To classify words: Western and Indian Grammatical Approaches

Emilie Aussant (1)

1 HTL - HTL - Histoire des Théories Linguistiques - UMR 7597

This paper aims at briefly recalling the presuppositions the European and Indian grammatical approaches present regarding word-classification. From its very beginning up to the most contemporary trends in linguistics, the European approach knew essentially only one classification of words: the canonical list of eight parts of speech which comes from Dionysius Thrax and which was developed, restructured, sub-divided, etc., throughout the course of history, according to the aims of particular scholars or schools. Within Vyâkarana, native Sanskrit grammar, the situation is not so different: the Sanskrit grammarians generally alternated between only two classifications (the four-fold Yâskan division of parts of speech and the two-fold division proposed by Pânini); some of them like Nâgesa having even tried to reconcile the two.

Mots clés: Words Classification; parts of speech; Sanskrit Grammar; Graeco-Latin Grammar

Domaines: Linguistique

Emilie Aussant. To classify words: Western and Indian Grammatical Approaches. Sanskrit Syntax and Discourse Structures, Peter M. Scharf, Emilie Aussant, Gérard Huet, Jun 2013, Paris, France. ⟨halshs-01396088⟩