‹ Back to the text

yepi

ya

indefinite pronoun with enclitic particle

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. yāti (pr): goes; goes to; goes forward; proceeds; travels
6. yāti (pr): (of an army) marches against; pursues; routs
7. ye (pron): whoever; whatever; whichever; those who
8. ye (pron): whoever; whatever; whichever; those who (object)
9. …

Built from

• ye — root · whoever
  Relative pronoun from ya; the same stem as English 'who' and Latin 'qui', tracing to Proto-Indo-European *yo- (the relative stem).
• pi — ending · even; also
  Enclitic particle api (here in short form) meaning 'even', used here to generalize or broaden the relative pronoun into an indefinite sense ('whoever at all').

Analysis. ye (relative pronoun 'whoever', from ya) + api (enclitic 'even, also'). The combination expresses concession or generalizing indefiniteness: 'whoever it may be', 'whatever it might be'.

Etymology. ya is the old Indo-European relative pronoun stem (cognate with Latin qui, Greek hos, English who); api is a fossilized enclitic meaning 'even' or 'also', possibly related to Sanskrit api and Proto-Indo-European *h₂ep- 'to take hold of', but its original force in compound pronouns is to generalize or broaden the sense.

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

Lite mode — plain HTML for e-readers and old browsers. Full version