Sphoṭa (Devanagari स्फोट, the Sanskrit for "bursting, opening", "spurt") is an important concept in the Indian grammatical tradition of Vyakarana, relating to the problem of speech production, how the mind orders linguistic units into coherent discourse and meaning. He theorized the act of speech as being made up of three stages: 1. * Conceptualization by the speaker (Paśyantī "idea") 2. * Performance of speaking (Madhyamā "medium") 3. * Comprehension by the interpreter (Vaikharī "complete utterance").