पृष्ठम्:The Sanskrit Language (T.Burrow).djvu/२४१

THE DECLENSION OF NOUNS 235 Vocative Singular. The vocative singular consists of the simple uninflected stem, and it is therefore a survival from the time when the inflection of the noun had not been built up to the degree which appears later. In this respect it points to the same conclusion as the system of nominal composition, indicat- ing an early period of IE in which the bare stem could function as a word. In thematic stems the vocative is formed simply by dropping the -s which characterises the nominative : vrka , Gk, A ukc, Lat. hipe . The various languages agree in having the e- grade of the suffix in this case instead of the usual o (Au^oy, etc.). Stems which take vrddhi in the nom. sg. substitute guna in the vocative (svan, pitar as opposed to svA, pita , etc.), and this characteristic is found also in related languages (Gk. kvov , 77 glt€/}). This guna appears also in i- and w-stems ( agne , suno) since the formation of adjectival i- and w-stems was originally parallel to that of the adjectival r- and w-stems. The feminines in -t and -u substitute the short vowels i and u and this is pro- bably to be regarded as the regular development of -iw and -wh when followed by a pause. Compare the similar development of -ah to d in Greek vocatives like vvfuf>a, av^wra. The vocative of the d-stem is anomalous (bale, voc. of bald ‘ girl ') and is per- haps due to the addition of an enclitic particle i (-e for -<zh-i). The vocative is unaccented in Sanskrit, except when it appears at the beginning of a sentence or pa da, and in these conditions it has a special accent of its own, namely on the first syllable, regardless of the normal position of the accent in the word. There are traces of this latter type of accentuation elsewhere (Gk. 7 TaT€p } d&eA <f>€, as opposed to irar-qp, aSeApos in the nom. sg.), but nowhere to the extent that is found in Sanskrit. The system cannot be very ancient, otherwise there would not be regular guna of the suffix, which is due to the suffixal accentua- tion which characterises these types normally. Nominative Plural , Masc , and Fem . The Sanskrit - as (pAdas ‘ feet ') corresponds to IE -es which is preserved elsewhere (Gk. 7 rdS€f). The termination always appears in the full grade though it is never accented. It is associated with the strong stem in stems of varying grades, and this may be either guna {pitar as, uksdnas , agnayas) or vrddhi ( datdras , rajdnas). As in the accusative singular the latter type is due to extension from the nominative singular. An 5 appears in most of the plural cases, e.g. acc. -ns, instr.