-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 alternation between and ('they saw the wolves' ) is plausible. The two variants would still be pronounced differently, as the double -ss- is distinct from a single -s- (compare English "the sink" and "this sink"), but the alternation can now be understood as a simple process of gemination (doubling) or degemination. This can be understood in two ways. A number of roots beginning in look as if they had an s-mobile but the evidence is inconclusive, since several languages (Latin, Greek, Albanian) lost initial "s-" before sonorants ("l, m, n") by regular sound change. Examples include: Indo-European s-mobile In Indo-European