[INDOLOGY] Question about Tamil grammar and usage

Sun Sep 26 09:08:10 UTC 2021

Dear Professor HH , Greetings!

  In addition to Dr Palaiappan’s remarks, I would like to add few more 
information.

The converb (conjunctive participle, absolutive, adverbial participle) 
construction in Tamil (and in Dravidian) is used in a clause with 
several propositions, representing ‘successive’ actions (verbs), except 
the last verb, which is a finite one.

The CONV constructions in Tamil involves several different discourse 
(semantic, pragmatic) functions like, succession, completion, 
consequence etc, depending mainly on the discourse context.

The ‘subject’ is deleted if the same ‘subject’ is involved in such 
successive actions. There is no any constraint on the ‘subject’. The 
‘subject’ need not to be identical and can be inanimate.

appā

paṇam

koṭuttu

aṇṇaṉ

kaṭai.kku

pōy

kāy

vāṅki

father

money

give.CONV

elder brother

shop.DAT

go.CONV

vegetable

buy.CONV

piṟagu

ammā

camaittu

cāppiṭṭōm

after

mother

cook.CONF

eat.PAST.1.PL

“Father gave money, elder brother went to the shop and bought vegetables 
then mother cooed (the food) and we all ate (had our dinner).”

Most importantly, the converb construction is used involving successive 
actions. This structure is part of the upper-level discourse structures. 
That’s why Dr Palaniappan suggested the introduction of completive 
auxiliary and adverbials.

The sentence a) though grammatically well-formed sounds incomplete at 
the discourse pragmatic level. The sentence in a) can appear in, at 
least, two different structures:

a-1. Let us imagine, the sentence describes some regular activities. In 
a sequence of propositions (actions), the first series of sequences 
need, as Dr Palaniappan mentioned, a completive auxiliary. Without the 
completive auxiliary, the previous actions seem to stand in an adverbial 
relation but does not imply the sequence of successive actions.

In a normal conversation:

avarkaḷ//kōyilukku/      p//ō//yi pūcai /*/ceytu.viṭṭu/*/kaṭaikku.p 
pōvārkaḷ /

In narratives or one in a story-telling situation, each previous verb is 
repeated as a converb as in your example. In this context too the 
completive AUX is needed.

Further, the use of /mutalil/ (first) implies, contextually, that ‘going 
to temple’ and ‘performing pooja’ are preliminary conditions ‘to go to 
the shop’. Therefore, with reference to ‘/mutalil’/, there should be 
another adverb like, for example, ‘piṟaku’ “afterwards” to finish the 
proposition in harmony.

Your example b) may be starred as you suggest. This is not because the 
‘subjects’ are not identical. But as I mentioned above, pragmatically 
and semantically the previous actions have to be marked in completive 
aspect.

The example c) with INF and the particle –um (ceyy-a-um) raises another 
problem as this construction implies a completely a different meaning. 
In Tamil, INF-um implies actions of ‘immediate sequence’ or ‘immediate 
consequence’, for example,

pōlis varavum tiruṭaṉōṭiviṭṭāṉ‘as the police arrived the thief ran away’

pōlis

varavum

tiruṭaṉ

ōṭiviṭṭāṉ

police

come.INF.um

thief

run.AUX.3MS

To conclude tentatively, in my opinion, all the three examples a, b & c 
are ‘morpho syntactically’ correct. However, at the discourse pragmatic 
level they sound problematic. I am afraid that the sentences are a 
perfect translation into Tamil of some English examples. Please forgive 
me if I am wrong.

Typologically in tail-head linkage constructions, languages use CONVERB 
constructions. Nevertheless, the CONV in Tamil has an array of meanings 
depending on the discourse context.

Thanks for raising this interesting question. This deserves honestly 
more corpus-based studies.

With my Best regards.
Murugaiyan

Le 23/09/2021 à 23:03, Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan via INDOLOGY a écrit :
>
> Dear Hans,
>
> In normal day-to-day interaction, to convey the meaning intended by 
> the English sentences, the sentence 3 in (a) should have the verb 
> ‘ceytuviṭṭu’ to denote the completion of the ‘doing’ action.  Sentence 
> 3 in (b) should have the word for ‘after’ as in ‘ceyta piṉ’. 
> Otherwise, it might give the meaning that ‘we’ worshipped them and 
> took them to the shop. Sentence 3 in (c) would give the meaning that 
> we will take them to the shop to worship too (may be, some priests are 
> being invited to the inauguration of a shop, where the priests have to 
> offer worship in addition to buying stuff!)
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Regards,
>
> Palaniappan
>
> *From: *INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info> on behalf of 
> Indology List <indology at list.indology.info>
> *Reply-To: *"Hock, Hans Henrich" <hhhock at illinois.edu>
> *Date: *Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 11:57 AM
> *To: *Indology List <indology at list.indology.info>
> *Subject: *[INDOLOGY] Question about Tamil grammar and usage
>
> 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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