Pāṇinian Grammar: Part 9 - Initial and Final Heads

This series of articles is dedicated to Pāṇinian grammar of the Saṃskṛta language, as presented in his treatise “Aṣṭādhyāyī”. In trying to characterise the grammar of the Saṃskṛta language spoken in his day, Pāṇini Maharṣi manufactures legitimate and only legitimate words of the Saṃskṛta language, by designing a set of 4000 rules in a highly compressed language of the “sūtra” that operates on the sounds, verb roots, prefixes and suffixes, to generate all the words of Saṃskṛta language.

In this process, Pāṇini uses techniques from modern computing (especially the theory of formal languages that are used in analysis and compiler design for programming languages) and anticipates them even though it would be 2500 years from his time when the first actual computer would be invented. Techniques like optimal ordering of data, information compression, metalanguage, metarules, use of non-terminal symbols, light before heavy are all used in this masterpiece.

To study the Aṣṭādhyāyī, it is essential to know the Saṃskṛta language, as that is the language for which the grammar is designed. However in this series, my aim is to introduce how Pāṇini uses these techniques in his treatise for people who don’t have any knowledge of the Saṃskṛta language, or formal language theory in computer science. I also present the rich developments in the philosophy of language that Pāṇini’s work inspired in his successors and compare it with Western philosophies of language like that of Russell, Wittgenstein, de Saussure, etc.

Language was an important concern in ancient Indian philosophy, especially for the Āstika schools, as they believed that the efficacy of the Vedic rituals directly depended on the sounds of the chanted mantras. They wanted to justify how this efficacy is brought about, and in the process, they had to analyse how the sounds of a language relate to meaning and ultimately reality itself. By the end of this series, you will have a deep appreciation of the importance, depth and scope of Aṣṭādhyāyī and the Indian views on language.

Heads: Initial or Final

In this final part of the series, let us end on a lighter and a slightly less technical topic. Try reading the following two sentences.

1. The view that beating a third-rate Serbian military that for the third time in a decade is brutally targeting civilians is hardly worth the effort is not based on a lack of understanding of what is occurring on the ground.
2. It’s not a lack of understanding of what is occurring on the ground that creates the view that it’s hardly worth the effort to beat a third-rate Serbian military that is brutally targeting civilians for the third time in a decade

Both the above sentences mean exactly the same and are equivalent completely in terms of vocabulary. What differs is just ordering of the information - what detail comes after what? Yet, did you find the first sentence more difficult to comprehend and the second one easier to comprehend even though you realised at the end that both convey exactly the same thing? If yes, you have understood an important phenomena - ordering of information affects our comprehension. Let us now analyse a little deeper - why is the second sentence easier on the mind than the first. For that we need to start with gentler examples and some technical language needed to describe some linguistic concepts.

The first pairs of concepts are - HEAD and the MODIFIER.

Noun & Adjective

Let me explain what they mean by an example. Consider the phrase “this beautiful house”.

In the phrase ”this beautiful house”, the main thing that is being talked about is ”house” and the demonstrative pronoun ”this” and the adjective ”beautiful” are modifiers. You realise that the main thing that is being described in this phrase is the house. The word “beautiful” just adds additional information that the house is of a particular kind - nice to look at. The word “this” simply conveys that you are not talking about any random house but a particular house that is relevant to your context and is situated nearby.

So we have: “this beautiful house” Head: house Modifiers: this, beautiful

Now, in English, we have by its syntactical convention that the modifiers (adjectives, articles) come first and then the head comes finally at last. Such languages where the head comes last and its modifiers come first are called logically as head-final languages (rarely, scholarly jargon does make sense!). But this is not the case in all languages and need not be. In principle, the head and its modifiers could have come in any order.

Take Spanish, for example.

Phrase: “esta casa hermosa” (esta=this, casa=house, hermosa=beautiful) Literal Translation: “this house beautiful”

In Spanish, first comes the demonstrative pronoun (this) , then the head (house) and its other modifiers (beautiful). So in this case, Spanish is a head-intermediate language because the head comes in between a set of modifiers - neither first nor last.

Let us consider Basque, a language spoken in France. There, this same phrase is given below.

Phrase: etxe eder hau (hau=this, eder=beautiful, etxe=house) Literal word-by-word Translation: “house beautiful the”

So, we see that in Basque, the head comes first and is then followed by its modifiers.

Exercise: In all the languages that you know of, translate this phrase and see where the heads and the modifiers came. In Indian languages, the phrase will come like English only.

Reported Speech

The concepts of head and modifiers are also important in other scenarios.

Consider the following sentence: “He said that the water was hot”.

We can split the sentence as follows:

He said = the main sentence, HEAD

that= marker of reported speech

the water was hot = details of what was reported, MODIFIER

So here we see that the main sentence is “he said”. The part “the water was hot” is simply a description or a detail about what was said. In other words, the reporting sentence (“he said”) is the HEAD and the reported sentence (“the water was hot”) is its MODIFIER. In this case, English prefers a head-initial approach. But let me translate this sentence in few other languages:

Consider Hindi:

Sentence: “उन्होंने कहा कि पानी गर्म था”

Literal word-by-word Translation: He said that water hot was

Syntax: HEAD-MODIFIER

Consider Sanskrit:

Sentence: सः अवदत् जलम् उष्नम् आसीत् इति, PREFERED, (OR) जलम् उष्नम् आसीत् इति सः अवदत् (ALSO USED)

Literal word-by-word Translation: He said water hot was that (OR) water hot was that he said

Syntax: HEAD-MODIFIER (OR) MODIFIER-HEAD

Consider Tamil:

Sentence: தண்ணீர் சூடாக இருந்தது என்று அவர் கூறினார், PREFERED, (OR) அவர் கூறினார் தண்ணீர் சூடாக இருந்தது என்று, (RARELY USED)

Transliteration: taṇṇīr sūḍāga irundadu enḍru avar kūrinār, PREFERED, (OR) avar kūrinār taṇṇīr sūḍāga irundadu enḍru, (RARELY USED)

Literal word-by-word translation: Water hot was that he said, (OR) He said water hot was that

Syntax: MODIFIER-HEAD PREFERRED / HEAD-MODIFIER

We see that both English and Hindi allow only a head initial construction for reported speech. The head should come first and then only the modifier - what was reported. But Tamil and Sanskrit allow both head-initial and head-final construction. But the head-final construction is preferred in both Tamil and Sanskrit and the head-initial construction for reported speech is used less often.

Possessive Case

Next, let us go to possessives. Consider the English phrases below.

Phrases: Rama’s book (OR) book of Rama

Syntax: MODIFIER-HEAD (OR) HEAD-MODIFIER

In expressing a possessive like in the phrase “Rama’s book”, the main thing being talked about is the book. “Rama’s” is just a modifier that conveys the additional information that the book being talked about is owned by or associated with Rama. In the apostrophe construction “Rama’s book”, we have a head-final construction whereas in the OF construction like in the phrase “book of Rama”, we have a head-initial construction. So we see that in case of possession, English allows both a head-initial and a head-final construction. But Indian languages in this case, allow only a head-final construction in this possession scenario.

Examples:

Hindi: रामा का पुस्तक

Sanskrit: रामस्य पुस्तकम् / राम​-पुस्तकम्

Tamil: ராமனுடைய​ புத்தகம் (rāmaṇuḍaiya puttagam)

Literal Translation in all the above examples: Rama [ ] book (MODIFIER - HEAD)

Subject - Verb - Object

Consider an ordinary English phrase “Rama killed Ravana”. In this sentence, the main person being talked about is Rama. In English grammar, you would have learnt that “Rama” is the subject of this sentence. Everything else in the sentence - “killed Ravana” - describes what the subject “Rama” is doing and if you still remember your school English grammar, you would have been taught that the things that describe the subject are called predicates. Now, if you want to recast it in our terms, the subject is the HEAD as he is the entity being described. The predicate describing the modifier is the MODIFIER. In English, the subject of a sentence always comes first and only then the predicate. So, in case of a subject-predicate scenario, English is a purely head-initial language. Now let’s go deeper into the predicate “killed Ravana”. Here, the main thing is the action that is being done - “killed”. The object of the verb “Ravana” is simply an additional information that conveys who was being killed. So, within the predicate - the verb is the HEAD and the object of the verb is the MODIFIER. And we know that in English, the object always has to come after the verb. So, within the predicate too, English strictly follows a head-initial construction.

In short, in the sentence: Rama kills RavanaSUBJECT: Rama=> HEAD PREDICATE: killed Ravana => MODIFIER (answers the question: Rama did what?)

WITHIN THE PREDICATE: VERB: killed=> HEAD OBJECT: Ravana=> MODIFIER (answers the question: Who/What got killed?)

So, English strictly follows a head-initial construction when organising a simple SUBJECT-VERB-OBJECT sentence.

Now, this need not always be the case always. Consider Biblical Hebrew. If I translate this same sentence into Biblical Hebrew, it is:

Hebrew sentence: Harag Rama et-RavanaLiteral Translation: Killed Rama Ravana Here, we see that the subject of the verb “Rama” neither comes first nor last in the sentence - it sits in between the initial verb and the object. So, it is head-intermediate with respect to subject and predicate. Within the predicate, the verb comes first (killed) and then the object (Ravana). So, in the predicate, Biblical Hebrew is a head-initial language. It is the same with Classical Arabic. [Note: Modern Hebrew and Modern Standard Arabic follow the same English order of SUB-VERB-OBJ].

How about a full head-final construction? Subject comes last after the predicate. The verb comes after the object in the predicate - so OBJ VERB SUB - exactly the reverse of English. So the sentence “Rama killed Ravana” would come out in such a language as “Ravana killed Rama”. Such languages are rare but they do exist - examples of this are a few Native American languages: Hixkaryana and Urarina.

How about Indian languages? Indian languages have flexible word order and the order of the subject, verb and the object can be changed due to the case endings. But the normal word order is that of SUB OBJ VERB. So, the English sentence “Rama killed Ravana” normally comes out as “Rama Ravana killed” in all Indian languages. Here, the subject “Rama” first and then only the predicate. So it is head-initial with respect to subject and predicate. But within the predicate, the HEAD verb comes later after the MODIFIER which is its object. So, Indian languages are head-final within the predicate.

Relative Clauses

Consider the following sentence: Rama, who gave me the book, is here.

Let us now concentrate on the phrase Rama who gave me the book. Here, the main person being talked about is “Rama”. So, this is the HEAD. Now, the part “who gave me the book” is just additional information that describes “Rama”- it is called a relative clause in grammar. In this case, a relative clause acts as the MODIFIER. Now, as usual, here, the MODIFIER (relative clause) follows the HEAD (main clause). So, this is once again a head-initial construction. In English, only a head initial construction is allowed for relative clauses.

This is the same in Hindi as well. For example,

Hindi sentence: राम जिसने मुझे किताब दी थी वह यहाँ है

Literal word-by-word translation: Rama who to-me book gave he here is

But Dravidian languages like Tamil only allow a head-final construction where the relative clause comes first and the independent clause comes later. For example,

Tamil sentence: புத்தகத்தை எனக்குக் கொடுத்த ராமர் இங்கே இருக்கிறார்

Transliteration: puttagattai enakkuk koḍutta rāmar ingē irukkirār

Literal word-by-word translation: Book having-given Rama here is

What about Sanskrit? It turns out Sanskrit, also like Dravidian languages, mostly follow the head-final construction although rarely it allows a head-initial construction for relative clauses.

Sanskrit sentence: यः मम पुस्तकं दत्तवान् रामः अत्र अस्ति

Literal word-by-word translation: Who to-me book gave Rama here is

Let us summarise all the information in a table:

PARAMETER	SANSKRIT	TAMIL	HINDI	ENGLISH
Noun-Adj	Head final	Head final	Head final	Head final
Reported Speech	Head final	Head final	Head initial	Head initial
Possessive Case	Head final	Head final	Head final	Head initial preferred
Subject Predicate	Head initial	Head initial	Head initial	Head initial
Verb-Object	Head final	Head final	Head final	Head initial
Relative Clause	Head final	Head final	Head initial	Head initial

Comparing the entries of this table, we find that Sanskrit=Tamil and Hindi is in between English and Sanskrit. Like this, we can compare on so many aspects, whether a language is head-initial or head-final. In doing so, we arrive at the same results (verify this with the 6 parameters in the table above):

• European languages prefer more head-initial constructions whereas modern Indian languages have more head-final constructions.
• Among the Indian languages, the Dravidian languages and Sanskrit are almost always head-final but the modern Indo-Aryan languages (that are directly descended from Sanskrit) have developed quite a bit of head-initial tendencies (like in reported speech, relative clauses). Actually, Sanskrit and Dravidian are almost identical in this regard even if belonging to different languages families!

Authored by Rama Seshan Chandra Sekaran. Published by Brhat.