About the Book: Pa?inis Perfect Rule: A Modern Solution to an Ancient Problem in
Sanskrit Grammar
A new interpretation of a 2,500-year-old Sanskrit text upends millennia of
debate and affirms an ancient linguists remarkably sophisticated grammatical
system. Around 500 BCE, the Indian scholar P??ini wrote a treatise on Sanskrit,
the A???dhy?y?, describing a kind of language machine: an algebraic system of
rules for producing grammatically correct word forms. The enormity and elegance
of that accomplishment—and the underlying computational methodology—cemented
P??inis place as a founder of linguistics. Even so, centuries of commentators
have insisted that there are glitches in the machines ability to tackle rule
conflict (that is,