A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v3.c17.10

v3.c17.10

Verbal roots, then, are grammarians' tickets, by which actual spoken words are classified and arranged in groups for convenience of investigation. The roots in Sanskrit are mostly monosyllabic, consisting of a consonant followed by a vowel, as bhú, yá, ní, or of a vowel followed by a consonant, as ad, ish, ubh, or of a vowel between two consonants, as kar, gam, pat. Roots may also consist of a single vowel, as i, and in the place of a single consonant there may be a nexus, as grah, pinj, mlai. Those roots which have more than one syllable are usually of a secondary nature, being in some cases produced by reduplication, as jágar, in others made from nouns, as kumâr.