Hello everyone. And welcome back to this
companion series to
A.K. Warder's grammar guide 'An introduction to Pali'.
Lesson 24 begins by mopping up some
loose ends:
the pronoun amu; bahubbīhi compounds again;
and future inflections; before focusing on
auxiliary verbs in Pali.
This is Pali Studies, on the Learn Pali
channel.
So we start with the pronoun amu.
amu is a less frequent demonstrative
pronoun. i don't think there's a full paradigm
for it. And like all demonstratives it can stand as a
3rd-person pronoun: 'he, she or it'. But
is deictic, like idaṃ, meaning that it
refers to something which is
present. It usually is used in
comparisons, for something
that is more remote than something else.
'that over there', as opposed to 'this over
here'. So if we take an example,
this means something like 'having heard there,
not a declarer of this elsewhere'.
And note here that akkhātā is the
normative singular of the agent noun
akkhātar,
'to declare'.
Okay, next warder gives us yet another
variation on bahubbīhi compounds.
The word karma, when acting as the second member
of a bahubbīhi, means 'desiring' or
'wanting' - literally 'whose desire is'.
.The first member can be
a noun,
or an infinitive. And when it's an
infinitive
the niggahīta is dropped to leave -tu.
Action nouns, those ending -ana,
can also be used as an alternative to
the infinitive.  dassana-kama is quite common -
literally 'whose desire is the seeing of'...
And these are often better rendered into
English by a straight infinitive, 'a man is coming,
who wants to see the blessed one'. And
refer to
lesson 19 if you want more on infinitives or
action nouns.
Warder now introduces a variation on the
future inflection. Most
future tense verbs, in Pali, take the
infix
-issa- . Some however miss out the
connecting -i-
sound and add -ssa-
directly to a strengthened root.
We've actually already covered this when
we looked at the formation
of future verbs in lesson 10. So i'll
refer you back to that...
Okay, let's move on...
to auxiliary verbs in Pali.
This is quite a complex area. And I've
also discussed this
in depth in other tutorials. So this will be a recap.
But it's important to understand that
there are three
verbal aspects: the simple -
which covers straight facts, 'I write';
the imperfective, also called the
continuous or progressive
- which indicates something ongoing,
'I am writing';
and the perfective
- which indicates something that is
complete or finished, 'I have written'.
Tense then is a combination of time period and
these aspects. Now, the tense of a statement
can be indicated either through
inflection - that is the altering of the
verb itself,
and in English it's only the simple past
and present that use
verb inflection - or via
periphrasis -  which is a combination of
another verb, an auxiliary, with a
participle. In English, the continuous aspect is
expressed by a form of the verb
'to be' and a present participle.
While the perfective is a variant of the
verb
'to have' and a past participle.
Similarly, Pali uses inflection of the
main verb to indicate
tense. That should be no surprise. And
this is how the
indicative inflections of Pali map onto English.
But it also uses periphrasis with
different forms of the verb 'to be' used
as auxiliaries in combination with
participles. And this is mainly used in Pali to
express the perfective aspect.
So verbs from the root √as with a past
participle
emphasize the meaning of present
perfective,
'have done', 'I have proceeded
correctly'. If you remember, participles when used as
finite verbs, are in the nominative case and take
their gender and number from the subject. While
the auxiliary verb, like all verbs, agrees
in person and number with the subject.
And this means that, when the subject is
a 1st or
2nd person pronoun, either
it can be dropped or the auxiliary can
be dropped, without any loss of meaning.
And with the verb √as, when the subject is
in the
3rd person, the auxiliary is nearly
always dropped.
(If you remember from lesson 5 the 3rd
person form of
√as takes the special existential meaning
'there is'). Now note Warder
tends to render many of his examples as
stative verbs.
But literally these are perfective.
And he also points out that the optative
or potential form of √as, assa,
can be used to express something hypothetical.
But optative forms from the root √hū are
more often used in this way.
Note also, that very rarely the
imperfective or continuous
aspect is expressed by an auxiliary
and a present participle. But there's
actually only a couple of examples of
this.
Verbs from the root √hū and
√bhū with a  past participle also
emphasize the perfective aspect. But they can
indicate any time period,. In which case,
it's the
inflection of the auxiliary which
indicates the time.
Aorist for the past etc.
And as Warder notes, when √hū is used
in the present as an auxiliary, most
often, this is expressing the 'historical
present'. Now, as well as past participles, and very
occasionally present participles,
auxiliaries can accompany future passive
participles. And as verbs, these can have a wide range
of meanings, from
'being capable of' to 'ought to be' or
'must be done'. So when in periphrasis,
we get 'the road must be or
has to be travelled'. And, in a few cases,
they appear with future auxiliary verbs
in which case they express
'will have to be'. 'the road will have to be
travelled'. So watch out for participle and
auxiliary combinations.
And for a more detailed discussion on
aspect & tense in Pali and the use of
auxiliaries with the active and passive
voice,
as well as, the historical present, see
the tutorials
appearing above now...
The other auxiliary verbs that Warder
lists, I don't find very convincing.
And, as he states, they need not be
regarded as a form of periphrasis.
So I think we can ignore them.
Well, that was lesson 24. And I encourage
you to watch those other tutorials on
verbal aspect.
There are solutions to the translation
exercises linked in the description
below. And in next week's lesson,
we look at secondary derivative nouns,
as well as, compounds from indeclinables.
