On the origins of theories of compounding and the question of Indian influence on modern linguistics

Journal article

Abstract:: The ancient Indian linguistic tradition has been implicated in various ways in the development of modern linguistics. This paper starts from one superficially obvious point of influence: the use of Sanskrit terms for compound classes in modern approaches to compound classification. I show that the use of these terms does not reflect direct influence based on a proper understanding of the Indian tradition, and that in fact many interesting and important aspects of compound theorization in ancient India have been overlooked in modern linguistics.

Files:: Lowe_2026_On_the_origins.pdf

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Language:: English
Keywords:: compounds

classification

Sanskrit

Indian linguistic tradition

Pāṇini

bahuvrihi
Pubs id:: 2305753
Local pid:: pubs:2305753
Deposit date:: 2025-10-30
ARK identifier:: ark:/29072/ora_46503bd088ad487399580fc27a956898

Copyright holder:: John J. Lowe
Rights statement:: © 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properlycited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) orwith their consent.

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