[INDOLOGY] Question about Tamil grammar and usage

Hock, Hans Henrich hhhock at illinois.edu
Thu Sep 23 16:56:43 UTC 2021


Dear Tamil-specialists,

I would appreciate your enlightening me on the following issue

Tamil is reported to have discourse-linkage structures such as the one in (a) below, in which the final verb of an earlier sentence is resumed in the form of a converb (or conjunctive participle) at the beginning of the next sentence. In such structures the [+ human] subjects of the converb and the main verb of the sentence have to be identical.
I understand that, as a consequence, structures like the third line of (b) are unacceptable, because the subject of cey-tu and celvōm are human and not identical. Would the use of the infinitive ceyy-a ± ‑um as in (c) improve the sentence or even make it grammatical?
Hoping that some of you will be able to answer my question,

I remain with best wishes to all,

Hans Henrich Hock

a.           avarkaḷ           mutalil             kōyilukku        pōvarkaḷ
they                 first                 temple.dat      go.fut.3pl.mf
kōyilukku.p     pōy-i                pūcai               ceyvārkaḷ
temple.dat      go-cvb             worship           do.fut.3pl.mf
pūcai               cey-tu              kaṭaikku.p       pōvārkaḷ         …
worship           do-cvb             shop.dat         go.fut.3pl.mf
‘They will first go the temple; having gone to the temple, they will worship; having worshipped, they will go to the shop …’

b.           avarkaḷ           mutalil             kōyilukku        pōvarkaḷ
they                 first                 temple.dat      go.fut.3pl.mf
kōyilukku.p     pōy-i                pūcai               ceyvārkaḷ
temple.dat      go-cvb             worship           do.fut.3pl.mf
(avarkaḷ)         pūcai               cey-tu              nāṅkaḷ            avarkaḷai        kaṭaikku
they                 worship           do-cvb             we                   them                shop.dat
ar̤aittu.c          celvōm …
pick.up.cvb     go.fut.1pl
 ‘They will first go the temple; having gone to the temple, they will worship; they having worshipped, we will take them to the shop …’

c.           avarkaḷ           mutalil             kōyilukku        pōvarkaḷ
he.pl.mf.nom  first                 temple.dat      go.fut.3pl.mf
kōyilukku.p     pōy-i                pūcai               ceyvārkaḷ
temple.dat      go-cvb             worship           do.fut.3pl.mf
(avarkaḷ)         pūcai               ceyy-a(-v.um)  nāṅkaḷ            avarkaḷai        kaṭaikku
they                 worship           do-inf               we                  them       shop.dat
ar̤aittu.c           celvōm …
pick.up.cvb     go.fut.1pl
 ‘They will first go the temple; having gone to the temple, they will worship; they having worshipped, we will take them to the shop …’

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