The nominative/vocative plural of Vedic masculine a-stems in complex nominal expressions

Abstract In Vedic Sanskrit, masculine a-stem nominals exhibit two different forms of the nom/voc.pl, a short form (ending in ‑ās) and a long form (ending in ‑āsas). In this article, we will argue that the scope of this variation is not a single nominal but the entire noun phrase. This means that whereas the short form may occur several times in a noun phrase, the long form is either absent or occurs only once. From a functional point of view, complex noun phrases containing one long form are equivalent to simple noun phrases consisting of one long form. In contrast, complex noun phrases containing only short forms are equivalent to simple noun phrases consisting of one short form. The presence or absence of the long form marks the presence or absence of a certain linguistic feature, the exact nature of which still has to be determined. We will argue that in those cases in which two long forms occur in relative proximity to each other, they either have to, or at least can be interpreted as being part of two distinct noun phrases. In order to do so, we will apply morphological, semantic, syntactic as well as stylistic and metrical criteria.