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History of Linguistics 2021: Selected papers from the 15th International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHoLS 15), Milan, 28 August – 1 September
Edited by Savina Raynaud, Maria Paola Tenchini and Enrica Galazzi
[Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 133] 2024
► pp. 118–130

Chapter 8
Declension and description

The ways of Sanskrit grammarians

| Université Sorbonne Nouvelle — EA 2120 GREI
This paper studies the different ways in which ancient Sanskrit grammarians presented nominal declensions. Based on twelve Sanskrit grammars (from Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī up to Bhaṭṭoji Dīkṣita’s Siddhāntakaumudī) classified into three categories (“wholly generative” grammars, “partly generative” grammars and “pedagogical” grammars), it shows that though nominal paradigmatic sets were known from and used by various scholars — among whom grammarians — at a relatively early date, it is only with pedagogical grammars that they really enter the scene of grammatical description, i.e. as “official” grammatical or language teaching tools.
Keywords: nominal declensions, paradigmatic sets, pedagogical grammars, Sanskrit grammarians
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The corpus
  • 3.Presentation of nominal declensions in wholly and partly generative grammars
  • 4.Presentation of nominal declensions in pedagogical grammars
  • 5.About the emergence of paradigmatic sets in Sanskrit grammars
  • Abbreviations
  • Notes
  • References
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References (13)
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