
Pāṇini: Catching the Ocean in a Cow’s Hoofprint - dipankarbajpai
https://blog.granthika.co/panini/
======
KorematsuFred
Panani has not really got his due. While celebrated in India he remains vastly
unrecognized. He invented what we now call Context-Free-Grammar.

~~~
ncmncm
It would be better to say he invented all generative grammars, among which the
context-free form is noted as easy to parse. In consequence, it suffers from
limited conciseness.

The piece doesn't say outright that nothing in Chomsky is original to him, but
it is a necessary conclusion.

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_emacsomancer_
India is interesting as one of the places where linguistics was discovered
before writing. Which is why Indian "alphabets" are actually in a
phonologically meaningful order rather than just an arbitrary order.

~~~
agumonkey
not totally unrelated, drum teaching in India allegedly starts with a year of
verbally singing fundamental rhythms without touching a drum.

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unmole
The author blurb at the end of this brilliant piece simply says "Vikram
Chandra: Writer, programmer, teacher." It wasn't until I clicked through to
the linked website[0] that I realized that this was THE Vikram Chandra. His
novels _Sacred Games_ and _Red Earth And Pouring Rain_ are very highly
recommended. He also has a non-fiction book, _Geek Sublime_ that seems
somewhat related to this article.

0: [http://www.vikramchandra.com/](http://www.vikramchandra.com/)

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contingencies
TLDR; Pāṇini[0] was the first Indo-European grammarian.

Coming from Latin in high school I studied Pali and Sanskrit to a minor extent
in university. I've since come to loathe learning Indo-European languages for
their conjugations and prefer to revel in East and Southeast Asia, with more
interest in classical Chinese than Sankrit. That said, when drinking I make a
considered exception for French, and it's amazing how close the Indians[1]
(and the French!) came to China, and how Vietnam and Cambodia (as
Austroasiatic champions) emerged despite all of them!

Bonus old poem[2] for people who like obtuse grammar jokes.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C4%81%E1%B9%87ini](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C4%81%E1%B9%87ini)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%E1%BB%B9_S%C6%A1n](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%E1%BB%B9_S%C6%A1n)

[2] [http://pratyeka.org/homage-to-the-
synonym.pdf](http://pratyeka.org/homage-to-the-synonym.pdf)

