Tamil aaytam

[N. Ganesan]

10/15/97



      Re: Tamil aaytam [aaydam] identified as PD laryngeal
      *****************************************************

There are few papers on aaytam in Proceedings of Word Tamil conferences,
I think. A word `kahRu' has meanings of a type of color or sound.

Nammalvar (9th century) uses aaytam in a context where it should sound as 'y'.
Look at the etukai/prAsam/second syllable in each line.

ahtE uyyap pukumARenRu kaNNan kazalkaLmEl
koypUm pozilcUz kurukUrc caTakOpan kuRREval
ceykOlat tAyiram cIrt toTaippATal ivaipattum
ahkaamal kaRpavar AztuyarpOy uyyaR pAlarE

In certain TirukkuRals, aaytam is treated as a vowel while in others
it acts as a consonant in metrical computations (yAppilakkaNam).


%%%%%%%%%%
The process described by Prof. Bh. Krishnamurti is used effectively
by Turaimangalam CivappirakAcar (17th century). He is a Veerasaivaite.
He narrates the birth of Basavanna.

For all words ending with 'l', if a word starting with 't'
comes to merge with it, 't' will change to 'R'.
(example: kal + taLi = kaRRaLi = stone temple, etc.,)

This general rule has an additional possibility for few words. For the
joining of few words ending with the letter 'l' with words
starting with letter 't', 'l' will become 'h'.
It is a rare occurence. Even after 'l' changing to 'h',
't' will become 'R' (retroflex) as before never minding it is 'h'
that is in the front and not 'l'. Old habits die hard!
(example: pal + taanai = paRRaanai = pahRaanai)

Devas were praying to Basava when he is in Kailasam. This is like
t becoming R after seeing l.

Devas continue to pray to Basava when he descends to Earth in human form.
This is like t becoming R even after seeing h, instead of the usual l.

An instance of grammar taking the form of literature,

       kuRilvazi lakaram tanin^ilai yaayum
         kUTiya takaramun ezuttenRu
       aRikuRi vaTivam tiritalpOl n^an^ti
          aTalviTai meytirin^  tuRinum
       n^aRumalar viziyin kaNtavar ellAm
          n^an^tiyE enRuLam  makizn^tAr


Regards,
N. Ganesan
nas_ng at lms420.jsc.nasa.gov





> From: "Bh. Krishnamurti" <bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN>
>
> I am giving below the abstract of a paper on Ancient Tamil aaytam
> which has not been related to Common Dravidain Phonology untill now.
> I suggested that it was a relic reflex a Proto-Dravidian laryngeal
> (a h-type of sound = similar to Sanskrit visarga) some 34 years ago
> and I find more and more evidence. Only scholars with analytical
> knowledge of Old Tamil phonology can throw light on this problem
> as well as Comparative Dravidian scholars. I would welcome suggestions

:Abstract:
>
> Proto-Dravidian Laryngeal *H Revisited
> BH. KRISHNAMURTI
> University of Hyderabad
>
>  Old Tamil records of  the early Christian era (3rd century BC to 3rd
> century AD) noted the occurrence of a phoneme called aaytam with some
> kind of h-colouring in about a dozen lexical items. Tamil Lexicon
> transliterates it as /k(bar underneath)/, transcribed here as h(subdot).
> Its distributional properties include the following: (a) h (subdot)
> generally occurs after a short vowel, (b) it lengthens the preceding
> vowel compensatorily, (c) it gets assimilated to the following voiceless
> stop, (d) it is lost  before most consonants, (e) it alternates with a
> semi-vowel *y or *w pre-vocalically or inter-vocalically.  From a
> comparative study of definitely attested cases like Old Tamil
> ahtu 'that one', ihtu, 'this one', and pahtu/pattu 'ten' , h was traced
> to a PD laryngeal *H. By examining  a number of cases in Dravidian with
> similar phonological behaviour, I have shown that a PD laryngeal *H
> would explain   several   lexical and grammatical items with aberrant
> phonology better than heretofore. These include: (a) the root for
> '3' (*muH-); (b) irregular verbs like  caH -'die', *taH- 'bring, give
> to 1st or 2nd person', *waH- 'come' (all with *H in root-final position);
> (c) five verb roots involving *H in its interior structure, viz. *aHn-'say',
> *tiHn- 'eat', *uHn(subdot) - 'drink, eat', *kaHn(subdot) - 'see, eye',
> *weHn- 'hear' ; (d) seven sets of  personal pronouns *yaH-n : *yaH-m, etc.
> in which the length variation between  the nominative and  oblique stems
> can be explained; and finally, (e) PD or Pre-Dravidian negative morpheme
> in verb inflection was reconstructed  as
> *aHa(H) which remained *aHa(H) in PSD, PCD and PND, but became *Ha(H) in
> PSCD.  The PD laryngeal *H thus solves several  difficult  problems in
> comparative Dravidian phonology.
>

In a reply, S. Palaniappan (Palaniappa at aol.com) wrote:

Without having access to your full paper and some Dravidian linguistics
publications,  here are some comments.

Coincidentally, I have been thinking about the radical vowel length
variation in connection with my research related to pA, pan2uval, pAr,
para etc. In one of my earlier postings, I said, "Another word with
the meaning $extend/spread=$ is $para/paravu$ (DED 3255), which, I
strongly feel, is related to the root $pA$. (I think the process is
similar to tA-taru, and vA/varu.)"  There are other verbs like
no/nO which could  belong to this category. V. S. Rajam discusses
such words in her book "A reference grammar of Classical Tamil Poetry"
, p.69.

I think when you say "*wehn- 'hear'", you actually refer to the verb
root often transliterated as "ve" meaning 'heat'. If that is right,
there is no need for an 'n' in the root. Following your model, veh-
 should be enough.

Based on some words like pA, pan2uval, kaHsu, kaHRen2a, your model
needs to consider alternation of H with l and r also.


Also, if the morphophonemic rule concerning words ending in l or L as
 in kal or muL followed by a dental t changing to R and T respectively
 applied to all words, then in your model won't all words with roots
with a short radical vowel and ending in l or L have  the "H"
inserted between the vowel and l/L? For instance kaL (toddy) will
have to be kaHL. (Actually, there is a word cited by V. S. Rajam
"kaHTu" meaning toddy which occurs in PuRanAn2URu 319.4)
 How does this affect the case of paHtu (ten)?

The medieval grammar nan2n2Ul addresses this problem in one of its
puNarcci rules. Although it does not reconstruct a H, the problem
it deals with is the same thing, although it does it in relation to
paNpuppeyarp puNarcci. An example is to combine pacumai (green)
and ilai (leaf). There are two alternate results possible,
paccilai and pAcilai. In connection with deriving the pAcilai form,
 the grammarian gives a rule to be applied "Ati nITal".. The
steps work out like this.


pacumai + ilai > pacu + ilai (rule: IRu pOtal)
pacu + ilai > pAcu + ilai (rule: Ati nITal)
pAcu + ilai > pAcilai (with the radical vowel being lengthened, u
becomes extra-short "u" which gets dropped when combining with a
 word beginning with a vowel)

It is the second stage which relates to your model. I think, in
your approach the root meaning green should be modeled "paHc".

By the way, is using "w" instead of "v" a new convention in Dravidian
linguistics? I have seen your own "Telugu Verbal Bases" and works by
P.S. Subrahmanyam, and others always using "v".