Information AboutSakatayana |
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scholars such as Yaska (around 5th c. BCE) and Panini (d. circa 460 BCE), as well as other Sanskrit Grammarian s, but is lost to us today. One of his views which generated considerable controversy in the Indian tradition, and receives some support in modern etymology, is that most nominal roots are ultimately derived from actions. This refers to the origin of names of things, or Nouns . For example, the noun ''origin'' derives Etymologically from the Latin ''originalis'', ultimately derived from the verb ''oriri'', "to rise". An example of a Morphological derivative might be the noun ''hitter'' - derived from the verb ''hit''. The controversial claim is that all nouns are ultimately derived from some Verbal Root . This process is reflected in the Sanskrit Grammar as the system of krit- Pratyaya s or verbal affixes. It is possible that the debate is based on two interpretations of ''root'' -- as referring to the etymological root (as in ''origin''), as opposed to the Morphemic stem (morphological root, as in ''hitter''). However, for many nouns (e.g. the English stem ''root''), it is hard to defend even the etymological claim. A modern interpretation of this claim is that cognitively, most nominal categories are based on behaviours rather than other attributes (e.g. an aeroplane may be made to have the shape of a bird), a point that is reinforced in most Cognitive Semantics approaches to the Lexicon . In his ''The word and the world'', the philosopher Bimal Krishna Matilal refers to this debate (which lasted several centuries) as an
His text may have been called the ''Lakshaṇa Sāstra'', in which he also describes the process of determining gender in animate and inanimate creation (Sanskrit is a strongly gender-inflected language). Unfortunately, not much is known about Sakatayana's life, but it is likely that he lived in Gandhara , what is today the Pakistan - Afghanistan region. SEE ALSO REFERENCES
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