208 THE FORMATION OF NOUNS thereby acquires a non neuter, eventually feminine gender, enables it to be personified. In the same way we may judge the relationship between dpas, nom. pL fem. and udakam, udan - (Gk. v8cjp, etc.) ‘ water '* There is nothing about radical action nouns as such, from the point of view of their meaning which should cause them to become masculines or feminines ; only the mechanical development which caused them to inflect in the same way as the adjectival type of noun which formed the basis of the 1 animate 7 gender is responsible for their becoming such. In the same way other action noun stems eliding in occlusives early inflected in this way (Hitt, karlimmiyat- ' anger etc.). The neuter i-sterns were eliminated except for small remnants, and a similar tendency, though on a smaller scale is observable among the action nouns in -u. The thematic action nouns are extensions of root stems which were originally common gender, and this characteristic they retained ; when the common gender split into masculine and feminine they naturally became masculines because this is the masculine adjectival suffix. In the same way the action nouns in -d are feminine because this is the feminine adjectival suffix. An essential part is played in the development of the IE system of gender by the system prevailing in these languages by which an adjective must be inflected in the case, number and gender of the noun with which it is in agreement. This is one of the most characteristic features of Indo-European, as gram- matical congruence on this scale is hardly to be found elsewhere. Traces of an earlier system, in which the simple adjectival stem could function in attributive use, survive in nominal composi- tion, indicating that the full system was only gradually built up, but it is none the less of ancient origin. It is fully developed in Hittite and applies, there to gender in so far as the ‘ common gender ' and the ' neuter ' are distinguished, that is to say in the nominative and the accusative. With the growth of the feminine gender, which is the final stage in the development of the system, the system of congruence was correspondingly extended. §22* Nominal Composition The capacity to combine independent words into compound words is inherited by Sanskrit from Indo-European, and similar formations are found in other IE languages. Sanskrit differs
