Sanskrit word formation and context free rules

In recent years, a number of linguists, among them Selkirk (1982) and Di Sciullo and Williams (1987), have explored the hypothesis that word formation, including compounding and derivation, can be given a syntactic characterization of its own in terms of context free rules which are independent of those used for phrases and sentences. One way to explore the empirical adequacy of this hypothesis is to try to apply it to languages rich in derivational and inflectional morphology as well as in complex compounds. One such language is Classical Sanskrit. Below, I shall investigate how such a hypothesis can be applied to compound formation in Classical Sanskrit, touching only in passing upon its applicability to derivation