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yassa

ya

masc dat sg of ya (letter); masc gen sg of ya (letter); masc dat sg of ya (pron); nt dat sg of ya (pron); …

1. ya (pron): whoever; whatever; whichever
2. ya (letter): (gram) letter y; 34th letter of the alphabet; palatal semi-vowel
3. ya (cs): (gram) ya; suffix used to form impersonal and passive verbs
4. ya (cs): (gram) ya; conjugational sign of group 3 divādigaṇa verbs
5. yassa (pron): to whom; for whom; for whoever; for whatever; for whichever
6. yassa (pron): of whoever; of whichever; whose
7. yassa (sandhi): whoever to him

Built from

• ya — root · who, which (relative)
  The stem of the relative pronoun, from PIE *yo-. Cognates: Sanskrit ya-, Greek ho (ὁ), Latin qui, English who. Marks the head of a relative clause.
• ssa — ending · genitive singular
  The genitive case-ending, from PIE *-sya. Shows possession, relationship, or the object of a preposition. In yassa, it signals 'of whom' or 'whose'.

Analysis. ya (relative pronoun stem) + ssa (genitive singular ending, showing possession or relation). The form yassa stands in relative clauses: 'the one whose...' or 'of which...'. It appears frequently in canonical formulas like yassa dukkhā nirodho (the cessation of suffering for/of which).

Etymology. ya is the Indo-European relative pronoun stem (Sanskrit ya-, Greek ho [ὁ], Latin qui, English who). The genitive ending -ssa derives from the Proto-Indo-European *-sya, visible in Sanskrit -sya and Greek -sio. Pali has generalized -ssa across genders and numbers in oblique cases.

Meanings from the Digital Pāḷi Dictionary; morphology and etymology by Claude.

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