Page:On the Non-Aryan Languages of India.djvu/17

 ON THE NON-ARYAN LANGUAGES OF INDIA. H In Khyeng khiaung-pa-hto ' man'; khiaung-nq-hto 'woman.' In Mru kornga * a horse,' kornga-ma ' a mare.' These forma- tions are found more or less in almost all the languages, and even where sex is not distinguished, or we are not told of such distinction, in the short grammatical sketches we possess, pa appears to be often extensively used as a formative, as, for instance, in Lepcha mat-bo 'a doer,' from mat ' to do'; in Mikir kichihang-po ' a beggar,' from kichihang ' to beg '; in the Thado dialect of Kuki kelchingpa 'a herdsman.' In Karen some nouns are formed by prefixing pa, as pgha 'old,' pa- pgha ' an elder '; gentile and such-like, by affixing jj/io, as kaseup)ho ' mountaineers,' from kaseu ' a mountain.' In Dhimal ka, in Magar chii, and in the Abor class dak or do, correspond to the -adjectival j)« or ha of Tibetan and other languages; thus Dhimal minka 'ripe,' Magar minc/iu, Abor mindo, Tibetan sminpa. In some languages a prefixed a is much used as a formative, as in Burmese atsa ' food,' from tsa 'to eat'; in Lepcha acJior ' sour' from chor 'to be sour.' in Khyeng amidk 'love,' from mldk 'to love'; in Manipuri asdha 'hot,' from sdba 'heat.' There is a good deal of resemblance between the post- positions in several languages, and in some of them the same form for the third personal pronoun is used to denote the genitive relation; thus in Bahing wainsa d ming 'the man his wife '; in Lushai lien a ui ' the friend his dog ' ; in Karen pghaknyau a htioie 'the man his dog.' The postpositions in this group are of two kinds, simple and compound, the first member of the compound being gene- rally the sign of the genitive or dative relation, as in Kachari ni 'of,' ni phra 'from.' The two South-Indian groups have only generally simple postpositions. In the present group, as the rule, adjectives follow their sub- stantives, and then the postpositions are affixed to the adjectives, and not to the substantives ; but, in nearly all the languages, the demonstrative pronouns precede the sub- stantives. In the two South-Indian groups, and also in all the Aryan languages of India, both the adjective and the demonstrative invariably precede the substantive. In the