Re: jaññā

Dear Chris,

Perhaps a form of subjunctive (after all the conditional, optative and subjunctive are the modes of the irreal) 3rd plural ending in -an, like bhavān, so Pāli jaññā < *janyān (<jan-ya-an) (cf. Burrow, section on subjunctive). I am not sure at all, but I think the 3rd pl. -an of the Skt subjunctive seems to me a decent candidate, because the suffix -yāt that Geiger calls an optative is actually subjunctive in Skt.

Best wishes,

Aleix

2016-03-24 15:31 GMT+07:00 Chris Clark chris.clark@... [palistudy] <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>:

Dear all,

The second and third person singular optative is sometimes formed with the ending -yā (Skt. -yāḥ and -yāt, respectively; Geiger § 129A). Thus, the second and third person singular optative of √jñā can be jaññā (there are other forms, of course).

In Cone’s “A Dictionary of Pāli” (s.v. jānāti), jaññā is also listed as a third person plural optative. A number of passages are quoted which seem to support this. Assuming Cone is correct, does anyone know the historical process that led to this form? Is the ending -yā found in other third person plural optative verbs?

Regards,
Chris