz Lazarus, co-founded the journal Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft in 1860, thus laying the foundations for a promising new area of research. (shrink)

Den Belangen der menschlichen Seele hat sich Ludwig Wittgenstein nahezu in seinem gesamten philosophischen Schaffen gewidmet – doch v.a. in seinen letzten Schriften verdichten sich seine Bemerkungen zu Problemen des Fremdseelischen, die sich in der Frage ausdrücken lassen, wie – und ob! – wir vom Seelenleben Anderer wissen können, wie wir also wissen können, was – und dass – Andere fühlen, empfinden und denken. In diesem Buch wird Wittgensteins grammatischen Untersuchungen zum Fremdseelischen nachgespürt, d.h. der Art und Weise, wie wir (...) über das Seelenleben Anderer sprechen. Anders als in der traditionellen Philosophie nähert sich Wittgenstein dem Problem des Fremdseelischen nicht nur als einem erkenntnistheoretischen, sondern auch als einem praktischen Problem, das uns im Alltag begegnet, wenn Andere lügen oder sich verstellen oder wir sie nicht verstehen, weil sie uns aufgrund soziokultureller Umstände fremd sind. Die Betrachtung solch alltagspraktischer Fälle zeigt, dass das Problem des Fremdseelischen für Wittgenstein weniger ein Problem über Andere, als vielmehr ein Problem mit Anderen darstellt. (shrink)

Was kann eine Rezeption Wittgensteinscher Philosophie für die Theologie leisten? Dieser Frage geht die Autorin anhand zweier prominenter Beispiele nach: des walisischen Religionsphilosophen D. Z. Phillips und des amerikanischen Theologen George A. Lindbeck. Dadurch werden zwei bedeutende Beiträge anglo-amerikanischer Wittgensteinrezeption für den deutschsprachigen Raum zugänglich gemacht. Als Ansatzpunkt einer «Theologie nach Wittgenstein» steht der Grammatikbegriff Wittgensteins im zweiten Teil der Arbeit im Zentrum. Vor dem Hintergrund des Wittgensteinschen Theologieverständnisses (unter Einbeziehung der Versuche Phillips' und Lindbecks) beschreibt die Autorin, wie eine (...) «Theologie als Grammatik» von Wittgenstein her gedacht werden kann. (shrink)

Mitte der fünfziger Jahre entsteht mit den Arbeiten der amerikanischen Linguisten Zellig S. Harris und Noam Chomsky die Theorie der generativen (Transformations-)Grammatiken a) Chomskys Grammatikmodell in den "Aspects" ... b) Entwicklung der Theorie ... nach 1965 ...

In the preceding we have argued that brevity in the form of Generalizing Brevity is an important theoretical principle underlying Panini's grammar. It applies blindly at the metalevel, when the grammar is being chosen. Generalization is a concern at one remove: A device for the metalanguage is only chosen such that its use in accord with the maximum brevity leads to some generalization. Many potential brevity increasing devices are not chosen for this reason. But at the metalanguage level brevity is (...) paramount. To prove this we have shown that Panini maximizes brevity in many cases at the cost of other possible theoretical principles. We have also shown that many features of the grammar flow from the brevity criterion. We have concluded that logical organization, generality, and other aspects of explanation largely follow from brevity and that this can be regarded as a substantial aspect of the explanatory power of the theory behind the grammar. Generalization should follow on the heels of maximum brevity. And, considering Panini's domain of data this is a perfectly reasonable expectation. (shrink)

The following principles are seen to operate in the rules Pānini provides for Sanskrit grammar. (1) The obvious principle that the introduction of affixes and augments which condition sound replacements necessarily precede the latter. (2) Bracketing, whereby an operation whose condition is internal relative to a condition causing another operation applies prior to the latter. (3) The derivational prehistory of a form is pertinent to the operations which apply to it. (4) Blocking: a rule R2 is said to block an (...) R1 if, in a given domain, R1 tentatively applies (and would apply in the absence of R2) wherever R2 can apply, while R2 would be vacuous if R1 applied. (4a) Limited blocking, which obtains where R1 and R2 overlap but also have independent domains of application. These principles account for correct derivations in cases where post-Paninian grammarians invoked rule order: where two rules conflict, that one takes precedence which is stated later in the grammar. This principle is not generally tenable, since some derivations require that a rule stated previously in the grammar take precedence. Hence, the grammarians who invoke such rule ordering in cases of conflict must admit that only a knowledge of the correct results to be obtained by applying the rules allows one to correctly apply the rules in the first place. It is argued that Pānini avoided this weakness. (shrink)