Pratyaya: grammatical affixes

In this section we will list the grammatical affixes added in the Paninian system. In this system, the inflection process (say, for Declension and Conjugation) consists of inflecting the nominal and the verb with certain affixes (prefixes, suffixes, and augments). These affixes are usually defined in abstract terms (for e.g., 'jas' is the affix for the Nominative-Plural Declension, while 'tip' is an affix for the III-Person Singular Conjugation of the Verb).

Hence, even though we know that the Masculine-Nominative-Plural term for 'kUpa' ('kUpAHa'), and the Feminine-Nominative-Plural term for 'nadI' ('nadyaHa') appear very different, we can say at a high level that we only need to attach the identical abstract affix 'jas' to any nominal base to get the NOM-P term (which results in two different concrete affixes by following two different pathways of sutras).

The inflection process consists of the application of an ordered sequence of context-specific sutras to transform these abstract affixes into concrete affixes. These sutras may further add or drop affixes (prefixes, suffixes and augments).

Much of the Ashtadhyayi is focused on defining such context-specific rules. This context can be thought of as a set of pre-conditions that must be met before the activation of a sutra (assume all sutras are dormant until activated by certain contextual pre-conditions). There are also a number of methods defined in the Paninian system for handling exceptions. For instance, which sutra is given priority when the pre-conditions for two or more sutras are satisfied at some point in the processing ? The transformation of each term happens in an orderly and systematic manner, and each sutra in the sequence comes into effect only when a specified context becomes visible to the Paninian computational system. For e.g. the {7.3.84: sArvadhAtukArdhadhAtukayoHa} sutra applies 'guNNa' to the 'aNgam' of the verb root only when the verb root has a vowel-final and the affix is a 'sArvadhAtuka' verb affix. However, this sutra comes into effect only after a preceding sutra adds the 'sArvadhAtuka' verb affix based on certain other context-specific rules, and so on.

Illustrations of these inflections are provided for a sample Declension and a sample Conjugation on the next few pages. Nominal Declension is known as 'subanta prakaraNNam' (i.e. 'sup'-final production), while verb Conjugation is known as 'tiNanta prakaraNNam' (i.e. 'tiN'-final production).