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Nāsaketari Kathā
479
the different dialects, L.S., st. w. No. 80). Whereas, in our text, this -va is still absent before most terminations beginning with a consonant ( as e.g., leņa ( nai ), deņa ( hāra ) ), it has been generalized throughout the modern paradigms ( the corresponding forms of which are levaņa, devaņa). (b) Syntax
The chief characteristic of Modern Rājasthānī syntax, viz. the mixture of the Hindi and Gujarātī impersonal construction of the transitive verb. is peculiar also to our text : cp. what has been said below in § 34.iv of our grammar. In the formation of reflexive verbs by uro. our text agrees with modern Mārawādi (cp. grammar 32). But whereas in the latter dialect, the root raha always adds a negative sense to a preceding pres. part., ( as e.g., gāto rahaņo ‘not to sing' ) (cp. L.S. p. 29), it has, in our text, kept its old meaning 'to remain' (cp. e.g. XII,29 sadāi bhamatā rahai 'they remain constantly roaming' ). Another difference between the modern vernacular and the language of our Nāsaketari Kathā appears in the treatment of the attributive adjective, which, if qualifying a noun in the locative or agent, commonly coincides with the latter throughout modern Rājasthānī, in opposition to what has been stated in our $ 24, I, c ( see also L.S. p. 7). (c) Phonology
Most of the ( spelling, or rather ) phonological phenomena observable in our Nāsaketari Kathā, are common to several groups of vernaculars, as shown by a comparison with the materials given in Beames' Comparative Grammar: as e.g., the fact that the vowels a, i, and u, that long and short vowels interchange; the cerebrals are substituted for dentals; mediae for tenues; h for aspiratae; s for ś, and in some case also for ș; the arbitrary vowel-nasalizations; the substitution of j for y; i for final -in; the dropping of final y; the substitution of kh for ș; the dropping medial k and t; the numerous assimilations in consonantal groups; the development of svarabhakti-vowels, of a prothetic a before s, and of various glides, and
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