222 THE DECLENSION OF NOUNS sir as ' head '). The terminational accent in the oblique cases entails in some instances a reduction of the root, e.g. udnds as compared with Engl, water , etc. It is seen also in gen. sg. usrds 4 of the dawn 3 compared with the strong stem vasar° which appears in compounds. In two cases fixed accent has been applied to nouns of the old r n declension : dhar , dhnas ‘ day udhar, udhnas ‘ udder In the masc, and fem, r- and w-stems the accent shift to the termination is preserved in the weakest cases where the vowel of the suffix is lost : pita , pitrd, cf. Gk. ira r^p, tt cn-pos, murdha ‘ head gen. murdhnds, uksd 4 bull 3 , uksnds, cf. Gk. apr^v, Faprjv 4 lamb gen. apvos. In the middle cases where the n and r of the suffix were vocalised on the loss of the guna vowel the accent is retracted to the suffix : pitfbhis, murdhdbhis. In cer- tain cases the apophony indicates that the accent was originally of the alternating variety although it has become fixed : svd f dog gen. sunas (original accent in Gk. kvvqs), yuvi ‘ young man gen. yilnas, maghdvd, maghonas. With as-stems traces of this accent shift are exceedingly rare. The instr. sg. bhtsd ( bhiyds - 4 fear ') and the gen. sg. usds (for us-s-as) show both the terminational accent and the correspond- ing weak form of suffix and root. Otherwise these stems have been normalised. This accent was originally characteristic of the i- and w-stems, and traces remain notably in Greek : 019 sheep gen. olos, yow 4 knee * t yowos, Sopv ‘ spear *, Sovpos. Sanskrit in general has stabilised the accent ( dvyas , mddhvas) though occasionally the apophony indicates original accent of the termination, e.g. in drunas ( <drunds) gen. of ddru 4 wood The nom. sg. pdsu nt. and the gen. sg. paivds (masc. but originally neuter) repre- sent the original IE inflection, but they no longer belong to- gether, since the forms classed with pdiu have acquired a normal radical accent, and a masc. pasus has come into being, to which the gen. sg. pasvas is attached. Elsewhere termina- tional accent appears in a small number of suffixally accented nouns which take the gen, sg. termination -as : aris : ary as ; ray is : ray as ; pitus : pitvas. The accent shift remains in the case of those participles in -ant which are accented on the suffix*: nom. sg. ad an ( eating ' : instr. sg. adatd ; yunjdn * joining ' : yunjata ; sanvdn 1 press- ing 3 : sunvatd , etc. ; but this does not apply to the middle
