overview of rules that change nounbase and supmmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1673

After we add a sup after a nounbase, or a nounbase plus feminine affix added, there are several hundred rules that may change the affix and a few that may change the end of the nounbase, plus some general sound change rules that apply whenever any affixes are added.

There is only one nounbase after which no sup affix changes by any rule -- nau- "ship". But, because of the general joining rule ecoya, nau becomes nAv before the sup that start with vowels. See nau- plus sup for examples.

Most of the nounbases that end in consonants, like yudh- "fight", vidyut- "lightning" and vid- "knower", are easy too. After these, all sup stay unchanged, except su, which disappears by rule halGyA. See yudh- plus sup for examples.

The most common nounbases are those that end in a. After these, almost all the sup change in some way. See a-enders plus sup .

There are also special rules that apply only to bases ending in R i u, and to bases ending in the feminine affixes GI Ap.

Also, some rules apply only to special nounbases called pronouns. For instance, adding jas to masculine azva we get azvAs "horses", but adding jas after masculine sarva-, which is a pronoun, we get sarve, as in rAjJasH sarve 'zvAH "all the king's horses".

But the weirdest bases have different forms before three different groups of sup affixes. For instance, the nounbase rAjan-, like most bases ending in an, replaces an sometimes with An, sometimes with n, sometimes with a. A weirder one is vidvat-, with affix vatu. This one looks like vidvAns- before certain affixes, vidvat- before others, and viduS- before others. The most involved are the ones ending in ac''', like pratyac-. This one looks like pratyak-, pratyaJc- or pratIc-, and when combined with su it makes pratyaG by a very special rule.

Summarizing, there are lots of rules that change a sup affix, and some that change the base before it, and the general sound combination rules apply too. Some of the rules are used often, others only very rarely, some to just one nounbase.

If you are panicking now, well, read how to learn to add sup without much pain .

how to learn to add sup without much painmmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1674

I just explained how there are hundreds of rules that might be applied just to add the sup you need to make a stupid sentence like "even monkeys fall from trees", and your conclusion might be that there is no way you could ever learn all of those.

Your despair comes from the false idea that you must learn ALL the rules before even attempting to add a sup. If you were to study these rules that way, you would not finish "learning" them in a year, and then when you try to assemble "from trees", you wouldn't know which rule you must use.

So, we don't study the rules that way.

We start by cheating. Ask your teacher for a word meaning "from trees". he will say vRksebhyas. Ask him to say "monkeys stay", he will say tiSThanti kapayaH or tiSThanti vAnarAH or something like that. If you don't have a teacher, use dictionaries and the inria declension gadget.

To go the other way, find which affix is at the end of a noun, use a teacher also if possible. If not possible, then use inria reader , that's what's it's for.

After you have some practice doing this, you start to see that the plural of kapis is kapayas and the plural of munis is munayas and the plural of gatis is gatayas. The rules are great things and they are useful sometimes, but they are not very useful for someone that is just starting to learn. The pANini grammar was never intended to be used to teach beginners, it was always intended to be a tool for experts. And I promise that it has a wonderful structure, but you will have to take this statement on faith from me because the rules will look to you like utter madness for the first two years.

deer is in gardenmmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1678

To make a word for "deer", we take any of the nounbases meaning deer, for instance mRga-. If we don't want to say that the deer is a doe then we don't add a feminine affix. Now what tiG do we need? No rule says that we have to use any particular case, so we need one of the affixes in the first group, svaujas. An as there is one deer, we need the first affix, su.

mRga- + su → mRgas

In this case no rules changes the affix and no rule changes the nounbase.

Now type mRgas into inria reader . We will get a blue box, meaning that mRgas might be a noun. Click the blue box and you'll see this --

mRga m sg nom

Here mRga- is the nounbase. The nom means that we used one of the three affixes in the first group, svaujas. The sg means singular, so we used the first of the three affixes, su. The m means that mRga- is a masculine nounbase.

Now the verb for "there is" is asti or bhavati, which are kartari verbs. A nounbase meaning "garden" is udyAna-. What sup does this need? According to rule AdhAro 'dhikaraNam the plave where the action of the verb happens is a location. And according to rule saptamy adhikaraNe ca, location words get an affix of the seventh group, Gyossup. As we mention only one garden, we need the singular affix, which is Gi. So we have to join --

udyAna + Gi

Now rule AdguNaH works automatically, and replaces the a and the i with one e --

udyAna + Gi → udyAne "in garden"

Now if you type udyAne into inria reader and click the blue box, it shows --

udyAna n. du. acc. | n. du. nom. | n. sg. loc

This means that the nounbase is udyAna, a neuter base, and the affix is either au from the second group amauTchaS, au from the first group svaujas, or Gi from the seventh group Gyossup. inria reader does NOT look at the rest of the sentence to try to guess which of the options makes sense in this case, so you'll have to figure out that yourself.

So our sentence will be

udyAne mRgo bhavati "the deer is in the garden"

or --

udyAne mRgaH "the deer is in the garden"

lightning is whitemmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1679

A nounbase for "lightning" is vidyut-, which is always f, and a nounbase for white is zukla-, which is f when it describes an f word such as vidyut.

When zukla- is f, it gets the feminine affix Ap added, by rule ajAdyata.

vidyut- is also f but gets no feminine affix because no rule says so.

Now if we are saying "lightning is white", no rule says that we have to use any particular group of affixes, so we use the first group, svaujas. So we use singular su after vidyut, and also after zukla because adjectives always get the same sup and gender as the noun they describe. So to assemble our nouns we need these pieces --

vidyut + su

zukla + Ap + su

Now the automatic rules. Rule halGyA says tha su disappear after consonants and after Ap. And the a of zukla disappears before A by akassa.

vidyut + su → vidyut

zukla + Ap + su → zuklA

and our sentence is

zuklA vidyut "lightning is white"

If we want to say "I see white lightning" using pazyAmi, a kartari verb, then vidyut gets am instead of getting su, because it is the object of a kartari verb, and zuklA too gets am, because it just copies the sup of vidyut-. So the sentence will be --

zuklAM vidyutamM pazyAmi "I see white lightning"

camels drank watermmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1681

The nounbase uSTra- means "camel". To mean "drank", we have several options; one of then is using the verb apiban "they drank", which is a kartari verb with laG tense. For water we can use udaka-.

Now because of the same rule of the previous example, udaka-, being the object of a kartari verb, gets an affix of the second group. The camels are the doer, and if there are more than two of them, they get a plural affix. No rule says which group should the doer get, so we use the first group, svaujas. The plural affix of the first group is jas. So we have to join --

udaka- + am

uSTra- + jas

Now the automatic rules. Ordinarily when an affix that starts with A is added after another a, the first a disappears by rule atoguNe. But in udaka- + am, the am loses a by rule amipUr, and in the case uStra + jas, a + a becomes long A by rule prathamayo. So our words are udakam. apiban and uSTrAs. The sentence is --

udakam apibann uSTrAH "camels drank water"

(the n doubled by Gamohra)

Write that sentence into inria reader and it will tell you that uSTrAH has pl nom (namely jas) and udakam has either sg acc ( am) or sg nom ( su).

noun building machinemmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1683

The pANini rules build all nouns by this process --

(1) choose a nounbase

(2) if the nounbase is f (that is, if it means a woman) and some rule (such as ajAdya) says that a feminine affix must be added to it, then do so.

(3) add a sup affix. If some rule says that a second, third etc affix must be added, then do so; otherwise add a first affix. The affix must be singular, dual or plural according to rules bahuSu ff.

(4) from this point on, some rules might change the nounbase and the affix.

(5) In some situations, such as supodhA, the sup affix must be removed.

As there are hundred of such rules, if you try to do that too soon, you will likely fail, because maybe some of the rules you don't know yet must work. That's why, before we learn the rules, we must learn how to cheat, by using inria reader and inria declension to do the disassembling and assembling for us.

So now I'll explain the cheats, and afterwards I'll show some examples.

how to disassemble nouns using inria reader

how to assemble nouns using inria declension

disassembling azvas assembling azvas

disassembling vidyutam assembling vidyutam

disassembling kapinA assembling kapinA

disassembling rAmeNa assembling rAmeNa

disassembling vyAghrI assembling vyAghrI

disassembling azvasmmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1686

When you type azvas or azvaH into inria reader, it shows a blue and a red rectangle. The blue azvaH is a noun. Click it and inria shows

azva m sg nom

the azva is the nounbase, and the sg nom means that su was added to it.

azva- + su azvas

The word appears as azvaH because inria always displays the final s of a word as H, showing the pronunciation that the word will have before a pause (see rules sasaju and kharava).

assembling azvasmmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1687

To add the affix su after the nounbase azva- that means horse, when the horse is either a stallion or of unknown sex, we do this:

Go to inria grammar, and under Declension

type the letters azva

choose HK from the dropdown

choose masculine

press send

We get a table that shows the results of adding all of the twenty-one tiG affixes after masculine azva-.

The one we want, su, is in the first line of the table, the one marked nominative, at the left under " singular". There we can read azvaH, which is how inria types azvas. We just put together the azva and the s, no rules were involved here.

disassembling vidyutammmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1688

Putting vidyutam into inria decension we get one blue rectangle, and clicking it, it shows --

vidyut_2 f sg acc

The vidyut_2 is a feminine nounbase, vidyut, and acc means that one of the second affixes am au zas was added, in particular, the singular affix am. So inria is telling us that --

vidyut f + am → vidyutam

Here no rule added or changed anything.

Notice that no feminine affix (no GI and no Ap) was added to the base. This happens because no rule tells us to add any feminine affix.

assembling vidyutammmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1689

To get the result of adding vidyut + am, we go the inria declension, type vidyut, choose HK, choose feminine, and press Send.

In the table that appears, we need the third line, accusative. am is a second ending; to get the second endings we need the third line, to get the third endings the fourth line, and so on.

disassembling kapinAmmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1690

Here reader shows --

kapi m sg i

The i means the third endings TA bhyAm bhis. So here inria is saying that --

kapi m + TA → kapinA

It's clear that the T of TA is a label, so we were expecting to get kapi + A. Somehow some rule added an n in between.

assembling kapinAmmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1691

inria declensionm tells us that adding TA after masculine kapi we get kapinA (it is in the fourth line of the table, instrumental). If we ask for feminine kapi plus TA, it will say kapyA. Why?

The grammar rules form kapinA this way --

kapi m + TA →AGonA kapi + nA → kapinA "with monkey"

Rule AGonA turns into nA the TA that follows a masculine or neuter that ends in i or u. But that rule won't work after a feminine, so in that case --

kapi f + TA →ikoyaNaci kapyA "with she-monkey"

disassembling rAmeNammmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1692

If we ask inria reader to find the ending in rAmena it will fail horribly. That's because there is no such word. rameNa must have N. If we ask about rAmeNa, we get

rAma m sg i. / n sg i

So inria is seeing two options here. Either rAmeNa is the masculine nounbase rAma with TA added, or it is the neuter nounbase rAma with TA added.

assembling rAmeNammmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1693

Assembling rAma + TA works like assembling kapi + TA. Put rAma into declension, set masculine, set HK, press send. The fourth line of the table shows rAmeNa, with N not n.

To do that with the rules, we must know rules TAGasi and AdguNaH and the Natvam rules. Rule TAGasi says that TA turns into ina after short a --

rAma+ TA →TAGasi rAma + ina

then AdguNa always works, turning a + i into e --

rAma + ina → rAmena

and whenever n follows an r, the Natvam rules may work --

rAmena →Natvam rAmeNa

disassembling vyAghrImmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1694

inria reader says at vyAghrI --

vyAghra f sg nom

and this means that when we add su after the feminine nounbase vyAghra-, we get vyAghrI --

vyAghra f + su vyAghrI

The nounbase vyAghra means "tiger", and is usually a masculine nounbase. But when it means a female tiger it must be a feminine nounbase. Adding su after just vyAghra we should have gotten vyAghras, but we got vyAghrI here instead. so there must be some explanation of why the s disappeared, the a too, and the I was added.

✓

assembling vyAghrImmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1695

I'll explain first how the rules make vyAghrI, and later i'll explain how to get this word from the Declension gadget.

vyaghrI is formed like this. Rule jAtera teaches that names of kinds of animals, among others, must get GI added when they are feminine --

vyAghra- f + su →jAtera vyAghra- + GI + su

(the GI is added between the nounbase and the sup because rule GyApprA says so.)

Now, according to rule yasyetica, the a A i I of a nounbase must be erased before GI --

vyaghra- + I + su →yasyetica vyAghrI + su

and finally, rule halGyA says that su is lost when it comes after GI --

vyAghrI + su →halGyA vyAghrI

Writing all in one line --

vyAghra- f + su →jAtera vyAghra- + GI + su →yasyetica vyAghrIs →halGyA vyAghrI "tigress"

Now you might think that all feminines get I added, but that is not the case. Some get GI (like vyAghra-), some get Ap (like azva-), some get nothing (like vidyut-). And a few can even get more than one option with different meanings (a zudrA is any woman of the zudra caste, while a zudrI is the wife of a zudra).

As it is not easy to figure out which feminine affix needs to be added to a f nounbase, the Declension gadget does not even try to do that for you. When you want to add sup to a feminine, you dont type the plain nounbase into the gadget; instead, you type the nounbase with A or I already added. So to figure out the table for feminine vyAghra-, you type vyAghrI into the gadget, select feminine, and press Send. Typing vyAghra will not work.