Page:EB1911 - Volume 03.djvu/949

 Bh. kā, what? keo, keu, any one; Mth. kicchᵘ, Mg. kuchu, Bh. kachu, anything. The oblique forms of these vary greatly, and must be learned from the grammars.

Conjugation in Maithili and Magahi.—It is in the conjugation of the verb that the amazing complexity of the Mth. and Mg. grammars appears. The conjugation of the Bhojpuri verb is quite simple, and will be treated separately. In all three dialects the verb makes little or no distinction of number, but instead there is a distinction between non-honorific and honorific forms. In Mth. and Mg. this distinction applies not only to the subject but also to the object, so that for each person there are, in the first place, four groups of forms, viz.:—

In Mth. all the forms in which the object is honorific end in -nhⁱ. Mg. closely follows this, but the forms are more abraded.

Forms in which the object is non-honorific may be, as in the case of nouns, short, long or redundant. The long forms are made by adding ai (or in the second person -ȧh) to the short forms, and the redundant forms by adding k to the long forms. Again, if the object is in the second person, the ai of the long and redundant forms is changed to au. Finally, in the first person the non-honorific and honorific forms depending on the subject are the same, and are also identical with those forms of the second person in which the subject is honorific. We thus get the following paradigm of the Mth. past tense of the verb mārab, to strike. The Mg. forms are very similar. Besides the above there are numerous optional forms. Moreover, these are only masculine forms. The feminine gender of the subject introduces new complications. It is impossible here to go into all these minutiae, interesting as they are to philologists. They must be learnt from the regular grammars. On the present occasion we shall confine ourselves to describing the formation of the principal parts of the verb.

In Mth. the usual verb substantive and auxiliary verb is, as in Bengali, based on the root ach (Skr. r̥cchati), the initial vowel being generally dropped, as in chī, I am; chalahū, I was; but achⁱ, he is. In Mg. we have hī or hikī, I am; halũ, I was. The finite verb has three verbal nouns or infinitives, viz. (from the root mār, strike), Mth. mārⁱ or Mg. mār; mārab; and māral. All three are fully declined as nouns, the oblique forms being mārai or māre, mārᵃbā, and mārᵃla, respectively. There are two participles, a present (Mth. mȧrait = Pr. mārentu) and a past (Mth. māral = Pr. māri-allu). The Mg. forms are very similar. The old Mg. Pr. present and imperative have survived, but all other tenses are made from verbal nouns or participles. The past tense (of which the conjugation for a Maithili transitive verb is given above) is formed by adding pronominal suffixes to the past participle. Thus, māral + ī, struck + by-me, becomes mȧr’lī, I struck. In the case of intransitive verbs, the suffixes may represent the nominative and not the instrumental case of the pronoun, and hence the conjugation is somewhat different. The future is a mixed tense. Generally speaking, the first two persons are formed from the verbal noun in b, which is by origin a future passive participle, and the third person is formed from the present participle. Thus, mārab + ahū, about-to-be-struck + by-me, becomes mȧrᵃbahū, I shall strike, and mȧrait + ȧh, striking + he, becomes mȧrᵃtȧh, he will strike (compare the English “he’s going,” for “he is on the point of going”). A past conditional is also formed by adding similar suffixes to the present participle, as in mȧritahū, (if) I had struck. This use of the present participle already existed in the Pr. age (cf. Hēma-candra’s Grammar, in. 180). In Mth. the present definite and the imperfect are formed by conjugating the present or past tense respectively of the auxiliary verb with the present participle; thus marait chī, I am striking. Mg. (like vulgar

English) substitutes the oblique form of the verbal noun for the present participle, as in māre hī, I am a-striking. The perfect is usually formed by adding the word for “is” to the past; thus, Mth. mȧrᵃlī achⁱ, I have struck, lit. struck-by-me it-is. A pluperfect is similarly formed with the past tense of the auxiliary verb.

There are numerous irregular verbs. Most of the irregularities are due to the root ending in a vowel or in a weak consonant such as b (= Pr. v). Thus root pāb, obtain, past participle pāol, first singular, past tense, paulī. More definitely irregular are a few roots like kar, do, past participle kail. These last instances are cases in which the past participle is independently derived from a Skr. past participle, and is not formed as usual by adding the pleonastic suffix -al or -il (Skr., Pr., -alla-, -illa-, see ) to the Bihari root. Thus, Skr. kṛta-s, Pr. kaa-u, ka-ill-u, B. kail, instead of kar-al.

There is a long series of transitive verbs formed from intransitives and of causal verbs formed from transitives, generally by adding āb (Skr. āpaya-, Pr. āvē-). Compound verbs are numerous. Noteworthy is the desiderative compound formed by adding the root cāh, wish, to the dative of a verbal noun. Thus, ham dēkhȧ-kē cahait-chī, I am wishing for the seeing, I wish to see.

Conjugation in Bhojpuri.—The Bh. conjugation is as simple as that of Mth. and Mg. is complex. In the first and second persons the plural is generally employed for the singular, but there is no change in the verb corresponding to the person or honour of the object. The usual verb substantive and auxiliary verb is derived in the present from the root bāṭ or bāṛ, be, as in bāṭē or bāṛē (Skr. vartatē, Pr. vaṭṭai), he is. The past is derived from the root rah (Skr. rahati, Pr. rahai), as in rahᵃlī̃ or (contracted) rahī̃, I was. The verbal nouns and participles are nearly the same as in Mth.-Mg., the first verbal noun and the present participle being mār and mārat, as in Mg. The old present and imperative, derived from the Mg. Pr. forms, are also employed in Bh. Thus, mārē (Pr. mārēi), he strikes. This tense is often used as a present conditional. When it is wished to emphasize the sense of a present indicative, the syllable -lā is suffixed. The same suffix is employed in Rajasthani, Naipali and Marathi to form the future, and in Bh. it is often also used with a future sense. The past tense is formed, as in Mth.-Mg., by adding pronominal suffixes to the past participle; thus, marᵃlī̃ (māra + lī̃), I struck, as explained above. Similarly, for the first and second persons of the future we have marᵃbī̃, I shall strike, and so on, but the third person is mārī (Pr. mārēhi), he will strike, marihen (Pr. mārēhinti), they will strike. The periphrastic tenses are formed on the same principles as in Mth. As an example of Bh. conjugation we give the present, past and future tenses in all persons. There are a few additional optional forms, but nothing like the multiplicity of meanings which we find in Mth. and Mg.

It will be observed that the termination of the present changes in sympathy with the old present to which it is attached. In some parts of the Bh. area, especially in the district of Sāran, u is substituted for ᵃl in the past. Thus, maruī̃, I struck. The maru- is merely the past participle without the pleonastic termination -alla- which is used in Bihari, as explained under the Mth.-Mg. conjugation.

Irregular verbs, the formation of transitive and causal verbs, and the treatment of compound verbs, are on the same lines as in Mth.