The agent suffixes as a window into Vedic grammar*

The two Indo-Iranian agent suffixes -tarand -tárcan be reconstructed for IE as preaccenting *-torand accented *-téron the evidence of their Greek cognates. In addition to accent and ablaut, they differ in three other respects: (1) semantically, (2) morphotactically with respect to their constituency in the word, co-occurrence with other affixes, compounding potential, and whether they allow the prefix to be separated from the root, (3) syntactically with respect to whether they have accusative or genitive complements, and adverbial or adjectival modifiers. Here I put forward a unified analysis that explains these systematic differences and relates them intrinsically to each other. I have relied on the Vedic material assembled by Renou, Lühr, and most comprehensively by Tichy. My citations and interpretations of Rigvedic examples adhere to the authoritative new translation by Jamison and Brereton (2014).