256 THE DECLENSION OF NOUNS in the nominative and accusative. This declension contains some special features which may be briefly summarised. It has been considerably influenced by the pronominal declension. In the instr. sg. the termination -ena has been taken from that source. The older termination -a still exists in the Vedic lan- guage, though it is a good deal less common than -ena. In Avestan only the ending -a appears. The Indo-Iranian termin- ation of the dat. sg. was ~di , a contraction of the stem vowel and the termination -at, and this was inherited from Indo-European (-0 + ei) : Av. haomdi, Gk. lttttqj, etc. To this a postposition a might optionally be added as in Av. ahurdi a and in Skt. this element has become permanently attached, producing the extended termination -dya. The ablative sg. which is distin- guished from the gen. sg. in this declension alone, is inherited directly from IE (O, Lat. - dd , etc.). There exists no common IE form of the gen. sg. In Balto- Slavonic the old abl. sg. functions also as gen. sg. and in view of the identity of the two cases elsewhere this could be ancient. Italic and Celtic have an ending -f, which is the adjectival suffix -t substituted for the thematic suffix. This t appears in Sanskrit in constructions of the type saml-kr * to make even In Hitt, the gen. sg. of the thematic class is equivalent to the nom. sg. There exists in the Veda a small number of compounds like rathaspdti which possibly contain such a form of gen. sg. A form corresponding to the Sanskrit termination appears in Greek and Armenian (Gk. <no, Arm. - oy ). A similar formation, but without the -y- appears elsewhere : Goth, wulfis (<°eso) i O. SI. ceso ‘ whose These terminations may be presumed to have originated in the pronominal declension, as has happened elsewhere. The elements -so and -syo which are thus added to the stem appear to be demonstrative pronouns of that form. The loc. sg. is analysable into the stem vowel and the normal termination -i : cf. Gk. olkoi, etc. The nom, pi. -as (a + as) appears in a similar form elsewhere (Goth, wulfos , Osc. nuv - lanus ), but in its place an ending -oi, derived from the pronouns is also frequent (Gk. Xvkoi , Lat, lupt, Lith. vilkai, Toch. B. yakwi). The ending -as is in the Vedic language sometimes pleonastically extended to - dsas , a feature which is also ob- served in Iranian (Av. -dyhd). This innovation is again abol- ished in classical Sanskrit, but it lives on in some early Pali forms {pandiidse , etc.). The acc. pi. has acquired its long vowel
