Fortunatov's Law and tolkAppiyar's rules

[N. Ganesan]

>The trouble is that these are attested at a much later date. The
>presence of words like 'kalki' shows that -lk- is acceptable in Modern
>Tamil. But that tells us nothing abouut the situation in early First
>Millenium BCE. [...]

>Analogical restoration is a known process. We need to be sure that it
>did not happen here, i.e., that -lk- etc were possible in proto-Dravidian,

 -lk- in Tamil was/is possible all the time. Not just kalki
 a medieval or later borrwing from Sanskrit.

 Just two examples from Old Tamil,
 cel + katir = celkatir (going sun)
 pal + kalai = palkalai (many arts, talented)
 and so on.

N. Ganesan