THE FORMATION OF NOUNS IX 9 In the descriptive and synchronistic grammar of Sanskrit the various suffixal combinations are treated as units, which is what they have in fact become in the course of the develop- ment of the language. For the historical and comparative treatment of the subject a more radical approach is needed. Here it is necessary, as is done in the following pages, to start from the single, primitive elements, and in the exposition to build up the whole suffixal system from them in the way that it had developed in the prehistory of the language. Between the original simple suffixes, as so analysed, no dis- cernible distinction of meaning or function can be found. In some ways they have no meaning. Thus an ancient IE word wet ‘ year ! appears in Hittite as such (also in Sanskrit reduced to -ut in parut f last year ') ; in Greek it appears with the suffix - os as {F)ctos, witho ut anything being ad ded to the meaning ^ Likewise in Sanskrit neuter action nouns with suffixes (-0$, etc.) do not differ fundamentally in meaning from roots used in the same sense : dvls- ‘ hatred 1 : dvdsas ‘ id/, etc. Of course when several words derived from the same root with different suffixes appear side by side, differences of meaning between these words usually develop, but this is a matter of idiom and nothing to do with the ultimate nature of the suffixes as such. What applies, to the simple suffixes applies equally to the compound suffixes. In the examples quoted abdve the suffixes -tas t -nas and -vas are used in precisely the same way as the simple suffix -as. Hittite has a series of suffixes -sar t -tar, -mar, -vat (with variant n-stems) making neuter action nouns of exactly the same nature, and this accurately reflects Indo-European usage. In the course of time specialisation of usage in the case of various suffixes has developed in all languages, but this is secondary and it is possible in some cases to show how it has come about . 1 The most important distinction in nominal derivation in early Indo-European was not between the different suffixes simple or compound, but in a difference of accentuation accord- ing to which a word formed with the same suffix functioned either as an action noun or agent noun/adjective. Accented on the root it was an action ^noun and neuter , accen ted on the suffi x itjwas an a gent noun or adjective and originally of the so-called ‘ common gender *. The system is preserved to some extent in Sanskrit and is exemplified by such doublets as brahma n. 1 E.g. in the case of the comparative suffix- tara, see p. 149.
