--- In [email protected], cardemaister <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "BillyG." <wgm4u@> wrote: > > > > --- In [email protected], cardemaister <no_reply@> > wrote: > > > From a linguistic POV that's so confusing that I'd like > > > to know what exactly is your source for that. > > > > The analogy of the crystal ball comes from Swami Yogananda's book, > > "The Second Coming of Christ". > > > > > Actually, those Hindi truncations(?) of Sanskrit words > > > make me "furious"! Well, at least a bit irritated... :] > > > > But there is a good reason for it as Brahm-a with 'short' a, > signifies > > something different than Brahmaa (two a's for effect only) with a > long > > a. > > I'm not sure what you mean by "for effect only" but the difference > between "brahma" (nominative singular *neuter* gender form of the > word whose lemma , i.e, "dictionary form" is "brahman") and "brahmaa" > (nominative singular *masculine* form of the..., etc.) is *almost* > as essential as the difference in English between, say , "fit" > and "feet". I know there's a *qualitative*, not just quantitative, > difference between the vowels in those words, but that's the closest > analogy I can think of in English to the importance of the length > of vowels in Sanskrit, where it is a so called distinctive feature, > that is, two words with totally different meanings can differ from > each other only by the length of their vowel, like for instance > "sama" (same) and "saama" (song, and stuff). > > Here are some forms of the singular inflectional paradigm > of the word (whose lemma is) "brahman": > > nominative singular masculine brahmaa > (Example: yatiinaam brahmaa bhavati saarathiH) > accusative singular masculine brahmaanam > > nominative singular neuter brahma > (anaadimat paraM brahma...) > accusative singular neuter brahma > > Actually, the "criterion" for a neuter gender > word in Sanskrit is that its nominative and accusative > (English: objective) are identical in form. > > In the rest of the inflectional cases (instrumental, dative, > ablative, genitive and locative) 'n' appears as a "separator" > - or whatever it's officially called - between the stem and > the suffix; for instance, genitive (English: possessive) > singular of both masculine and neuter inflection is > "brahmanaH" (because of a peculiar assimilation , actually: > brahmaNaH - brahma-N-aH).
I just set'em up and you knock'em down, I'm NO expert!
