How are numerals formed in Indo-European languages today, and how were they formed in the ancestral language Proto-Indo-European (PIE)? And do ordering patterns of components within numerals align with other word order patterns in the same languages? Andreea S. Calude and Annemarie Verkerk considered those questions in a paper looking at how 81 present and past…… Continue reading Structure of numbers in Indo-European
Tag: Sanskrit
2,000 year old Sanskrit puzzle solved?
A PhD student may have found a way to simplify the analysis of Sanskrit grammar, overturning a time-honoured way of reading a classic grammatical description. In his PhD thesis, Dr Rishi Rajpopat (of St John’s College, Cambridge) analysed the oldest surviving descriptive grammar of any language. This is Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī, a comprehensive grammar of Sanskrit,…… Continue reading 2,000 year old Sanskrit puzzle solved?
Pāṇini and Panini
A great grammarian of Sanskrit, Pāṇini, lived sometime around the 6th to the 4th century BCE. Pāṇini is often considered to be the first great descriptive linguist. The name Pāṇini is not to be confused with name of the Italian sandwiches known as panini. https://languagemiscellany.com/2022/06/paninis-apostrophes/ According to a comment made by a user on a…… Continue reading Pāṇini and Panini
Odia, a classical language in India
According to a quiz I read recently, the 6th language to be designated in India as a ‘classical language’ is Odia. I had never heard of Odia, so I wanted to find out more. The Language Odia belongs, with Bengali and Assamese to the Madaghan sub-family of Indo-Aryan (Klaiman, 1990). Indo-Aryan is itself part of…… Continue reading Odia, a classical language in India