Tamil grammar

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Much of Tamil grammar is extensively described in the oldest available grammar book for Tamil, the Tolkāppiyam. Modern Tamil writing is largely based on the 13th century grammar Naṉṉūl which restated and clarified the rules of the Tolkāppiyam, with some modifications.

1 Parts of Tamil grammar
2 Tamil words
3 Parts of speech
4 Sentence structure
5 Example
6 References
7 External links
- 7.1 General

[edit] Parts of Tamil grammar

Traditional Tamil grammar consists of five parts, namely eḻuttu, col, porul, yāppu, aṇi. Of these, the last two are mostly applicable in poetry. The following table gives additional information about these parts.

Tamil name	Meaning	Main grammar books
eḻuttu	letter	Tolkāppiyam, Nannūl
col	word	Tolkāppiyam, Nannūl
porul	meaning	Tolkāppiyam
yāppu	form	Yāpparuṅkalakkārikai
aṇi	method	Tanṭiyalaṅkāram

[edit] Tamil words

Tamil, like other Dravidian languages, is an agglutinative language. Tamil words consist of a lexical root to which one or more affixes are attached.

Most Tamil affixes are suffixes. Tamil suffixes can be derivational suffixes, which either change the part of speech of the word or its meaning, or inflectional suffixes, which mark categories such as person, number, mood, tense, etc. There is no absolute limit on the length and extent of agglutination, which can lead to long words with a large number of suffixes, which would require several words or a sentence in English. To give an example, the word pōkamuṭiyātavarkaḷukkāka means "for the sake of those who cannot go", and consists of the following morphemes:

pōka

muṭi

āta

var

kaḷ

ukku

āka

accomplish

puNarci

negation
(impersonal)

nominalizer
he/she who does

plural marker

for

Words formed as a result of the agglutinative process are often difficult to translate. According to Today Translations^[1], a British translation service, the Tamil word "செல்லாதிருப்பவர்" (sellaathiruppavar, meaning a certain type of truancy †) is ranked 8^th in The Most Untranslatable Word In The World list.

[edit] Parts of speech

[edit] Nouns

Tamil nouns (and pronouns) are classified into two super-classes (tiṇai) - the "rational" (uyartiṇai), and the "irrational" (aḵṟiṇai) - which include a total of five classes (paal, which literally means 'gender'). Humans and deities are classified as "rational", and all other nouns (animals, objects, abstract nouns) are classified as irrational. The "rational" nouns and pronouns belong to one of three classes (paal) - masculine singular, feminine singular, and rational plural. The plural form for rational nouns may be used as an honorific, gender-neutral, singular form. The "irrational" nouns and pronouns belong to one of two classes (paal) - irrational singular and irrational plural. As the example in the table indicates, the paal is often indicated through suffixes.

peyarccol (Name-words)
uyartiṇai (rational)			aḵṟiṇai (irrational)
āṇpāl Male	peṇpāl Female	palarpāl Collective	oṉṟaṉpāl One	palaviṉpāl Many
Example: the Tamil words for "doer"
ceytavaṉ He who did	ceytavaḷ She who did	ceytavar They who did	ceytatu That which did	ceytavai Those ones which did

Suffixes are also used to perform the functions of cases or postpositions. Traditional grammarians tried to group the various suffixes into 8 cases corresponding to the cases used in Sanskrit. These were the nominative, accusative, dative, sociative, genitive, instrumental, locative, and ablative. Modern grammarians, however, argue that this classification is artificial, and that Tamil usage is best understood if each suffix or combination of suffixes is seen as marking a separate case. (Schiffman, 1999).

Tamil nouns can also take one of four prefixes, i, a, u and e which are functionally equivalent to demonstratives in English. For example, the word vaḻi meaning "way" can take these to produce ivvaḻi "this way", avvaḻi "that way", uvvaḻi "the medial way" and evvaḻi "which way".

Some nouns are formed by means of agglutination. For example, "he-who-does" or "that-which-will-become" are the so-called participial nouns. Composite nouns are formed by combining adjectives and pronouns. For example, combining "good" and "he" into "good-he" we obtain the equivalent of the English "a good man". Correspondingly, the noun "good-they" is translated as "good people". Verbal nouns in Tamil are formed from the roots of verbs and are roughly equivalent to the English "-ing" nouns.

[edit] Verbs

Like Tamil nouns, Tamil verbs are also inflected through the use of suffixes. A typical Tamil verb form will have a number of suffixes, which show person, number, mood, tense and voice, as is shown by the following example aḷintukkoṇṭiruntēṉ "(I) was being destroyed":

aḷi

intu

koṇṭu

irunta

ēn

root
destroy

voice marker
past tense
object voice

tense marker
during

tense marker
past progressive

person marker
first person,
singular

Person and number are indicated by suffixing the oblique case of the relevant pronoun (ēn in the above example). The suffixes to indicate tenses and voice are formed from grammatical particles, which are added to the stem.

Tamil has two voices. The first - used in the example above - indicates that the subject of the sentence undergoes or is the object of the action named by the verb stem, and the second indicates that the subject of the sentence directs the action referred to by the verb stem. These voices are not equivalent to the notions of transitivity or causation, or to the active-passive or reflexive-nonreflexive division of voices found in Indo-european languages.

Tamil has three simple tenses - past, present, and future - indicated by simple suffixes, and a series of perfects, indicated by compound suffixes. Mood is implicit in Tamil, and is normally reflected by the same morphemes which mark tense categories. These signal whether the happening spoken of in the verb is unreal, possible, potential, or real.

[edit] Auxiliaries

Tamil has no articles. Definiteness and indefiniteness are either indicated by special grammatical devices, such as using the number "one" as an indefinite article, or by the context. In the first person plural, Tamil makes a distinction between inclusive pronouns that include the listener and exclusive pronouns that do not. Tamil does not distinguish between adjectives and adverbs - both fall under the category uriccol. Conjunctions are called iṭaiccol.

Verb auxiliaries are used to indicate attitude, a grammatical category which shows the state of mind of the speaker, and his attitude about the event spoken of in the verb. Common attitudes include pejorative opinion, antipathy, relief felt at the conclusion of an unpleasant event or period, and unhappiness at or apprehension about the eventual result of a past or continuing event.

[edit] Sentence structure

Except in poetry, the subject precedes the object, and the verb must conclude the sentence. In a standard sentence, therefore, the order is usually Subject Object Verb (SOV) though Object Subject Verb is also not uncommon.

Tamil is a null subject language. Not all Tamil sentences have subjects, verbs and objects. It is possible to construct valid sentences that have only a verb - such as muṭintuviṭṭatu ("It is completed") - or only a subject and object, such as atu eṉ vīṭu ("That is my house"). The elements that are present, however, must follow the SOV order. Tamil does not have an equivalent for the word is and the word is included in the translations only to convey the meaning. The verb to have in the meaning "to possess" is not translated directly either. In order to say "I have a horse" in Tamil a construction equivalent to "There is a horse to me" or "There exists a horse to me" will be used.

Tamil lacks relative pronouns, but their meaning is conveyed by relative participle constructions which are built using agglutination. For example, the English sentence "Call the boy who learnt the lesson" will be said in Tamil roughly as "That-lesson-learnt-boy call".

[edit] Example

A sample passage in Tamil script with an ITRANS-like transliteration.

aasiriyar vakuppukkuL nuzhainthaar.
avar uLLE nuzhainthavudan maaNavarkaL ezhunthanar.
vaLavan mattum than arukil ninRu kondiruntha maaNavi kanimozhiyudan pEsik kondirunthaan.
naan avanai echarithEn.

English translation of the passage given above:

The teacher entered the classroom.
As soon as he entered, the students got up.
Only Valavan was talking to Kanimozhi who was standing next to him.
I warned him.

Notes:

Tamil does not have articles. The definite article used above is merely an artefact of translation.
To understand why Valavan would want to be warned, it is necessary to comprehend Asian social etiquette. It is considered impolite to be distracted when a person of eminence (the teacher in this case) makes an entry and the teacher may feel insulted or slighted.

Word (romanised)	Translation	Morphemes	Part of speech	Person, Gender, Tense	Case	Number	Remarks
aasiriyar	teacher	aasiriyar	noun	n/a, gender-neutral, n/a	nominative	honorific plural indicated by suffix ar	The feminine gender aasiriyai can be used here too; the masculine gender aasiriyan is rarely used, considering the honored position of the teacher
vakuppaRaiyuL	inside the class room	vakuppu+aRai +uL	adverb	n/a	locative	n/a	Sandhi (called puṇarci in Tamil) rules in Tamil require euphonic changes during agglutination (such as the introduction of y in this case)
nuzhainthaar	entered	nuzhainthaar	verb	third, gender-neutral, past		honorific plural	In an honorific context, the masculine and feminine equivalents nuzhainthaan and nuzhainthaaL are replaced by the collective nuzhainthaar
avar	He	avar	pronoun	third, gender-neutral, n/a	nominative	honorific plural indicated by suffix ar	In honorific contexts, the masculine and feminine forms avan and avaL are not used
uLLE	inside	uLLE	adverb	n/a		n/a
nuzhainthavudan	upon entering	nuzhaintha + udan	adverb	n/a		n/a	Sandhi rules require a v to be inserted between an end-vowel and a beginning-u during agglutination.
maaNavarkaL	students	maaNavarkaL	collective noun	n/a, masculine, often used with gender-neutral connotation, n/a	nominative	plural indicated by suffix kaL
ezhunthanar	got up	ezhunthanar	verb	third, gender-neutral, past		plural
VaLavan	VaLavan (name)	VaLavan	proper noun	n/a, masculine, usually indicated by suffix an, n/a	nominative	singular
mattum	only	mattum	adjective	n/a		n/a
than	his (self) own	than	pronoun	n/a, gender-neutral, n/a		singular
arukil	near (lit. "in nearness")	aruku + il	adverb	n/a	locative	n/a	The postposition il indicates the locative case
ninRu kondiruntha	standing	ninRu + kondu + iruntha	adverb	n/a		n/a	The verb has been morphed into an adverb by the incompleteness due to the terminal a
maaNavi	student	maaNavi	pronoun	n/a, feminine, n/a		singular
kanimozhiyudan	with Kanimozhi (name of a person)	kanimozhi + udan	adverb	n/a	comitative	n/a	The name Kanimozhi literally means sweet language
pEsik kondirunthaan	was talking	pEsi + kondu +irunthaan	verb	third, masculine, past continuous		singular	Continuousness indicated by the incompleteness brought by kondu
naan	I	naan	pronoun	first person, gender-neutral, n/a	nominative	singular
avanai	him	avanai	pronoun	third, masculine, n/a	accusative	singular	The postposition ai indicates accusative case
echarithEn	cautioned	echarithEn	verb	first, indicated by suffix En, gender-neutral, past		singular, plural would be indicated by substituting En with Om