I derivati in *-mo- della lingua vedica.

• Position: Book review

I derivati in *-mo- della lingua vedica (Samhita e Brah-mana). By ROSA RONZITTI. Linguaggi e culture: studi e ricerche, vol. 4. Perugia: GUERRA EDIZIONI. 2006. Pp. 119.

In this slim volume the author surveys the Vedic primary derivatives in -ma-, first etymologically (pp. 7-51) and then functionally (pp. 53-98), and attempts to provide a consistent account of their formation and semantics, through a consideration of their relation to the argument structure and valency of the verbal root from which they are derived. Her intriguing conclusion is that for intransitive verbs (whose only argument is S[ubject]) the -ma- derivative is a nominalization of the predicate (so, e.g., to yati 'journeys' the noun yama-'journey'), while for transitive verbs (with arguments S[ubject] and 0[bject]), the -ma- nominalizes the object (so, e.g., juhoti 'pours', with homa- 'what one pours, libation'). Such an account is somewhat more sophisticated, and certainly more theoretically up-to-date, than the usual treatment in the standard grammars, which simply state that most -mo- derivatives are action nouns, with some agent nouns in the collection.

Unfortunately the simplicity and clarity of Ronzitti's conclusions have been bought at some cost. First, the necessary prerequisite for a study like this, the philological examination of all relevant forms in context, seems to have been scanted, and she often simply accepts traditional dictionary definitions. This can lead to trouble, as when she renders dharma- as 'legge, or-dine' and interprets it as a nominalization of the object of the transitive root dhr 'fissare, tenere'. But it is now generally agreed that Vedic dharma(n)- has now developed the legal/ethical sense so widely attested in later Sanskrit, and is better rendered as 'support' or the like, an interpretation that suggests that it is a nominalization of the transitive subject, or at most the predicate, rather than the object.

The case of this word brings up another problem, as hinted by my parenthetical (n). A number of the words Ronzitti counts as primary -ma- derivatives have older- and better-attested -man-stems alongside: here dharman-, which occurs well over fifty times in the Rig Veda, beside dharma-, which begins to be attested (scantily) only in the Atharva Veda. It is an old and still robust opinion (see, e.g., Whitney, Wackernagel-Debrunner, and...