We may now shuffle these components around in any order and still retain the meaning: in doing so, we may well lose some clarity, or we may even sound poetic, for example: I from the universal I to the particular I desire limits the mind I in the waking state I by attachment I. The problem with these prepositional phrases is that it is not at all clear whether they are related to the activity of the whole sentence (i.e. to the verb), or are merely qualifying one of the nouns. For example, the intention was to indicate that the mind suffers limitation/restriction/reduction from its natural open state of universality to the confined state when identified with the particular, however, other interpretations are possible: the phrases I from the universal I to the particular I in the first of the two split up sentences may be construed as qualifying the word 'mind' and thus be understood as a range of separate minds 'from gods to dogs'; in the second of these split up sentences these phrases could be viewed as qualifying the word 'desire' and mean a range of desires 'from the general to the personal'. The phrases can thus be re-arranged to produce all sorts of misunderstandings, so let us be clear that the intended meaning of the other two phrases is that 'attachment' is the instrument/means/method by which the mind is limited, and that the 'waking state' is the circumstance where/when the limitation takes place. In an inflected language (one that uses case endings) the relationship to the verb is shown by a suffix appended to the word; our sentence would thus become something like: waking state IW desire SUBJECT limits VERB mind 0BJECT universal FR0M particular T0 attachment BY There are two points to note here: firstly, the subject and object also have endings to show their relationship; and secondly, the word endings indicate the relationship to the verb by definition. All the words in the sentence are quite independent of their position (order or arrangement) which is one limitation in a non-inflected language like English; but more importantly, the relationship to the verb is precisely defined, and thus minimizes the possibility of misunderstanding. In Sanskrit there are seven case endings: the sixth indicates a relation to another noun in the sentence, and the other case endings indicate the relationship to the verb.
