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@list.indology.info> on behalf of Indology List <indology@list.indology.info>
Reply-To: "Hock, Hans Henrich" <hhhock@illinois.edu>
Date: Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 11:57 AM
To: Indology List <indology@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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