Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 3.djvu/43

 28 STRUCTURE OF VERBAL STEMS.

and will be better understood when seen side by side with the modern forms. The desiderative and intensive have left few or no traces of their existence, and may be passed over un- noticed.

§ 9. We may now approach the languages of the present day, and the discussion becomes more minute and particular. Though the verb of the new world has ways of its own, yet it stretches out hands across the gulf of centuries to the old world verb, and supports its claim to descent from it by still pre- serving traces unrnistakeable, though often faint and irregular, of the ancient forms and systems.

As in the noun, so also in the verb, the first thing to be con- sidered is the stem. The modern verbal stem undergoes no changes, but remains absolutely the same throughout all moods, tenses and persons. To this rule there is a small though im- portant exception, consisting of some participles of the preterite passive which are derived direct from the Prakrit forms, and are thus early Tadbhavas. The number of these early Tadbhava participles differs in the various languages. They are most numerous, as might be expected, in Sindhi, which has a hundred and forty of them in a total of about two thousand verbs. In Panjabi, Gujarati and Marathi the number is rather less, while in Hindi only five, and in Bengali and Oriya only two exist. They will be found, together with their derivations, in Chapter IIL §§46, 47, 48.

With this slight exception the verbal stem remains unaltered throughout. Thus, having got, by means hereafter to be ex- plained, the word sun for "hear," Hindi simply tacks on to it the terminations ; thus sunnd to hear; suntd hearing, sund heard, auniin I hear, nunc he hears, suno hear ye ! sunegd he will hear, mnkar having heard.

Primary stems are almost always monosyllabic, but secondary or derivative stems have often more syllables than one. The