May I Speak to Professor Panini, Please? Discovering the Algorithm for Rule Conflict Resolution in the Aṣṭādhyāyī

Chaired by Òscar Pujol, Director, Instituto Cervantes.

Panini's Aṣṭādhyāyī, composed around the 5th century BCE, is one of the most complete grammars of any language, but its rules can conflict when applied to the same word, and Panini left a metarule to decide which one wins. For over two millennia, scholars had understood that metarule in a way that frequently produced grammatically wrong results. This talk describes the discovery of what Panini actually meant, and how reading the rule correctly resolves conflicts that had defeated interpreters for centuries.

About the speaker: Rishi Rajpopat completed this work as a doctoral student in Sanskrit at the University of Cambridge before moving to the University of St Andrews.