Page:A Grammar of the Urdū Or Hindūstānī Language in Its Romanized Character.djvu/71

 69. Having thus given examples of the Conjugation of Intransitive Verbs—in the case of the two Auxiliary Verbs ''hona. and ja.na.''—we shall now give a Paradigm of the Conjugation of a Transitive Verb. Almost the only difference between these two classes of Verbs is, that in the latter all the Tenses formed by the Past (or Passive) Participle require the Subject or Agent to be, not in the form of the uninflected Nominative, but in that of the Agent, i.e. in the inflected form (or, in the case of the 1st and 2nd Personal Pronouns, the uninflected), with the particle ne added. We shall take the regular Verb

Marna ' to beat' or ' kill.' Root, mar.i  Verral Nouns.

(1) Mar—(the root)—'a beating' or 'blow. (2) The Gerund or Infinitive, marna (-ne, -nl) ' beating,' or ' to beat,' or 'kill.' (3) The Abstract Noun, mdran 'killing' or 'beating,' and (4) The Agent, marnewala (or -ham) or maranhar ' a beater,' ' one who beats,' or ' kills,' ' a writer.'

i To save room we shall, in the Paradigm of the Tenses of this Verb, give only the Singular Number. Instead of usne, the Plural form unne is often used for the 3rd Singular Agent, and therefore, for a Plural Agent, the form unhonne is generally used.

70. Before proceeding to the Conjugation of a second Transitive Verb, we would call the attention of the student to the syntactical construction of those Tenses of such Verbs which are formed from the Past Participle.

As the Nominative Case in English is then to be expressed in Urdu by the ' Agent' Case, so the Object of the Verb in English is often to be treated in Urdu as the Subject, as if it were a Verb in the Passive Voice—which, however, it is ''not. ''In that case the Verb must agree in Gender and Number with the word or words thus changed from Object to Subject. Thus, 'He struck the (or a) boy' would commonly, in Urdu, be Uine larkd mara (' by him boy struck'). 'He struck a (or the) girl' would be Utrie larkl mar i (lit. 'by him girl struck'). But these sentences might also be translated into Urdu thus—ume larke ko (or larkl ko) mara, lit. ' by him (or, taking the ' Agent' as simply another form for the Subject or Nominative, 'he') the boy (or the girl) struck.' This latter construction would generally be preferred if it were intended to express definitely some particular boy or girl; the want of the Article in Hindustani being a frequent cause of ambiguity. Neither of these Hindustani sentences is regarded as being in the Passive Voice. In that Voice, they would require to be expressed somewhat in this way : Usse (or ''uski mtfrifaf) larka mara. gaya—ot larkl marl gap.—i.e. ' ''By him (the) boy (or girl) beaten became ' (or 'was beaten'). We have thought it desirable to notice and explain this peculiar construction thus early—although belonging properly to the Syntax—as we know it is often a stumbling-block to tyros in the language, though by practice in reading and conversation they soon become familiar with it.

71. We shall now give a second illustration of the