Linguistic Theory in India and Panini

인도의 언어이론과 파니니

In the history of linguistics in the world the scholars in India could be regarded as the representative linguists, who had provided the cornerstone of the academic development at linguistics. Without looking into the contents of Indian linguistic theories devised and developed in the past it would be almost impossible to account for the origin of descriptive linguistics and historical linguistics. These linguistics trends became full-fledged in 19 and 20 century and are still accepted by a lot of researchers in order to analyze newly revealed languages and train students only coming up the toddling level of linguistic studies. In this paper I will show how far the influence of Indian linguistics has colored the flow of linguistic growth historically. Especially through the analysis of Panini grammar I will prove the intimate relationship between the Indian linguistic theory and the generative grammar - it is the most active theory at present. The methods that Panini applied to constitute the rules like sutra include lots of information, that also could be discovered at the rules postulated in the generative grammar. One of the common features found at both linguistic theories is the simplicity of rule representation. At the generative grammar a rule has to be established without any redundancy. When certain number of sounds like p, b, m show the same phonological. change relevant to lips (labial in linguistic term) different rules need not to be given for each sound separately. It is better to find a way of putting the sounds together in a rule with grouping the 3 sounds with the shared phonetic feature 'labial'. In Panini grammar the form of a rule was decided based on the simplicity, too. For example, sutra 6.1.77 shows the phonological connection between the vowels i, u r 1 and the semi-vowels y, v, r, 1. However, it does not require to postulate 4 individual rules respectively. Instead a rule in which the vowels and the semi-vowels are involved is suggested, and linguistically the rule make it clear that the more simpler the rules will be the better they can reflect the efficiency of human language acquisition. Although the systems introduced at Panini grammar have some sense of distance from the language education itself we cannot deny the fact that the grammar formulates the a turning point of linguistic development. It is essential for us to think over the grammar from the view point of the modem linguistic theories to understand their root and trunk more thoroughly. It will also help us to predict in which way linguistic tendency will proceed to in future.