[INDOLOGY] "Psychological complexity" of Sanskrit language/literature

[Antonia Ruppel]

Dear Gleb,

I dimly remember the study that I read some 15 years ago by an Indian
> scholar by the last name Basu (or Vasu), that estimated that Sanskrit has
> about 30-40% more psychologically relevant terms/words, than classical
> languages (i.e. Greek and Latin), and 80% more than modern European
> languages.
>
> My (perhaps entirely unhelpful) first reaction to this is that Sanskrit,
due to its history and stylistic conventions, has many more words for
pretty much anything than most other languages do, literary/ancient or not.

Also, my guiding principle in the questions you ask would be to make sure I
keep questions of language/grammar and of literature/style very clearly
separate. The one truly linguistic aspect of a language that could express
its 'psychological complexity' to me would be its lexicon (unless we were
to consider morphemes such as inclusive 'we' vs exclusive 'we' that are
found in some languages, but not e.g. Sanskrit; or perhaps verbal moods
that distinguish between 'would', 'could' and 'should', all expressed by
the same verbal category in Classical Sanskrit). The main distinguishing
features of the Sanskrit lexicon (I am here thinking especially of the fact
that it has such a beautiful wealth of synonyms) seem to be due to the
pressure to be innovative that writers using a grammatically fixed language
could only channel in a limited variety of ways.

That said, I would be greatly interested in literature that shows my
curmudgeonly attitude to be wrong:-).

All the very best,
     Antonia





> But all my attempts at finding that study failed. I would be very grateful
> if someone helped me to identify that study or suggested something recent
> and authoritative on the subject. I would be grateful for any comments as
> well.
>
> Kind regards,
> Gleb Sharygin
> PhD Candidate
> Institut fur Indologie und Tibetologie
> LMU München
>
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