Kannada needs its own grammar

A lot has been written and said about the revision of Kannada textbooks. I do not want to comment about those political moves. However, I do want to say something about an entirely different part of these textbooks, namely the notes that are given under an imposing title, namely saiddhantika bhashabhyasa. Does this mean the ‘theoretical study’ of language? I do not know. But under this imposing title, notes about the same old traditional ‘Kannada grammar’ are given.

I have pointed out in my book, Kannadakke beku kannadadde vyakarana (Kannada needs its own grammar), published about 20 years ago, that this traditional Kannada grammar, based mainly on Keshiraja’s 13th century treatise, Sabdamanidarpana, is only an effort to apply the grammatical rules of Sanskrit to Kannada.

Sanskrit is an Indo-Aryan language, whereas Kannada is a Dravidian language. The grammars of these two languages are derived from two entirely different proto-languages, hence differ from each another even in their basic principles. Take, for example, the formation of compounds in Sanskrit and Kannada: Compounds are formed in Sanskrit by joining together two (or more) nouns, and are classified depending upon which of the two nouns is the prominent one. If the second is prominent, the compound is a tatpurasha, if the first is prominent, it is an avyayibhava, if both are prominent, then a dvandva, and if an outside word is prominent, it is a bahuvrihi. The formation of compounds in Kannada is different.

All the Kannada compounds have the second word (which is a noun) as the prominent word, and hence, all of them come under tatpurusha! The first word, however, may be a noun, an adjective or a verb. For example, compounds like nelagaḍale (groundnut), kaimagga (handloom), and benkipeṭṭige (matchbox) have a noun as the first word; biccukatti (open sword), cuccumaddu (injection), and masekallu (whetstone) have a verb as the first word, and compounds like kiruberaḷu (little finger), niṭṭusiru (sigh), and kaṭṭaḍavi (dense forest) have an adjective as the first word. We need to classify these compounds depending upon the nature of their first word.

It is, therefore, evident that any effort to apply the classification of Sanskrit to Kannada compounds can only lead to confusion as it has happened in the traditional Kannada grammar. Some Kannada grammarians have postulated additional compounds like gamaka and kriyasamasa, which are not compounds at all. There are several such fundamental differences between the grammars of Sanskrit and Kannada. Since, the ancient grammarians of Kannada like Nagavarma and Keshiraja were completely unaware of these differences, their efforts to write Kannada grammar by using Sanskrit as their model has led to many wrongs and confusion. Since the saiddhantika bhashabhyasa of Kannada textbooks is based upon these traditional grammars, it also contains many such errors.

There is another important difference between the two. Sanskrit is a written form of a language that existed about 2000 years ago, and has remained unchanged. The written form of Kannada, however, has undergone changes in the past thousand years, depending upon the changes in its spoken form.

As a result, Old Kannada changed to Middle Kannada, which has now changed to Modern Kannada. Grammar too reflects these changes. For example, there is no difference between compounds and noun phrases in Sanskrit, except for the fact that in compounds, the first word loses its case suffix. Generally, there is no difference in meaning between compounds and noun phrases in Sanskrit. In Kannada, compounds are very different from noun phrases not only in form, but also in their meaning. One cannot generally obtain the meaning of a Kannada compound word by merely looking at the meaning of its constituent elements.

This, and several other differences that are based upon the above factor, were also not recognised by traditional Kannada grammarians, and this problem affects the Saiddhantika bhashabhyasa of Kannada textbooks.