| Panini |
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He was a sixth-century-BCE Indian grammarian who compiled a Sanskrit grammar known as the Ashtadhyayi (translation: "the eight chapters"), which contains 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology. It is the earliest known Sanskrit grammar, and is also the earliest known work of descriptive and generative linguistics – i.e., it describes the way people spoke Sanskrit, and it gave rules for creating properly formed Sanskrit sentences. |
| Quotation:
"On November 22, Calcutta University, the oldest university in India, conferred the degree of Doctor of Literature on [Noam] Chomsky for his outstanding contributions in the fields of linguistics and social sciences. Receiving the degree from Vice-Chancellor Asis Kumar Banerjee, Chomsky said he was happy to receive the honour in the land where his subject had its origin. 'The first generative grammar in the modern sense was Panini's grammar,' he said."
(Source: Frontline (India's National Magazine), Volume 18 - Issue 25, Dec. 2001 ) |