Simulating the Paninian System of Sanskrit Grammar

We propose a model for the computer representation of the Pān. inian system of sanskrit grammar. Based on this model, we render the grammatical data and simulate the rules of As.t.ādhyāȳı on computer. We then employ these rules for generation of morpho-syntactical components of the language. These generated components we store in a psubsequential automata. This we use to develop a lexicon on Pān. inian principles. We report briefly its implementation. 1 A Representation of As.t.ādhyāȳı The general grammatical process of As.t.ādhyāȳı (Katre, 1989) can be viewed as consisting of the following three basic steps: 1. Prescription of the fundamental components which constitute the language. 2. Characterization of these fundamental components by assigning them a number of attributes. 3. Specification of grammatical operations based on the fundamental components and their attributes. 1.1 Fundamental Components In his grammar Pān. ini furnishes a number of elements (phonemes/morphemes/lexemes) which constitute the building blocks of the language. We assign each of them a unique key in our database. Thus the phoneme /a/ has the key a 0, the kr. t suffix /a/ has the key a 3 and the taddhita suffix /a/ is represented by the key a 4. Given such a collection of unique keys, we define the set of fundamental components as follows: Definition 1 The collection of unique keys corresponding to the basic constituents of the language, we define as the set F of fundamental components. Further, we decompose this set F into two disjoint sets P and M, where P is the set of keys corresponding to the phonemes and M containing the keys of the rest of the constituting elements (morphemes/lexemes). P = {a 0, i 0, u 0, . . .} M = {bhU a, tip 0, laT 0, . . .} F = P ∪M (1) P ∩M = φ (2) 1.2 Attributes The fundamental units of the language are given an identity by assigning a number of attributes to them. The various technical terms introduced in the grammar come under this category, as also the it -markers and sigla or pratyāhāras. For example, the attributes hrasva, gun. a and ac characterize the element a 0 as short vowel /a/ and attributes like pratyaya, prathama and ekavacana tell that tip (= tip 0) is a third-person singular suffix. Again, each attribute is assigned a unique key in our database. Definition 2 The collection of unique keys corresponding to the terms, which characterize a fundamental component, we define as the set A of attributes. Corresponding to the sets P and M we can decompose the set A into two disjoint sets Aπ and Aμ, Aπ being the set of unique keys of the attributes to the elements of P and Aμ to elements of M. Aπ = {hrasva 0, udAtta 0, it 0, . . .} Aμ = {dhAtu 0, pratyaya 0, zit 9, . . .}