THE FORMATION OF NOUNS 127 Later they were specialised as masculines owing to their ex* temal form. In contradistinction there are a couple of neuter nouns vdna- 4 forest 1 and tana - ' offspring 1 which are extensions of root stems (van-, tan-) which had retained their neuter gender. Old neuter formations are found in yugdm * yoke ' (: Gk. £vyov t Lat. iugutn) and padam 4 step 1 (: Gk. tt&ov, Hitt. pedan). These are old formations, among the very few simple thematic neuters that can be traced to Indo-European. They will be discussed in connection with the suffix m (p. 172 ff.). §4. Neuter Formations with alternating rjn Suffix The suffixes r (which in Sanskrit may also represent IE l) and n must be studied together since they early became associated in a common paradigm in which the nom. acc. was formed by the r-stem, while the oblique cases w T ere formed on the basis of an n-stem. This ancient type of neuter noun is tending to obsolescence in the earliest Sanskrit, as it is in Greek and most of the other languages. InHittiteon the other hand, which presents here, as so often, a more archaic stage of Indo-European, the system is unimpaired. The system as found in Hittite contains simple rjn stems with this alternation, e.g. eshar 4 blood gen. sg. einas, also a series of compound suffixes formed by the addi- tion of these suffixes to stems in u t m, s, t, namely -war, -mar, -sar, tar , Examples are partawar ‘ wing gen. sg. partaunai , tarnummar 4 letting go, to let go", gen. sg. tarnummas (mm < mn), hannessar ' law, law suit gen. sg. hannesnas , paprdtar 4 uncleanness gen. sg. papr annas (nn<tn). This early system of neuter nouns exists only in fragments in other IE languages, but an abundance of suffixes containing r and n have these primitive neuter types as their ultimate source. There are a few simple neuter stems in r with alternating ^ n-stem in Sanskrit. Such are dhar * day gen. sg. ahnas (Av. ^ azan - 4 id ’), tidhar 4 udder ’ gen. sg. udhnas (Gk. ov8ap, ovdarog, Engl, udder , etc. ; there also appears to be in the Veda a second tidhar 7cold ; =Av. aodar- 4 id. 1 ). In these the suffix has the guna grade, but it may also appear in the weak grade, in which case it is strengthened by a further suffix. This is usually t: ydkrt "liver gen. s g. yaknds (Av. ydkar-, Lat. iecur, Gk. ^ } * fjirap, all without any/), idkrt 4 dung gen. sg. saknds, with a
