Linguistics Archives - Mahar Pañña

KACCĀYANA VYĀKARAṆAṀ

(Kaccāyana’s Pāḷi Grammar)

By Ven. Kaccāyana Mahāthera

Department of Pāḷi
International Theravāda Buddhist Missionary University
Yangon, Myanmar
May 25, 2007

(Chapter I) (SANDHI-KAPPA)¹ (Euphonic combination)
(Chapter II) (NĀMA-KAPPA)² (Noun)
(Chapter III) (KĀRAKA-KAPPA) (Syntax)
(Chapter IV) (SAMĀSA-KAPPA) (Compound)
(Chapter V) (TADDHITA-KAPPA) (Nominal derivative)
(Chapter VI) (ĀKHYĀTA-KAPPA) (Verb)
(Chapter VII) (KIBBIDHĀNA-KAPPA) (Verbal derivative)
(Chapter VIII) (UṆĀDI-KAPPA) (Affixes)

Read More:

Kaccāyana Grammar and Saddanīti Grammar
Kaccayana’s documentation (https://kaccayana.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html)
𑀲𑀦𑁆𑀥𑀺𑀓𑀧𑁆𑀧 (Sandhikappa) (https://christham.net/)
- "sandhi is derived from saṃ + dhā meaning “putting together” and is used to refer to the transformation that results from the joining together of two words (or two parts of a word) for the sake of euphony.”
Satimā

Footnotes:

https://dn721804.ca.archive.org/0/items/kaccayana-pali-vyakaran-sandhi-kappa-vol.-1/kaccayana%20pali%20vyakaran%20%28%20sandhi%20kappa%20%29%20Vol.1.pdf ↩︎
https://ia600500.us.archive.org/3/items/kaccayana-pali-vyakaran-nama-kappa-vol.-2/kaccayana%20pali%20vyakaran%20%28%20nama%20kappa%20%29%20Vol.2.pdf ↩︎

East Pwo Karen Basic Sentences and Word Order

As explained in the book, Culture, Customs and Literature of the Eastern Pwo Karen People in Myanmar, by Ashin Pin Nya Tha Mi (2022), the basic word order for Eastern Pwo Karen is Subject-Verb-Object, whereas the basic word order for Burmese is Subject-Object-Verb. We can see the examples shown below.

‘Uncle eats rice.’

Subject (ကတ္တား)	Verb (ကြိယာ)	Object (ကံ)
မင်စဝ်	အင်း	မေဝ်
Uncle	eat	rice

(Pin Nya Tha Mi, 2022, p. 98)

‘ဘကြီးသည် ထမင်းကို စားသည်။’

ကတ္တား	ကြိယာ	ကံ
မင်စဝ်	အင်း	မေဝ်
ဘကြီး	စားသည်	ထမင်း

(Pin Nya Tha Mi, 2022, p. 98)

According to the research from Kato (2019), Karenic languages follow the word order of Subject-Verb-Object, unlike the languages of the Tibeto-Burman language family, most of which are Subject-Object-Verb type.

Kato (2019) also cited that the change of Karenic languages from Object-Verb to Verb-Object could have been the result of contact with Mon in the late first millennium AD (700-999 AD).

Examples are shown below.

‘Thawa struck Thakhlein.’

Subject (ကတ္တား)	Verb (ကြိယာ)	Object (ကံ)
သာအွာ	ဍောဟ်	သာခၠိင်း
Thawa	strike	Thakhlein

(Kato, 2019, Example 54)

“သာအွာသည် သာခလိင်းကို ရိုက်သည်။”

ကတ္တား	ကြိယာ	ကံ
သာအွာ	ဍောဟ်	သာခၠိင်း
သာအွာ	ရိုက်သည်	သာခလိင်း

(Kato, 2019, Example 54) in Burmese translation

In the case of a ditransitive verb, the two objects are arranged in the order of Recipient – Theme.
(Kato, 2019, p. 142)

‘Thawa gave Thakhlein a jackfruit.’

Subject	Verb	Indirect Object	Direct Object
သာအွာ	ဖှ်ေလင့်	သာခၠိင်း	နွဲာသး။
Thawa	give	Thakhlein	jackfruit

(Kato, 2019, Example 55)

“သာအွာသည် သာခလိုင်းကို ပိန္နဲသီးတစ်လုံး ပေးသည်။”

ကတ္တား	ကြိယာ	ကံ (Indirect)	ကံ (Direct)
Subject	Verb	Indirect Object	Direct Object
သာအွာ	ဖှ်ေလင့်	သာခၠိင်း	နွဲာသး။
သာအွာ	ပေးသည်	သာခလိင်း	ပိန္နဲသီး

(Kato, 2019, Example 55) in Burmese translation

References:

Kato, A. (2019, June 3). Pwo Karen. The Mainland Southeast Asia Linguistic Area, 131–175. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110401981-004

Pin Nya Tha Mi. (2022). Culture, Customs and Literature of the Eastern Pwo Karen People in Myanmar (1st Edition). Sarpay Beikman.