The grammar of the Sanskrit language has a complex verbal system, rich nominal declension, and extensive use of compound nouns.
Sanskrit grammatical tradition (vyākaraṇa, one of the six Vedanga disciplines) began in late Vedic India and culminated in the Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini.
The oldest attested form of the Proto-Indo-Aryan language as it had evolved in the Indian subcontinent after its introduction with the arrival of the Indo-Aryans is called Vedic.
[a] This led to the rise of a vigorous, sophisticated grammatical tradition involving the study of linguistic analysis, in particular phonetics alongside grammar, the high point of which was Pāṇini's stated work, which eclipsed all others before him.
In order to ensure wide dissemination, Pāṇini is said to have preferred brevity over clarity[6] – it can be recited end-to-end in two hours.
Patañjali, who lived three centuries after Pāṇini, wrote the Mahābhāṣya, the "Great Commentary" on the Aṣṭādhyāyī and Vārtikas.
The following is a timeline of notable post-Pāṇinian grammatical figures and approximate dates:[8] The Sanskrit sound system can be represented in a table of place and manner of articulation:[9][10] The table below shows the traditional listing of the Sanskrit consonants with the nearest equivalents in English (as pronounced in General American and Received Pronunciation or wherever relevant in Indian English), French, Spanish, Russian or Polish, along with approximate IPA values.
The form of the symbols used to write Sanskrit has varied widely geographically and over time, and notably includes modern Indian scripts.
What is important is that the adherence to the phonological classification of the symbols elucidated here has remained constant in Sanskrit since classical times.
[A] Long syllabic r (ṝ) is also quite marginal, occurring (optionally) in the genitive plural of ṛ-stems (e.g. mātṛ, pitṛ ⇒ mātṝṇām, pitṝṇām).
a i u·ṇ ṛ ḷ·k e o·ṅ ai au·c ha ya va ra·ṭ la·ṇ ña ma ṅa ṇa na·m jʰa bʰa·ñ gʰa ḍʰa dʰa·ṣ ja ba ga ḍa da·ś kʰa pʰa cʰa ṭʰa tʰa ca ṭa ta·v ka pa·y śa ṣa sa·r ha·l
Visarga ḥ ः is an allophone of r and s, and anusvara ṃ, Devanagari ं of any nasal, both in pausa (i.e., the nasalised vowel).
The Śākalas and the Atharva Veda Prātiśākhya agree on the observation that abhinidhana occurs only if there is a slight pause between the two consonants and not if they are pronounced jointly.
[23] The Atharva Veda Prātiśākhya 2.38 lists an exception: a plosive at the end of the word will not undergo abhinidhāna and will be fully released if it is followed by a consonant whose place of articulation is further back in the mouth.
[24] The Cārāyaṇīya Śikṣa states that the consonants affected by abhinidhāna are the voiceless unaspirated plosives, the nasal consonants and the semivowels l and v.[25][f] Sanskrit inherits from Proto-Indo-European the feature of regular in-word, vowel variations known in the context of the parent language as ablaut or more generally apophony.
This feature, which can be seen in the English forms sing, sang, sung, and song, themselves a direct continuation of the PIE ablaut, is fundamental[g] in Sanskrit both for inflexion and derivation.
Whilst with the 1-grade-based system it is possible to derive the 0-grades thus: the approach used by the ancient grammarians does not always work: To overcome this, the ancient grammarians, while formulating most roots in zero-grade form, make an exception for some, and prescribe a treatment called samprasāraṇa on these: Thus, unlike most others, the root 'svap-' does not hold a 0-grade vowel, and is subject to samprasāraṇa before the past participle 'sup·tá-' can be formed.
[34] Nouns whose stem vary between strong, middle and weak forms may correspondingly reflect 2nd, 1st and zero-grade vowels respectively.
[q] The author of the Kāśikā commentary (c. 700 CE) declares its use optional, and it might have disappeared from popular speech in the early centuries of the Common Era.
[36][37] Verb conjugation in Sanskrit involves the interplay of five 'dimensions', number[τ], person[υ], voice[φ], mood[χ] and tense[ψ], with the following variables:[38] periphrastic future, simple future Further, participles are considered part of the verbal systems although they are not verbs themselves.
While the same noun cannot be seen to be of more than one gender, adjectives change gender on the basis of the noun they are being applied to, along with case and number, thus giving the following variables:[53][54] dative, ablative, genitive, locative, vocative The oldest system of declension was in Proto-Indo-European, inherited by Sanskrit, to affix the endings directly to the nominal root.
The general classification is: When the nominal endings are being affixed to a noun of each class, they may undergo, in some cases, some changes, including being entirely replaced by other forms.
However, Sanskrit, especially in the later stages of the language, significantly expands on this both in terms of the number of elements making up a single compound and the volume of compound-usage in the literature, a development which has no parallels elsewhere.
[68] In Sanskrit, adverbs are either inherited as set forms from the parent language or may be derived from nouns, pronouns or numeral.
Thus within the bounds of phonological and morphological definition wrought by Pāṇini, the syntax of Sanskrit has continued to evolve in the course of its productive literary history.
It furnished no subconscious symbols for the impressions which we receive in childhood nor for the emotions which form our character in early adolescence.