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 pōyi 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 tiruṭaṉ ōṭiviṭṭāṉ ‘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