Bhante Sujato Pali Course 2023: Warder lesson 14

Ahhhh…this helps clears up my present participle conundrum in the DPD. I am no longer going to think gerund when it comes to Pali. Way too confusing.

There are heaps upon heaps of interpersonal communications models in the US that perpetuate this, I think. I mean, I feel. Presumably this helps everyone over here communicate better. Hmmm.

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Thank you so much, Bhante @sujato for your teachings today and the past few months. It’s truly valuable to me.

:pray: :pray: :pray:

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Were I to use the subjunctive here in New York, I would be understood. But perhaps a bit retro.
Still quite common in the UK though.

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Thank you Bhante Sujato for a stimulating Pali immersion. As the timing is somewhat challenging we will pause for the rest of the year and look forward to joining John Kelly’s class in the new year.

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7 posts were merged into an existing topic: John Kelly Pali course 2023: lesson 15

Decades ago my British professor told me that the subjunctive mood was mainly used in the US, while the UK preferred using modals.

Being old, I don’t think the subjunctive mood is retro. :grin:

https://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2015/03/revisiting-the-subjunctive-mood-great-for-persuasion/

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Correct. And in Australia even more so.

Shakespeare would absolutely agree with you. :smiley:

Where is Marquette Law School tho? … There’s no mention of the subjunctive in this randomly chosen Aussie guide to legal writing:

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Correct! Correct! Correct! (20 character minimum!)

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:grin: :laughing: :rofl:

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Marquette is in the US. Honestly I never hear people using the subjunctive anymore. It was taught as the proper way to speak/write but there aren’t that many people who would even know what it is these days. In French, as I alluded to earlier, it’s intrinsic to everyday parlance. Native English speakers struggle with its use (and with it’s horrific – yet beautiful – construction).

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Mr Paliś egs for the Interrogative pronouns in Lesson 12:

Ko dhammam deseti = Who teaches the Dhamma?
Kam buddho deseti = What does the Buddha teach?
Kesam buddho deseti = To whom does the Buddha teach?

Responding to Warderś explanation of the indefinite pronoun in Lesson 14 might it be possible to make these sentences?

Koci dhammam deseti = Someone teaches the Dhamma.
Kamci buddho deseti = The buddha teaches something.
Kesamci buddho deseti = The Buddha teaches anyone (willing to listen).
or
Kassaci eso patto = This bowl is someone’s.

I am also not really getting my head around this. It seems to just be a mistake? DPD says endings in -ya are “gerund” while endings in -tvā are “absolutive”, and distinguish the senses. But normally absolutive = gerund (in Pali anyway). In Magadhabhasa the two endings are treated together and the senses not distinguished.

One interesting detail in Magadhabhasa:

Some facets of the way absolutives are employed can be more easily grasped when the remnant nature of the instrumental case is borne in mind

This is a really good point. An abolutive expresses something whose action has been completed before the main action. But by implication, the main action is enabled through the prior action, or can happen because of it, this giving an instrumental sense. Consider say in the jhana formula, upasampajja viharati, “having entered one dwells”. It’s not just incidentally that one “enters” first, but rather one is able to dwell because one has entered.

This duality comes across in a number of idioms where a word, typically ending with a long feminine , functions ambiguously between absolutive and instrumental. This is further complicated because the final -ya can be dropped. A classic example is abhiññā sacchikatvā: does this means “having realized by means of direct knowledge”, or “having realized after directly knowing”?

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Here’s and audio clip of Bhante reading aloud with pdf of text and Ajahn Brahmali’s translation and notes for this lesson.

Warder Reading Passage 14.pdf (2.1 MB)

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Many thanks to both of you for (1) raising the question and (2) clarifying & expounding! This seems like an important mini-discussion, if only for trying to make sense of how DPD classifies these. But Bhante adds supremely nuanced details :heart_eyes:

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Regarding Lesson 14’s reading passage:

Question 1:
te yena so janapado yen’ aññataraṃ gāma-padaṃ ten’ upasaṅkamiṃsu

gāma-padaṃ is classified as a genitive tappurisa compound although it is written in the accusative, correct? Is it classified as such because yena requires a genitive?

Question 2:
tena hi samma tvañ ca sāṇa-bhāraṃ bandha, ahañ ca sāṇa-bhāraṃ bandhissāmi

How would one recognize sāṇa-bhāraṃ as a genitive tappurisa compound when, for all intents and purposes, it looks like the accusative?

Or maybe I’m going down a rabbit-hole and get too concerned about recognizing genitive tappurisa compounds?

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Hi, both of those compounds look accusative to me!
The relationship of the two component parts of the compound can be said to be genitive. (‘Of’).

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Ahhhhhh…I’m sure Warder said this but somehow it now makes sense to me. Thank you :slightly_smiling_face:

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I was going to talk about this very issue in class tonight, when we do a little review of recent week’s material! Thanks, Stephen. But I’ll go over it again anyway, since I thought there might be confusion on that.

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