Quick question on Sanskrit sentence structure

[Guest guest]

Hi,

 

Just wondered something on sentence structure and grammar.

 

If in English I say 'I kick the ball' do you say in Sanskrit 'I the ball kick' or maybe 'I have the ball kicked' or is it exactly the same?

 

Thanks

[Avinash]

Consider the English sentence "I kicked the ball."

Here 'I' is subject, 'kicked' isn verb and 'the ball' is object.

So, the order is subject + verb + object.

 

When people translate this sentence into Sanskrit, then they usually keep the order as subject + object + verb i.e. "I the ball kicked". But often you will find other orders too like subject + verb + object, verb + subject + object etc. All of these are correct.

 

Now, a question can arise as to how the meaning remains the same even on changing the word order when we know that in English changing the word order changes the meaning and sometimes makes the sentence as meaningless.

 

The answer is that in English the relative place of a word (or a set thereof) in a sentence determines what part of speech it belongs to.

 

In "I kicked the ball.", "the ball" is object.

In "The ball kicked me.", 'The ball" is subject.

 

So, the same set of words, viz., "the ball" can be subject or object depending on its relative position in the sentence.

But in Sanskrit, the word itself tells what part of speech it belongs to. The Sanskrit translation of 'ball' is 'kandukah' if it is subject. If it is object, then it is 'kandukam'.

 

So, wherever we see 'kandukah', we know it is subject; wherever we see 'kandukam, we know it is object. Even on changing word order, 'kandukah' remains subject and 'kandukam' remains object. Therefore, the order of words does not matter as much as in English.