Doubling

Also known as: reduplication, abhyāsa ("placing in front")

Introduction

So far, this guide has taken pains to avoid one particular topic. Consider the verb dā, which means "give." It is related to English words like "donor." You can see one of its forms below.

• दा → ददाति

  dā → dadāti

  give → He gives.

Well, this is something new! The verb root dā produces the verb stem dadā. It's almost as if the verb root were doubled. In fact, that's exactly what has happened. The process of doubling the root has many names, but let's make our own and call it doubling. Let's also call the da part the doubled sound.

Doubling occurs primarily in the older verb forms. It also occurs in the last verb class, which we will study a few lessons from now. But it occurs in other places too. For instance, the root sthā uses the stem tiṣṭha, which is irregularly produced by doubling!

In This Chapter

We will start with an overview of the rules that describe doubling. From there, we will study four of the five forms that actually use doubling. We'll study the fifth form at the end of the chapter.