Re: jaññā

Dear Aleix,

Per Whitney (§720) the third person plural subjunctive of a class 9 verb would be jānān. If that form exists in the Prakrits, it would be jānā, and in fact we do find jāṇā (with retroflex -ṇ-) in Māgadhī (per Pischel §510) it is identical to the Skt. subjunctive, without the final consonant which is usually dropped in the Prakrits.

The third person plural optative would be jānīyuḥ in Skt. which would be jāññu in the Prakrits, which I have never seen.

According to MW there is also an optative form jñāyāt and jñeyāt for the third person sing. According to Whitney (730), the root jñā loses its nasal before the class-sign (nā), that is jñānāti > jānāti, but apparently not in this case. So in the Prkrists, jñāyāt would change to ñāyā, losing the initial j- and the final -t. I have also never seen this form, although Fuchs gives the optative form -ññeyya (page 271; the dash indicates that it's only found in compounds) which starts with the palatalized nasal ñ.

Correction on the previous derivation there should be a long -ā- in the stem, viz.,

So the derivation is jānīyāt > jaññāt > jaññā

the long -ā- changes to -a- before a double consonant (but of course it's still metrically long); and the final vowel was already long so didn't have to be lengthened as I said.

Hope that helps,

Best wishes,

Bryan

From: "Aleix Ruiz Falqués ruydaleixo@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2016 9:32 PM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] jaññā

Dear Bryan,

Thank you for the correction. Actually I just wanted to suggest a possibility for the 3rd person plural from the subjunctive and forget about the optative. I guess it would be Skt. janīyān > P. jaññā. Would you agree with that?

Best wishes,

Aleix

2016-03-25 8:01 GMT+07:00 Bryan Levman bryan.levman@... [palistudy] <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>:

Hi Chris, Aleix

The standard optative for jñā (a class 9 verb) in Skt. is janīyāt, 3rd person singl.
In the Prakrits the -īy- is assimilated to the final consonat of the verb (-n) and becomes ñña- doubled because of the two consonants - this linguistic phenomena is called palatization. The final -t is dropped, which is a common Pkt change, and the vowel lengthened to reflect the dropped final consonant.

So the derivation is janīyāt > jaññāt > jaññā
so it is a standārd Skt > Prakrit derivation.

Best wishes, Bryan

From: "Aleix Ruiz Falqués ruydaleixo@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2016 5:03 AM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] 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

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