Prakrit Grammar: Verb Conjugation and Syntax
What this domain tests
Verb questions ask you to conjugate in the present, imperative, optative and future, to recognise participles and absolutives, and to explain basic Prakrit sentence patterns.
Tense and mood endings (active)
- Present: 1sg -mi, 2sg -si, 3sg -i, 1pl -mo, 2pl -ha, 3pl -nti. Examples: gacchai ‘he goes’, hasaṁti ‘they laugh’.
- Imperative: 2sg -hi/-su, 3sg -u, 2pl -ha, 3pl -ntu.
- Optative: -ejjā-: karejjā ‘he should do’.
- Future: -ssa-: karissai; hohii ‘he will be’.
- Passive present in -ijja-: karijjai ‘is done’.
Non-finite forms
- Present participle -nta-: gacchaṁto ‘going’.
- Past passive participle: kata, gata, diṭṭha.
- Absolutive/gerund: -iya, -ūṇa, -tūṇa: gacchiya, kāūṇa ‘having done’.
- Infinitive: -ium/-uṁ: gacchium ‘to go’.
Syntax
Order is normally SOV but flexible; the absolutive marks a prior action sharing the subject; ti closes a quotation; correlatives jo…so and jai…tai frame relative clauses; the agent of a passive stands in the instrumental.
Worked example
‘Having gone to the village, he sees the king’ → gāmaṁ gacchiya so rāyaṁ passai. gacchiya is an absolutive whose subject is the same as the main clause; passai is 3sg present of √paś.
Traps
Writing Sanskrit -ti for the 3sg; using an absolutive when the clauses have different subjects (use a temporal clause instead); forgetting the -e- theme in karei/karejjā.