Re: -i, -u

A comment from

> Burrow: "The Sanskrit language" (p. 314):
> "...The relation of the series -m, -s, -t, -an(t) with the

primary -

> mi, -si, -ti, -anti can only be explained by the assumptionthat in
> the latter series a particle -i indicating present time has been
> secondarily added. In the same way in the imperative endings -tu, -
> antu, a particle -u is added to the same basic terminations. This

is

> made clear, among other things, by the fact that these same
> elements -i and -u may appear by themselve in formations that have
> no personal termination. eg. in Greek 'phérei' ('phere' + 'i'),
> Hit. 's´akki' "knows" and in Hittite imperatives of the -h_i
> class: 'aku', 'da:u' ('ak-' "to die", 'da:-' "to take""
> Now, this seems to indicate that the verb stem and

the 'personalised

> verb stem' obtained by adding a 'personal possessive suffix' were

of

> the same syntactic category.
>

Namely a _gerund_ or participle, therefore syntactically equivalent
to a noun.


Torsten