On the Generalizability of Pāṇini’s Pratyāhāra-Technique to Other Languages

Pan . ini defines the sound classes involved in grammatical rules by pratyaharas, i.e., a two-letter code based on the order of the sounds in theutras. In the present paper we demonstrate that Pan . ini's pratyahara method is generalizable to the description of the phonological systems of other languages by applying it to the sound classes and phonological alternations of German. Furthermore, we com- pare Pan . ini's pratyahara technique with the technique of describing phonological classes by phonological features, which is more common in Western phonology. It turns out that pratyaharas perform better than features for the description of our sample of German phonological pro- cesses if one considers the quality criterion for class-description devices proposed by (10) which is based on the ratio of describable to actual classes.