The Possessive Adjectives of Late Prakrit

Abstract

Possessive adjectives are not strictly essential parts of speech; their place can often be taken by the genitive of the personal pronouns. This has led to a certain lack of continuity in their development, which has, however, often been exaggerated. Apart from very isolated survivals like maīa, the Sanskrit possessives had already died out in Prakrit. The Modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars have entirely new formations, the most widespread of which is that in -r-. In the singular one can distinguish three main groups of possessive adjectives in r-:—(1) Western Hindi, as characteristic of the first group has mērō, tērō for the possessive. (Oblique forms of the pronoun are mō, muj, mohi, muhi, and tō, tuj, tohi, tuhi.)(2) Gujarati and most of the Rajasthani dialects except Mewati belong to a second group whose main characteristic is the vowel -a-: Gujarati mārō, tārō (oblique base ma, ta).(3) Eastern Hindi and the Magadhan languages on the whole have -o- as the vowel of the possessive, thus Avadhi mōr, tōr (oblique mō, tō).