VyAkaraNa question: contextual factors in determining meaning

[birgit kellner]

Dear list-members,

I would like to know whether there exist any detailed studies of
contextual factors that assist in the disambiguation of meaning, as
posited by VaiAkaraNas and MImAMsakas.

I am referring to such factors as "context" (prakaraNa), "purpose" (artha), "suitability" (sAmarthya), "propriety"
(aucitya). In his "Indian theories of meaning" (1963, pp.48ff.), K.
Kunjunni Raja refers to different lists of such factors as contained
in the BRhaddevatA and VAkyapadIya. Before I start taking a closer
look at the primary sources he indicates, I would like to know whether
anyone else might already have done so and provided a systematic
comparison of these lists as well as possibly divergent
interpretations of the invididual items.

I am particularly interested in whether extralinguistic, psychological factors may (or may not) have
been viewed as relevant in this context. Most of the items listed by
BhartRhari and others (at least as given by Kunjunni Raja) seem to be either
linguistic (grammatical gender, semantic restrictions imposed by other
linguistic items) or situational (context, purpose), but there do not
appear any exclusively speaker- or hearer-related psychological
factors. This may of course be explicable through the grammarians'
background, but it is nevertheless of interest to the particular
perspective from which I am looking at these lists.

Any hints will be greatly appreciated,

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Best regards,

Birgit Kellner
Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies
Vienna University