Semantic Processing of Compounds in Indian Languages

2018

History of Linguistics 2021. Selected papers from the 15th International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHoLS 15), Milan, 28 August – 1 September, by Raynaud, Savina, Maria Paola Tenchini and Enrica Galazzi (eds.) [SiHoLS 133], Amsterdam & Philadeplhia: John Benjamins., 2024

In this study I show that the internal order of Sanskrit Noun-Noun endocentric compounds cannot be captured by means of the notion 'head', defined in semantic or morphological terms (§ §1-2). Next, I outline the strategy devised by the Indian grammarian Pāṇini (4 th century B.C.) to handle the internal order of Sanskrit compounds (§3). Finally, I argue that the notion relevant for determining the internal order of Noun-Noun endocentric compounds in Sanskrit can be identified by combining Pāṇini's intuitions with the formalism developed within generative grammar (§4). In this way, this study provides an additional example of how useful the history of linguistics (specifically, the study of Pāṇini's grammar) may be for solving a problem in contemporary linguistics (specifically, the puzzle as to how the internal order of a certain class of compounds is determined).

Compounding in an important process in the word-building mechanism in Tamil. It raises many issues relating to morphology, syntax and lexicon. A prototypical compound is a word made up of at least two bases which can occur elsewhere as independent words. Compounding represents the interface between morphology and syntax par excellence. Compounds have two sets of characteristic properties. The first set makes compounding resemble syntax and the second set brings compounding closer to word formation. The head-modifier, predicate-argument, and oppositional relations together with constituent structure all tend to align compounding with syntax. However, compounds also have a number of features which make them resemble words. First compounds are lexicalized. They are then often subject to semantic shift of a kind associated with stored words, which means that their meaning becomes non-compositional or even totally idiosyncratic. This type of drift is characteristic of all types of compounding. In a related fashion, there are often lexical restrictions on which compounds are permitted, resulting in paradigmatic gaps which resemble those found in derivational or inflectional affixation. A further property which links compounds with the words is that of non-referentiality. If we look at the non-heads of the compounds, we find that they never refer to specific objects. The constituents of compounds differ from constituents of sentences. Related to this is the fact that non-heads of compounds typically fail to be inflected. One property of words which distinguishes them from phrase is morphological integrity: their elements can not be split up by other words or phrases. This is generally true of constituents of compounds. It is not uncommon for the compounds they form to become so lexicalized that the element loses its status as an independent word and becomes a clitic or an affix. Finally, there are often phonological processes that apply to compounds but not to phrases. The compound verbs are formed from a base by the addition of a verb which function as the verbalizer or whose function is to verbalize the base. The bases are generally nouns. Even a verb can be compounded with a verbalizing verb to form another verb. It can be stated that there is no productive verbalizing suffix in Tamil. The verbalizing suffix -i which was in use to form verbs from Sanskrit noun stems is no longer in use. Only compounding is extensively used in the formation of verbs in Tamil. There are a number of verbs which are used to form verbs from nouns. Not all nouns will be added to a verbalizer and conversely not all verbalizers can be added to a noun; only a closed set of nouns can be collocated with a particular verbalizer. The compounds could be overlapping in their meaning as same nouns can be collocated with overlapping group of verbs. This leads to synonymy among compound verbs. Though the formation of verbs from N + V combination is a productive process, the nouns involved in the formation of compound verbs with reference to a particular verbalizer appears to be a closed set rather than an open set. But it is possible to recruit new members to a closed set which makes the process productive. Because of the closed nature of the nouns participating in the compound formation which results in the idiosyncratic nature of the resultant meanings, there need to be the listing of the compounds in the dictionary as soon as the compounds come into vogue. Instead of talking in terms of sets of nouns it is possible to talk in terms of semantic area or domain to which the nouns belong. Rajendran (1978), Agesthialingom (1981:15-60), and Karthikeyan (1983) can be considered as important works on compound verbs in Tamil. Compound verbs listed in kriyavin tarkalat tamir akarati (KTTA) (Dictionary of Contemporary Tamil) have also been taken into consideration while dealing about the compound verb formation in Tamil. The strategies used in the formation of compound verbs in Tamil will be investigated here.

Studies in Language, 2024

Despite a longstanding tradition of studies in Sanskrit compounds, a description that enables comparisons in cross-linguistic perspective has not yet been worked out. The present article follows classificatory criteria introduced by Bisetto & Scalise (2005, 2009) and sketches a typology of compounds in the most archaic variety of Sanskrit, Early Vedic, as transmitted by the RigVeda. Analyzing compounds on the basis of the grammatical relations holding between their constituents provides a classification into coordinate, subordinate, and attributive compounds, with the endocentric/exocentric divide cutting across all classes. In order to identify the position of Early Vedic compounds on the syntax-morphology continuum, the article investigates the degree of cohesiveness at the level of morphology, prosody, syntax, and semantics. With this respect, the RigVeda offers a varied picture where relics of archaic, less cohesive forms occur side-to-side with more productive and word-like ones.

Indian linguistics, 2003

Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, 2020

Udayana Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities (UJoSSH), 2017

Sanskrit and Old Javanese language are not cognate language. In a language comparative study, the language that has no geneologis relationship could be analyzed contrastively. In typological morphological, Sanskrit is classified into flective language, while the Old Javanese language is classified agglutinative languages. The aim of this writing is to describe and explain the grammatical process of Sanskrit compound word that orbed into Old Javanese. The data tabulation belonging to the compound words were analyzed explanative descriptively according to the nature of the data and the methods and techniques that relevant to the object of study. The methods and techniques used were framed into three stages, namely the data providing, data analysis, and presenting analysis. The theoretical basis of language comparison is similarity or semblance of form and meaning. Based on the analysis, the compound word in Old Javanese language largely derived from the Sanskrit in free base form or d...

Sanskrit is very rich in compound formation. Typically a compound does not code the relation between its components explicitly. To understand the meaning of a compound, it is necessary to identify its components, identify the way the components group together, discover the relations between them and finally generate a paraphrase of the compound. In this paper, we discuss our efforts in building a constituency parser for Sanskrit compounds. The average performance of this parser is 85%.

Sanskrit is very rich in compound formation. Typically a compound does not code the relation between its components explicitly. To understand the meaning of a compound, it is necessary to identify its components, identify the way the components group together, discover the relations between them and finally generate a paraphrase of the compound. In this paper, we discuss our efforts in building a constituency parser for Sanskrit compounds. The average performance of this parser is 85%.