An Introductory Grammar of the Pali Language

Charleston Buddhist Fellowship, Charleston, USA, 2012. — 143 p.This book is intended to be an introduction to the grammatical structure of the Pāḷi language for those who have no prior knowledge of subject. As such, it has been designed to make the study of Pāḷi grammar as easy as possible, by presenting the basic principles of the language and its inflections in a clear and systematic format.
Large portions of this book are based upon the third revised edition of A Practical Grammar of the Pāḷi Language (1997) by Charles Duroiselle. There are far too many typographical errors in that work, however, and I have endeavored to correct them in the current book, without, I hope, adding errors of my own. Moreover, many of the English translations given by Duroiselle are outdated, and I have tried to bring them into line with current interpretations.
Though Chapter 1 gives only basic information about the various changes that the sounds of Pāḷi can undergo, enough has been included so that the most common of these changes can be easily recognized when they are encountered in reading the texts. Several of the works consulted in preparing this book contained numerous references to Sanskrit in an effort to explain and illustrate the permutations that have occurred in Pāḷi. In this book, references to Sanskrit have been kept to an absolute minimum.
Chapter 2, Declension, and Chapter 5, Conjugation, begin with a definition of terms before the discussion of Pāḷi noun morphology and verb morphology, respectively.
These definitions provide the basis for understanding the grammatical structure of Pāḷi from a theoretical point of view. The definitions are followed by paradigms illustrating the actual forms found in Pāḷi. Chapter 6, Indeclinables, also begins with a definition of terms, as do Chapter 7, Compounds, and Chapter 8, Syntax. In general, technical jargon has been avoided.
Throughout the book, additional material is included in notes.