1 post tagged “locative”
I'm on an *n-stem high it seems today. Today in my Vedic Sanskrit class we ran into something very interesting, once proposed by Alan Nussbaum. I'm not entirely sure what to think of it yet, but I thought I'd throw it at you guys to see what you think.
the passage we were reading was RV x. 129, 1
नास॑दासी॒न्नो सदा॑सीत्त॒दानीं॒
नासी॒द्रजो॒ नो व्यो॑मा प॒रो यत्।
किमाव॑रीवः॒ कुह॒ कस्य शर्म॒न्न्
अम्भः॑ किमा॑सी॒द्गह॑नं गमी॒रम्॥
I'll spare you the transcription and translation, these things can easily be found online, what's interesting is the word शर्म॒न्न् śármann which without sandhi loses that double n: śárman 'protection' loc.sg.
That's right it's a locative singular. Where is the ending? There isn't one, several n-stems in vedic sanskrit show up with an endingless locative. This is weird, something we'd like to have explained. Alan Nussbaum proposed that the *n-stem formant itself was actually the locative case. Maybe based on *h₁en 'in' ? Either way, there's certain words that are naturally more prone to be coupled with cases, animate things will sooner get a dative, while inanimates will sooner get a locative. Taking the *n-stems as an old locative perfectly explains why there's endingless locatives in Sanskrit, and there is some reason behind it too.
Nevertheless, can a whole flection truly spring forth from one case form? One that isn't found anywhere anymore except for Sanskrit (and no doubt Avestan, though I know next to nothing about Avestan). I'm not sure what to thing, but it is a pretty exciting idea.
