Help with a sentence?

[Dominique.Thillaud]

>>what would be the subject in the
>>sentence you mentioned firstly, if you disconnect
>>sva from kaH: svayoor ...... zakyate to handle as
>>a separate sentence, how to translate this?
>
>The subject would be the (real) subject of jJaatum na zakyam:
>
>``svayoor maataa-pitroor api sarvam caritram jJaatum na zakyam''
>
>(transl: it is impossible (for one) to know the whole life even of
>(one's) own parents)
>
>>Let us return to your first question: do you
>>accept my advice for taking sva as a reflexiv
>>pronomina or not?
>
>I do.

        Don't me, perhaps because I don't understand all.

        According Stchoupak, Nitti, Renou's "Dictionnaire
Sanskrit-Francais", sv zakya- : "le neutre peut aussi s'employer
IMPERSONNELLEMENT, avec infinitif non passif" (I upcase).
        There is just a gnomic sentence without any subject and introducing
(for one) and (one's) is artificial. Perhaps they exist in the deep
structure, but they are neutralized in the nominal transformation who cut
the common referent of zakyam and jJAtum: The "formal subject" in this
nominal forms could be: I, you, she, we, Peter or the cat. About him, the
only thing we can know is an almost empty semantic feature: it can be a
subject for the verbs zak- and jJA-, nothing else (number, gender, person,
&c.). Naming it the "real subject" is nothing but a improper projection.
        Without subject, how sva can be a pro-noun? how inflect it?

        Before a noun, sva acts clearly as an adjective qualifying here the
parents as "belonging strongly to the context" (probably the ancient
meaning of *swe: see Eurindian facts and Ved. svadhA "inherent power") and
svayor could be replaced by priyayor, satyayor, janitavator, or even
removed. The adjectival use of sva is well attested (previous mails), his
Latin equivalent "suus" is an adjective and languages need commonly such
adjectives (Fr. "propre", Eng. "own"). The fact that some of them can be
used as pronouns ("this is my own car" / "that's my own") don't implies
they ARE pronouns.
        This opinion is Renou's one (Gr. Sanscr. §255): "sva-, beaucoup
plus souvent adjectif que pronom (...), insiste en principe sur la notion
de propriete" and Macdonell's one (Ved. Gr. for St. §115c): "sva is a
reflexive adjective (...). It is inflected like an ordinary adjective
(priya) in the RV (except the two isolated pronominal forms svasmin and
svasyAs)."
        (somebody able to count the number of sve in the RV ?)

        To give a personal answer at a connected problem, I believe that a
compound such svapitR is originally a karmadhAraya, not a tatpuruSa, even
if today both interpretations are possible.

        If I'm wrong, I would be very happy to know why.

        Regards,
Dominique

Dominique THILLAUD
Universite' de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France