-stan "koborsthan" ( "") "graveyard/cemetery", known as "Qabaristan" as (). Originally an independent noun, this morpheme evolved into a suffix by virtue of appearing frequently as the last part in nominal compounds. It is of Indo-Iranian and ultimately Indo-European origin: It is cognate with Sanskrit "" (Devanagari: ), meaning "the act of standing", from which many further meanings derive, including "place, location; abode, dwelling", and ultimately descends from Proto-Indo-Iranian . The Proto-Indo-European root from which this noun is derived is (older reconstruction ) "to stand" (or "to stand up, to step (somewhere), to position (oneself)"), which is also the source of
Indo-European s-mobile always followed by another consonant. Typical combinations are with voiceless stops: ', ', '; with liquids and nasals: ', ', '; and rarely: "". One theory of the origin of the "s"-mobile is that it was influenced by a suffix to the preceding word; many inflectional suffixes in PIE are reconstructed as having ended in *"s", including the nominative singular and accusative plural of nouns. The "s"-mobile can therefore be seen as an interference between the words, a kind of sandhi development. So for example, while an alternation between and (both meaning 'they saw') might be difficult to imagine, an