The story of Panini invinting the rules of sanskrit.ppt

It talks about sanskrit language and the rules set by panini

1. Linguistics Indian Knowledge system

2. Components of a Language Language has been the most effective tool for our communication since time immemorial (ancient). Though some basic communications can be handled with gestures, language become inevitable for communicating elaborate and complex ideas. Language is the tool which is difficult to maintain. There are differences in the same language spoken by people from different region. So, literature in a language becomes incomprehensible for the people in the future though they may be speaking the same language.

3. Components of a Language Language processing has two dimensions: receptive and productive. The receptive part of a language deals with the ability of an individual to receive language inputs from multiple sources and process them to decipher (decode) the intended message and comprehend them. The productive part of the language is to transmit back to others for their consumption. The focus in the former is on listening and reading, whereas it is on speaking and writing in the latter. So, sound (listening and speaking) and script (reading and writing) are the essential elements of a language. Therefore, language processing can be represented in a 2×2 framework.

4. Components of a Language Linguistics is a branch of language research that provides a scientific study of a language. It is a systematic study of language to understand speech sounds, grammatical structures, and meaning.

5. Panini work on Sanskrit grammar Indian grammarian Panini, who created a detailed system for Sanskrit grammar. In India, preserving sacred texts like the Vedas was crucial, so language, especially grammar, became very important. Panini’s work, known as the Ashtadhyayi , is a foundational text on Sanskrit grammar, organizing the language with clear rules for its structure, pronunciation, and vocabulary. Ashtadhyayi is a process of refinement and syntactical structuring because of which the language is called Samskrta (the refined one) and is considered a fine creation of human intelligence. Panini composed 3983 (sutras) rules to accommodate all the patterns and variation in Sanskrit language and arrange them in 8 chapters. (therefore the name Ashtadhyayi ). The basic approach of Panini and its distinguishing features make Sanskrit a powerful language and eternal in its appeal.

6. Panini work on Sanskrit grammar Panini did not write a set of rules and insisted that everyone should follow. E.g. this possible when you develop language like C or Python. He composed 3983 rule known as sutras which accommodates the pattern and variation in the Sanskrit language and arrange them is 8 chapters ( astadhyayi ). The entire language is rule-based, the vocabulary is not fixed or static for the language. The rules can be used for generating new words, as long as the rules are not violated. Therefore the language is dynamic can construct new words as demand arises, and can maintain the relevance.

7. Phonetics Phonetics is the study of sound in the language, phonetic in Sanskrit language has been addressed in detail, because the ancient Indian Knowledge System is oral. Entire transmission of Vedas from time has survived several thousand years on account id scientific methods of oral rendering. The science of the study of sound is known as ‘ Siksa ’. Regveda - pratisakhya and the Taittiriya - pratisakhya are the earliest works on the subject. According to these text the sound primarily arises at the junction of the of the throat and the chest due to the movement of the breath in the body and manifest in the oral cavity at different locations resulting in various sound patterns.

8. Pattern of Sanskrit Vocabulary The ultimate building block of any language is the word. Understanding the mechanics of word formation and generation is at the core of language mastery. Sanskrit vocabulary has set patterns that are unambiguously generated by clear syntactical rules.

9. Pattern of Sanskrit Vocabulary We shall start with a verbal root, say “ kṛ ” ( कृ ) meaning ‘in the context of or related to doing’. Using the grammatical rules, we can generate alternative forms of this verb. Figure 5.4 illustrates this example for eight forms: does, doing, doer, having done, please do, must do, to do, and done. Figure 5.4 We see a set pattern of word formation in these examples that is easy to understand and quick to build a vocabulary of the language. The question of interest to us is, “How is it possible to generate such patterns”? The words in Sanskrit can be divided into two categories: Noun forms (known as Subanta ) and verb forms (known as Tinanta ). Irrespective of whether a word has a noun form or a verb form, it can be expressed in a simple equation as follows:

10. Pattern of Sanskrit Vocabulary After adding a suffix to the base, relevant grammatical rules are invoked to generate the final word. If required additional suffixes can also be added to generate the word. This standardized structure lends itself to a natural process of patterns of vocabulary that we saw in Figure 5.4. To return to the example, as a simple illustration, the patterns happen in the following fashion:

11. Pāṇini defined “word” as one having a form with either a noun suffix or a verb suffix resulting in a noun form or verb form of the word respectively. Sanskrit grammar has a robust mechanism to generate an infinite number of words. As shown on the right side of the figure, a word in Sanskrit eventually acquires either a noun form or a verb form.

12. Pāṇini’s Rule of Word Generation Word = Root + Noun suffix or Verb suffix Generates infinite number of words Example (Verb root kṛ “to do”): करोति ( karoti – does) करोतु ( karotu – may do) कर्तुम् ( kartum – to do) कृत्वा ( kṛtvā – having done) For example, one can start from a verb root and add the required suffixes to it and generate a verb form. In our previous example, we illustrated patterns such as करोति ( karoti ), करोतु ( karotu ), कर्तुम् ( kartum ), and कृत्वा ( kṛtvā ) using the verb root kṛ , “related to doing”. These verb forms can be generated using appropriate suffixes.

13. Methods of Word Generation From Verb Root → Verb Form From Noun Root → Noun Form e.g., ‘ राम ’ ( Rāma ) → Rāma, Rāma’s, etc. Verb Root + Suffix → Noun Root → Noun Form Noun → Suffix → Verbal Root → Verb Form Enables crossover between noun & verb Similarly, starting from a noun (nominal) root one can generate a noun form by adding the required suffixes to it. For example, we can use a nominal root ‘ राम ’ ( rāma ) to generate noun forms such as by Rāma, Rāma’s, etc. using appropriate suffixes.

14. Role of Sanskrit in NLP NLP = Processing natural language using computers languages There are two key aspects: NLG (Natural Language Generation) → Generating text NLU (Natural Language Understanding) → Distilling meaning Sanskrit’s structure makes it suitable for both

15. Why Sanskrit for NLP? Rule-based, structured grammar ( Aṣṭādhyāyī ) Derivational & inflectional nature For example, in "reader," the "-er" is derivational, forming a new noun from the verb "read". In contrast, in "reads," the "-s" is inflectional, making it the third-person singular form of the verb, but it remains a verb.  Lexicon & syntax are precise → less ambiguity The lexicon refers to the entire vocabulary of a language or a person, essentially its dictionary of words and symbols, including their basic meanings. In contrast, syntax is the system of rules that governs how these words are put together to form meaningful sentences or phrases, dictating their order and structure.  Easier for NLG (word generation) compared to NLU

16. Why Sanskrit for NLP? ‘Payas’ is the common word for both water and milk in Sanskrit. When we hear the sentence नद्यां पयः प्रवहति ( nadyāṁ payaḥ pravahati ), meaning ‘payas’ is flowing in the river, we immediately resolve the ambiguity because we know for the fact that it is water that flows in a river, not milk. This is called yogyatā in Indian linguistics. Indian linguists have described fourteen such determiners to fix the meaning of a word in case of multiple meanings

17. Information Encoding in Sanskrit Example: बालः वृक्षस्य फलम् खादति → “The boy eats the fruit of the tree” Sentence broken into components: bāla (boy), vṛkṣa (tree), phala (fruit), khād (eat) Early linguists showed how meanings are encoded systematically

18. Key Linguistic Principles Ākāṅkṣā → Expectancy/need for connection between words Kāraka → Participants in action (doer, object, etc.) Vibhakti → Case markers for grammatical relations These principles help computers process meaning

19. Handling Ambiguity Sanskrit has in-built mechanisms to reduce ambiguity Example: Payas = water / milk Sentence context → नद्यां पयः प्रवहति (flowing in river) = water Principle: Yogyatā (semantic fitness) Indian linguists: 14 determiners to fix word meaning Applications & Advantages Useful for: Word sense disambiguation Machine translation Morphological analyzers & parsers Structured grammar → attractive for AI & NLP research Global research ongoing in Sanskrit Computational Linguistics