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

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@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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