यूनीवर्सिटी ऑफ़ मिशिगन
का-expressions:  का  of patient
        In descriptions of language a "patient" is typically the word or phrase referring to the person or entity most directly affected by the action performed by the agent.  In (1) the noun  कुत्ता  is the patient and the pronoun  मैंने is the agent:
1. मैंने कुत्ता घर के सामने से भगा दिया।
   'I shooed the dog from in front of the house.'
Not every patient denotes something that is directly affected by an action.  The word बिल्ली  in (2) refers to something not at all affected by the action expressed by the verb  देख:
2. हमने घर के सामने बिल्ली देखी
   'We saw a cat in front of the house.'
But because the grammatical relations of  बिल्ली to  देख and  हम in (2) are identical to the grammatical relation of  कुत्ता to  भगा दे and  मैं in (1),  बिल्ली in (2) is also counted as a patient. Unlike the few English parallels (take care of X, make use of X), in Hindi-Urdu the number of verbal expressions taking  का or  की of patient is very large:
3. आई॰ टी॰ नई दुनिया का निर्माण कर रही है।
   'IT is creating a new world.'
4. कार की मरम्मत करनी है।
   'I have to fix the car.'
Nearly all of these expressions are ones in which nouns specifying some kind of action [viz,  निर्माण 'creation' in (3),  मरम्मत 'repair' in (4)] occur with verbs like  कर 'do',  हो 'become; be done',  दे 'give',  आ 'come',  मार 'strike' and a few others.  There are also a few stative expressions such as X  का आदी हो 'be accustomed to X':
5. इस व्यवहार का वह आदी था।
   'He was used to dealing in this way.'
   (from Chapter One of  गोदान )
        The full list of expressions taking  का or  की of patient is much too long to give here.  It may in fact be open-ended.  Among the most frequent are:
Es: vy:v:har ka v:h Aadi T:a. (to be continued)
To index of grammatical notes.
To index of  मल्हार.
Drafted 24-26 May 2001. Part posted 26 May 2001.