CLASSIFICATION OF SANSKRIT COMPOUNDS. EUROPEAN TRADITION

Abstract

Тhis article is devoted to the consideration and analysis of main types and subtypes of Sanskrit compounds within the framework of European tradition which is a tradition of a listener’s grammar. On the basis of this a form and a function are the peculiarities of the compounds which a listener must know in order to delanguage them and turn into a concept. Ontological (analysis of the form), epistemological (explanatory, analysis, interpretation of the meaning) and functional (peculiarities of the functioning) approaches to samasas are presented in the European tradition. On the basis of syntactic relations between constituent elements and peculiarities of functioning scientists distinguish copulative compounds (with coordinate relation), determinative compounds (with subordinate relation), secondary adjective compounds (possessive compounds, compounds with governed fi nal member, secondary adjective compounds used adverbially) and irregular compounds. Analysis and interpretation of the meaning allow to divide compounds into optional (non-obligatory, members of which can be used as independent lexical units with the same meaning as in the compound) and obligatory (members of which can’t be used independently and express the same meaning as in the compound). These kinds of compound words are broken down into subspecies having taken the Indian grammarians’ terms (tatpurusa, dvandva, bahuvrihi and avyayibhava) as a basis. In domestic linguistics compound words are classifi ed either on the basis of syntactic relations of components (as word combinations) and are divided into primary (with coordinate and subordinate relations) and secondary (with co-subordinate relation) or on the basis of part-of-speech belonging (as a sequence of independent words – morphological basis) in which kinds of compounding of nouns, adjectives and dvandva are considered. Besides, spheres of their usage are also determined (functional basis).