9.B.1 Types of Words Sanskrit grammarians traditionally describe four types of words: kriya (verb), naman (noun), upasarga (verbal prefix), and nipata (particle). The naman and kriya have the fundamental notions of 'being' and 'becoming' respectively. The kriya type includes the basic kriya (verbs derived from a dhatu) and the nama-dhatu (verbs derived from nouns), which conjugate according purusa vacana and lakara, as well as the verbal qualifier (kriya-visesana) which is indeclinable (avyaya). The naman type includes the basic naman (common noun etymologically derived from a dhatu), the samjna (proper noun, personal name or technical term whose meaning cannot be etymologically determined), the sarva- naman (pronoun), and the nominal qualifier or adjective (visesana): all these decline according to linga, vacana and vibhakti. The upasarga (verbal prefix) has been discussed in 7.B.1, and the nipata (particle) is a catch-all for the remaining types of word. The nipata are avyaya (indeclinable), and although they are separate words they are not used by themselves: words of this class are ca (and) and he (vocative particle). 9.B.2 Use of iti The nipata iti means 'thus': it lays stress on what precedes it, typically referring to something that has been said; it is the Sanskrit equivalent of inverted commas. For example: asvena gacchami iti vadati "I am going by horse," he says. There is no system of indirect or reported speech in Sanskrit, so the above may equally be translated as: He says that he is going by horse. Note that iti grammatically isolates the phrase or sentence before it, from what follows: in the above example, the trtlya vibhakti of asvena is not related to the kriya vadati, even if the word 'gacchami' were omitted. This isolating function of iti may also be used to separate a definition from the word being defined, or a grammatical rule from an example of its application, and so on.
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