THE FORMATION OF NOUNS 139 §8. Masculine Formations of the Type brahman— from r- and w-stems The essential feature of this type is the suffixal accent as opposed to the radical accent of the neuters, and vrddhi in the nominative singular. There is some evidence that originally they were themselves capable of being used as adjectives with- out any change of form. Examples of this are found in many languages, e.g. Gk. paiKap ' blessed fidprvp ‘ witness Lat. uber in the sense of ' rich Hitt, kurur meaning both ' enmity ' and ' inimical, enemy In Sanskrit there are two formations which may be .compared with Gk. pLaprvp, although they have accent on the suffix, namely afitur- ‘ active in holy works ' and yantur- ' controller With the suffix -us we have forms like ndhus- ‘ neighbour ' and mdnus - ' man ' which are not in any way distinguished from, the corresponding neuter types. Such formations are, however, very much irf the minority, because Indo-European early developed this method of indicating the adjectival function of a stem by switching the accent. In some cases in Sanskrit the two types exist side by side, notably in the case of the suffixes - man - and -as-, but more often the old system has broken down. This is mainly due to the elimination of the old neuter types, which has left important classes of masculine agent nouns standing isolated. In Sanskrit there is an abundant class of agent nouns in -tar, kartdr- 1 doer etc. The nature of this formation only became clear with the discovery in Hittite of an archaic class of neuters in - tar . We have seen above that this, like similar formations, has left many traces in other languages and therefore must at one time have been widely prevalent. This means that the two types *kdrtar nt. * doing, action ’ and kartdr- masc. ' doer, agent ' must at one time have existed side by side, and this being so it becomes immediately clear that the relationship of the two types is exactly the same as that between brahman - and brahman- Skt. kartdr 1 doer ' is one connected with *kdrtar 1 doing ' and sthdtdr- * one who stands ' is similarly related to that sth&tar nt. which, as we have seen, is preserved in a somewhat disguised form in one passage of the Rgveda. Since this is one of the commonest formations in Sanskrit the citation of further examples may be dispensed with. A few words are necessary about the accent. Suffixal accent is proper
