Tu quoque?! On the second person pronoun tusya (tus̱a) and the second person verbal ending -tu (-du) in Niya Prakrit

Abstract

When compared to Old Indo-Aryan (OIA) and other Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA) languages, the marking of the second person in Niya Prakrit differs in two crucial respects. On the one hand, Niya Prakrit makes use of a pronoun tusya/ tus̱a ‘you’ that is not found in the other languages. On the other hand, Niya Prakrit has a verbal ending -tu (-du) as a second person marker on top of the old 2SG ending -si (-s̱i) and the 2PL ending -tha. This paper argues that these two peculiarities are related to one another and that both the pronoun and the verbal ending have not been properly described in earlier scholarship. First, it will be claimed that tusya (tus̱a) is not a genitive singular (GEN.SG), as previously thought, but a direct plural (DIR.PL). As a consequence, a new etymology for this pronoun will be offered too. Second, this article presents various arguments that -tu (-du) is not a 2SG ending, but a 2PL.