Fluidity of linguistic segmentation in Pāṇini’s grammar

Candotti, Maria Piera

;Pontillo, Tiziana

2021-01-01

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Abstract

Comparison and substitution are in the background of whatever kind of scientific analysis and Pāṇini’s grammar also relies on a presupposed bi–planar analysis of Sanskrit linguistic forms. This sounds quite similar to the renowned method of Bopp’s Zergliederung, but the most important device employed by Pāṇini in the process of “word formation” is definitely substitution instead of affixation. Nevertheless, Pāṇini’s substitution pattern — an incomparably sophisticated and clear–cut system — deserves to be spelt out in its own terms in order to avoid a skin–level comparativism which would, and in fact sometimes does, deprive modern scholars of its most interesting and enticing parts. We will show in this paper how one of the crucial features of Pāṇini’s replacement is the absence of purely abstract linguistic levels and the consequent fluidity of the units used to describe language. It is important to take Pāṇini’s model of substitution out of its supposed limited domain of allomorphy, to show that it is part of a broader conceptualization of linguistic units in spatial terms, i.e. as “places” where “things” happen. It is this lack of fixed status which was not understood by later Sanskrit commentators who came from a culture which had meanwhile deeply changed. It has neither been fully appreciated by modern scholars, who are rather focused on a derivational and/or multilayered interpretation of the system, which is more in tune with modern expectancies.