Discriminare tra aggettivo e sostantivo: appunti sulla tradizione paniniana

The article aims at describing Pāṇini’s treatment of phenomena that might modernly be subsumed under the problematic category of “adjective”. It is well-known that in Pāṇini’s grammar there is no “adjective” as a separate part of speech. Nonetheless, focusing on Pāṇini’s terminology, the authors identify a series of ‘adjectival features’ that have their role to play in the formation rules. These features may be conveniently grouped in three sets: a) genericity b) exocentricity c) subordination.