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Think classical Latin on steroids. Thanks largely to its scriptural use and Pāṇini's absolutely magisterial grammatical description meant mostly to protect the

Think classical Latin on steroids. Thanks largely to its scriptural use and Pāṇini's absolutely magisterial grammatical description meant mostly to protect the meaning of those scriptures, it was frozen in time at a much more rigid and inflected state than any of its Indo-European cousins. Classical Greek and Latin are slovenly and full of elisions and street usage - recreating infrequently-used grammatical cases using auxiliaries rather than endings/affixes, f'rinstance - by comparison. Grammatical precision in no way prevents the construction of meaningless or muddled utterances.

marcthe12 6y ago
I am curious about Avestan. It is dead and sister of Sanskrt.
- srean 6y ago
  As an Indian I have enormous curiosity about Persian culture -- cousins somehow distanced by the force of history. I find so many similarities in language (well of course that's a no-brainer), traditional music, recipes. I met many Iranian people while I was a student in the United States. My experience has been so absolutely wonderful. I don't how much goodwill Iranians have towards Indians, but personally I have a lot towards them. Hopefully would be able to visit sometime. This was impossible while I was a student in US -- without burning bridges that is.
lgessler 6y ago
Sure, it's a fact of Sanskrit that of all the well-attested classical IE languages it's done the best job of preserving PIE's case system. But what's this have to do with the question of whether Sanskrit has some especial status as a tool for thought, AI, or whatever people are claiming in this paper and elsewhere? Is it that using inflection for indicating grammatical relations is somehow superior to using adpositions? I'd be very interested to hear an argument that makes the case for this for something more than aesthetics, but I can't imagine one myself.
- stan_rogers 6y ago
  It's that grammatical specificity that is the core - and, truth to tell, the entirety - of the argument, as if it makes Sanskrit somehow equivalent to Loglan/Lojban-type constructed languages or a purpose-built computer language. Well, that and the prevalent idea in some nationalistic circles that Sanskrit is the original, perfect language, and that everything else is just a corrupt, fallen version of it. It's wishful thinking. Woo. It's the Lysenkoism of linguistics.

marcthe12 6y ago

I am curious about Avestan. It is dead and sister of Sanskrt.

srean 6y ago
As an Indian I have enormous curiosity about Persian culture -- cousins somehow distanced by the force of history. I find so many similarities in language (well of course that's a no-brainer), traditional music, recipes. I met many Iranian people while I was a student in the United States. My experience has been so absolutely wonderful. I don't how much goodwill Iranians have towards Indians, but personally I have a lot towards them. Hopefully would be able to visit sometime. This was impossible while I was a student in US -- without burning bridges that is.

lgessler 6y ago

Sure, it's a fact of Sanskrit that of all the well-attested classical IE languages it's done the best job of preserving PIE's case system. But what's this have to do with the question of whether Sanskrit has some especial status as a tool for thought, AI, or whatever people are claiming in this paper and elsewhere? Is it that using inflection for indicating grammatical relations is somehow superior to using adpositions? I'd be very interested to hear an argument that makes the case for this for something more than aesthetics, but I can't imagine one myself.

stan_rogers 6y ago
It's that grammatical specificity that is the core - and, truth to tell, the entirety - of the argument, as if it makes Sanskrit somehow equivalent to Loglan/Lojban-type constructed languages or a purpose-built computer language. Well, that and the prevalent idea in some nationalistic circles that Sanskrit is the original, perfect language, and that everything else is just a corrupt, fallen version of it. It's wishful thinking. Woo. It's the Lysenkoism of linguistics.