Tamil grammar
Encyclopedia
Much of Tamil grammar is extensively described in the oldest available grammar book for Tamil
, the Tolkāppiyam. Modern Tamil writing is largely based on the 13th century grammar which restated and clarified the rules of the Tolkāppiyam, with some modifications.
. Tamil words consist of a lexical root
to which one or more affix
es are attached.
Most Tamil affixes are suffix
es. Tamil suffixes can be derivational
suffixes, which either change the part of speech of the word or its meaning, or inflection
al suffixes, which mark categories such as person
, number
, mood
, tense
, etc. There is no absolute limit on the length and extent of agglutination
, which can lead to long words with a large number of suffixes, which would require several words or a sentence in English. To give an example, the word pōkamuṭiyātavarkaḷukkāka means "for the sake of those who cannot go", and consists of the following morpheme
s:
Words formed as a result of the agglutinative process are often difficult to translate. According to Today Translations, a British
translation service, the Tamil word "செல்லாதிருப்பவர்" (sellaathiruppavar, meaning a certain type of truancy
†) is ranked 8th in The Most Untranslatable Word In The World list.
" (uyartiṇai), and the "irrational" (aḵṟiṇai) - which include a total of five classes (paal, which literally means 'gender'). Human
s and deities
are classified as "rational", and all other nouns (animal
s, objects, abstract nouns) are classified as irrational. The "rational" nouns and pronouns belong to one of three classes (paal) - masculine singular, feminine singular, and rational plural. The plural form for rational nouns may be used as an honorific
, gender-neutral, singular form. The "irrational" nouns and pronouns belong to one of two classes (paal) - irrational singular and irrational plural. As the example in the table indicates, the paal is often indicated through suffixes.
Suffixes are also used to perform the functions of cases
or postpositions. Traditional grammarians tried to group the various suffixes into 8 cases corresponding to the cases used in Sanskrit
. These were the nominative
, accusative
, dative
, sociative
, genitive
, instrumental
, locative
, and ablative
. Modern grammarians, however, argue that this classification is artificial, and that Tamil usage is best understood if each suffix or combination of suffixes is seen as marking a separate case.
Tamil nouns can also take one of four prefixes, i, a, u and e which are functionally equivalent to demonstratives in English. For example, the word vaḻi meaning "way" can take these to produce ivvaḻi "this way", avvaḻi "that way", uvvaḻi "the medial way" and evvaḻi "which way".
Some nouns are formed by means of agglutination. For example, "he-who-does" or "that-which-will-become" are the so-called participial nouns. Composite nouns are formed by combining adjectives and pronouns. For example, combining "good" and "he" into "good-he" we obtain the equivalent of the English "a good man". Correspondingly, the noun "good-they" is translated as "good people". Verbal nouns in Tamil are formed from the roots of verbs and are roughly equivalent to the English "-ing" nouns.
s are also inflected through the use of suffixes. A typical Tamil verb form will have a number of suffix
es, which show person
, number
, mood
, tense
and voice, as is shown by the following example aḷintukkoṇṭiruntēṉ "(I) was being destroyed":
Person and number are indicated by suffix
ing the oblique case
of the relevant pronoun
(ēn in the above example). The suffixes to indicate tenses and voice are formed from grammatical particle
s, which are added to the stem.
Tamil has two voices. The first - used in the example above - indicates that the subject of the sentence undergoes or is the object of the action named by the verb stem, and the second indicates that the subject of the sentence directs the action referred to by the verb stem. These voices are not equivalent to the notion
s of transitivity
or causation
, or to the active
-passive
or reflexive-nonreflexive division of voices found in Indo-european languages.
Tamil has three simple tenses
- past, present, and future - indicated by simple suffixes, and a series of perfects, indicated by compound suffixes. Mood is implicit in Tamil, and is normally reflected by the same morpheme
s which mark tense categories. These signal whether the happening spoken of in the verb is unreal, possible, potential, or real. Tamil verbs also mark evidentiality
, through the addition of the hearsay clitic
.
s. Definiteness and indefiniteness are either indicated by special grammatical devices, such as using the number "one" as an indefinite article, or by the context. In the first person plural, Tamil makes a distinction between inclusive
pronouns that include the listener and exclusive pronouns that do not. Tamil does not distinguish between adjective
s and adverb
s - both fall under the category uriccol. Conjunction
s are called iṭaiccol.
Verb auxiliaries are used to indicate attitude
, a grammatical category which shows the state of mind of the speaker, and his attitude about the event spoken of in the verb. Common attitudes include pejorative opinion, antipathy
, relief felt at the conclusion of an unpleasant event or period, and unhappiness at or apprehension about the eventual result of a past or continuing event.
Tamil is a null subject language
. Not all Tamil sentences have subjects, verbs and objects. It is possible to construct valid sentences that have only a verb - such as muṭintuviṭṭatu ("It is completed") - or only a subject and object, such as atu eṉ vīṭu ("That is my house"). The elements that are present, however, must follow the SOV order. Tamil does not have an equivalent for the word is and the word is included in the translations only to convey the meaning. The verb to have in the meaning "to possess" is not translated directly either. In order to say "I have a horse" in Tamil a construction equivalent to "There is a horse to me" or "There exists a horse to me" will be used.
Tamil lacks relative pronoun
s, but their meaning is conveyed by relative participle constructions which are built using agglutination. For example, the English sentence "Call the boy who learnt the lesson" will be said in Tamil roughly as "That-lesson-learnt-boy call".
-like transliteration.
aasiriyar vakuppukkuL nuzhainthaar.
avar uLLE nuzhainthavudan maaNavarkaL ezhunthanar.
vaLavan mattum than arukil ninRu kondiruntha maaNavi kanimozhiyudan pEsik kondirunthaan.
naan avanai echarithEn.
English
translation of the passage given above:
The teacher entered the classroom.
As soon as he entered, the students got up.
Only Valavan was talking to Kanimozhi who was standing next to him. I warned him.
Notes:
Tamil language
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
, the Tolkāppiyam. Modern Tamil writing is largely based on the 13th century grammar which restated and clarified the rules of the Tolkāppiyam, with some modifications.
Parts of Tamil grammar
Traditional Tamil grammar consists of five parts, namely , sol, porul, yāppu, . Of these, the last two are mostly applicable in poetry. The following table gives additional information about these parts.| Tamil name | Meaning | Main grammar books |
| letter | Tolkāppiyam, Nannūl | |
| sol | word | Tolkāppiyam, Nannūl |
| porul | meaning | Tolkāppiyam |
| yāppu | form | |
| method |
Tamil words
Tamil, like other Dravidian languages, is an agglutinative languageAgglutinative language
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view...
. Tamil words consist of a lexical root
Lexeme
A lexeme is an abstract unit of morphological analysis in linguistics, that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken by a single word. For example, in the English language, run, runs, ran and running are forms of the same lexeme, conventionally written as RUN...
to which one or more affix
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
es are attached.
Most Tamil affixes are suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
es. Tamil suffixes can be derivational
Derivation (linguistics)
In linguistics, derivation is the process of forming a new word on the basis of an existing word, e.g. happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from determine...
suffixes, which either change the part of speech of the word or its meaning, or inflection
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
al suffixes, which mark categories such as person
Grammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
, number
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
, mood
Grammatical mood
In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...
, tense
Grammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
, etc. There is no absolute limit on the length and extent of agglutination
Agglutination
In contemporary linguistics, agglutination usually refers to the kind of morphological derivation in which there is a one-to-one correspondence between affixes and syntactical categories. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative languages...
, which can lead to long words with a large number of suffixes, which would require several words or a sentence in English. To give an example, the word pōkamuṭiyātavarkaḷukkāka means "for the sake of those who cannot go", and consists of the following morpheme
Morpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
s:
| pōka | muṭi | y | āta | var | kaḷ | ukku | āka | ||||||||||||||||
| go | accomplish | word-joining letter | negation (impersonal) |
nominalizer he/she who does |
plural marker | to | for | ||||||||||||||||
Words formed as a result of the agglutinative process are often difficult to translate. According to Today Translations, a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
translation service, the Tamil word "செல்லாதிருப்பவர்" (sellaathiruppavar, meaning a certain type of truancy
Truancy
Truancy is any intentional unauthorized absence from compulsory schooling. The term typically describes absences caused by students of their own free will, and usually does not refer to legitimate "excused" absences, such as ones related to medical conditions...
†) is ranked 8th in The Most Untranslatable Word In The World list.
Nouns
Tamil nouns (and pronouns) are classified into two super-classes (tiṇai) - the "rationalRationality
In philosophy, rationality is the exercise of reason. It is the manner in which people derive conclusions when considering things deliberately. It also refers to the conformity of one's beliefs with one's reasons for belief, or with one's actions with one's reasons for action...
" (uyartiṇai), and the "irrational" (aḵṟiṇai) - which include a total of five classes (paal, which literally means 'gender'). Human
Human
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
s and deities
Deity
A deity is a recognized preternatural or supernatural immortal being, who may be thought of as holy, divine, or sacred, held in high regard, and respected by believers....
are classified as "rational", and all other nouns (animal
Animal
Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...
s, objects, abstract nouns) are classified as irrational. The "rational" nouns and pronouns belong to one of three classes (paal) - masculine singular, feminine singular, and rational plural. The plural form for rational nouns may be used as an honorific
Honorific
An honorific is a word or expression with connotations conveying esteem or respect when used in addressing or referring to a person. Sometimes, the term is used not quite correctly to refer to an honorary title...
, gender-neutral, singular form. The "irrational" nouns and pronouns belong to one of two classes (paal) - irrational singular and irrational plural. As the example in the table indicates, the paal is often indicated through suffixes.
| peyarccol (Name-words) | ||||
| uyartiṇai (rational) |
aḵṟiṇai (irrational) |
|||
| āṇpāl Male |
peṇpāl Female |
palarpāl Collective |
oṉṟaṉpāl One |
palaviṉpāl Many |
| Example: the Tamil words for "doer" | ||||
| ceytavaṉ He who did |
ceytavaḷ She who did |
ceytavar They who did |
ceytatu That which did |
ceytavai Those ones which did |
Suffixes are also used to perform the functions of cases
Grammatical case
In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
or postpositions. Traditional grammarians tried to group the various suffixes into 8 cases corresponding to the cases used in Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
. These were the nominative
Nominative case
The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
, accusative
Accusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
, dative
Dative case
The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....
, sociative
Sociative case
This case in Hungarian language can express the person in whose company the action is carried out, or to any belongings of people which take part in the action . It is denoted by the suffixes "-stul/-stül," depending on vowel harmony. This case is obsolete and nowadays the instrumental-comitative...
, genitive
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
, instrumental
Instrumental case
The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...
, locative
Locative case
Locative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"...
, and ablative
Ablative case
In linguistics, ablative case is a name given to cases in various languages whose common characteristic is that they mark motion away from something, though the details in each language may differ...
. Modern grammarians, however, argue that this classification is artificial, and that Tamil usage is best understood if each suffix or combination of suffixes is seen as marking a separate case.
Tamil nouns can also take one of four prefixes, i, a, u and e which are functionally equivalent to demonstratives in English. For example, the word vaḻi meaning "way" can take these to produce ivvaḻi "this way", avvaḻi "that way", uvvaḻi "the medial way" and evvaḻi "which way".
Some nouns are formed by means of agglutination. For example, "he-who-does" or "that-which-will-become" are the so-called participial nouns. Composite nouns are formed by combining adjectives and pronouns. For example, combining "good" and "he" into "good-he" we obtain the equivalent of the English "a good man". Correspondingly, the noun "good-they" is translated as "good people". Verbal nouns in Tamil are formed from the roots of verbs and are roughly equivalent to the English "-ing" nouns.
Verbs
Like Tamil nouns, Tamil verbVerb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
s are also inflected through the use of suffixes. A typical Tamil verb form will have a number of suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
es, which show person
Grammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
, number
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
, mood
Grammatical mood
In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...
, tense
Grammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
and voice, as is shown by the following example aḷintukkoṇṭiruntēṉ "(I) was being destroyed":
| aḷi | intu | koṇṭu | irunta | ēn | ||||||||
| root destroy |
voice marker past tense object voice |
tense marker during |
aspect marker past progressive |
person marker first person, singular |
||||||||
Person and number are indicated by suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
ing the oblique case
Oblique case
An oblique case in linguistics is a noun case of synthetic languages that is used generally when a noun is the object of a verb or a preposition...
of the relevant pronoun
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
(ēn in the above example). The suffixes to indicate tenses and voice are formed from grammatical particle
Grammatical particle
In grammar, a particle is a function word that does not belong to any of the inflected grammatical word classes . It is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of words and terms that lack a precise lexical definition...
s, which are added to the stem.
Tamil has two voices. The first - used in the example above - indicates that the subject of the sentence undergoes or is the object of the action named by the verb stem, and the second indicates that the subject of the sentence directs the action referred to by the verb stem. These voices are not equivalent to the notion
Notion
Notion may refer to:* Notion * Notion * Notions , small articles used in sewing and haberdashery* Notion , music composition and performance computer program* Notion , Ion clone...
s of transitivity
Transitivity (grammatical category)
In linguistics, transitivity is a property of verbs that relates to whether a verb can take direct objects and how many such objects a verb can take...
or causation
Causality
Causality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first....
, or to the active
Active voice
Active voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. It is the unmarked voice for clauses featuring a transitive verb in nominative–accusative languages, including English and most other Indo-European languages....
-passive
Passive voice
Passive voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. Passive is used in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb. That is, the subject undergoes an action or has its state changed. A sentence whose theme is marked as grammatical subject is...
or reflexive-nonreflexive division of voices found in Indo-european languages.
Tamil has three simple tenses
Grammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
- past, present, and future - indicated by simple suffixes, and a series of perfects, indicated by compound suffixes. Mood is implicit in Tamil, and is normally reflected by the same morpheme
Morpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
s which mark tense categories. These signal whether the happening spoken of in the verb is unreal, possible, potential, or real. Tamil verbs also mark evidentiality
Evidentiality
In linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and/or what kind of evidence exists. An evidential is the particular grammatical element that indicates evidentiality...
, through the addition of the hearsay clitic
Clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
.
Auxiliaries
Tamil has no articleArticle (grammar)
An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
s. Definiteness and indefiniteness are either indicated by special grammatical devices, such as using the number "one" as an indefinite article, or by the context. In the first person plural, Tamil makes a distinction between inclusive
Clusivity
In linguistics, clusivity is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called inclusive "we" and exclusive "we"...
pronouns that include the listener and exclusive pronouns that do not. Tamil does not distinguish between adjective
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s and adverb
Adverb
An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....
s - both fall under the category uriccol. Conjunction
Grammatical conjunction
In grammar, a conjunction is a part of speech that connects two words, sentences, phrases or clauses together. A discourse connective is a conjunction joining sentences. This definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech, so what constitutes a "conjunction" must be defined for each...
s are called iṭaiccol.
Verb auxiliaries are used to indicate attitude
Attitude (psychology)
An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for something. Attitudes are generally positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or event— this is often referred to as the attitude object...
, a grammatical category which shows the state of mind of the speaker, and his attitude about the event spoken of in the verb. Common attitudes include pejorative opinion, antipathy
Antipathy
Antipathy is dislike for something or somebody, the opposite of sympathy. While antipathy may be induced by previous experience, it sometimes exists without a rational cause-and-effect explanation being present to the individuals involved....
, relief felt at the conclusion of an unpleasant event or period, and unhappiness at or apprehension about the eventual result of a past or continuing event.
Sentence structure
Except in poetry, the subject precedes the object, and the verb must conclude the sentence. In a standard sentence, therefore, the order is usually subject–object–verb (SOV) though object–subject–verb is not uncommon.Tamil is a null subject language
Null subject language
In linguistic typology, a null-subject language is a language whose grammar permits an independent clause to lack an explicit subject. Such a clause is then said to have a null subject. Typically, null subject languages express person, number, and/or gender agreement with the referent on the verb,...
. Not all Tamil sentences have subjects, verbs and objects. It is possible to construct valid sentences that have only a verb - such as muṭintuviṭṭatu ("It is completed") - or only a subject and object, such as atu eṉ vīṭu ("That is my house"). The elements that are present, however, must follow the SOV order. Tamil does not have an equivalent for the word is and the word is included in the translations only to convey the meaning. The verb to have in the meaning "to possess" is not translated directly either. In order to say "I have a horse" in Tamil a construction equivalent to "There is a horse to me" or "There exists a horse to me" will be used.
Tamil lacks relative pronoun
Relative pronoun
A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause within a larger sentence. It is called a relative pronoun because it relates the relative clause to the noun that it modifies. In English, the relative pronouns are: who, whom, whose, whosever, whosesoever, which, and, in some...
s, but their meaning is conveyed by relative participle constructions which are built using agglutination. For example, the English sentence "Call the boy who learnt the lesson" will be said in Tamil roughly as "That-lesson-learnt-boy call".
Example
A sample passage in Tamil script with an ITRANSITRANS
The "Indian languages TRANSliteration" is an ASCII transliteration scheme for Indic scripts, particularly for Devanagari script. It was developed by Avinash Chopde. The latest version of ITRANS is version 5.30 released in July, 2001...
-like transliteration.
aasiriyar vakuppukkuL nuzhainthaar.
avar uLLE nuzhainthavudan maaNavarkaL ezhunthanar.
vaLavan mattum than arukil ninRu kondiruntha maaNavi kanimozhiyudan pEsik kondirunthaan.
naan avanai echarithEn.
English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
translation of the passage given above:
The teacher entered the classroom.
As soon as he entered, the students got up.
Only Valavan was talking to Kanimozhi who was standing next to him. I warned him.
Notes:
- Tamil does not have a definite articleDefinite ArticleDefinite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzard's 1996 performance released on VHS. It was recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre...
. The definite article used above is merely an artefact of translation. - To understand why Valavan would want to be warned, it is necessary to comprehend Indian social etiquette. It is considered impolite to be distracted when a person of eminence (the teacher in this case) makes an entry and the teacher may feel insulted or slighted.
| Word (romanised) | Translation Translation Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of... | Morpheme Morpheme In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,... s | Part of speech | Person, Gender Grammatical gender Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be... , Tense Grammatical tense A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:... | Case | Number Grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions .... |
Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| aasiriyar | teacher | aasiriyar | noun Noun In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of... |
n/a, gender-neutral Gender-neutral Gender neutrality describes the idea that language and other social institutions should avoid distinguishing people by their gender, in order to avoid discrimination arising from the impression that there are social roles for which one gender is more suited than the other... , n/a |
nominative | honorific Honorific An honorific is a word or expression with connotations conveying esteem or respect when used in addressing or referring to a person. Sometimes, the term is used not quite correctly to refer to an honorary title... plural indicated by suffix Suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs... ar |
The feminine gender aasiriyai can be used here too; the masculine gender aasiriyan is rarely used, considering the honored position of the teacher |
| vakuppaRaiyuL | inside the class room | vakuppu+aRai +uL |
adverb Adverb An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs.... |
n/a | locative | n/a | Sandhi Sandhi Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries . Examples include the fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of sounds due to neighboring sounds or due to the grammatical function of adjacent words... (called puṇarci in Tamil) rules in Tamil require euphonic changes during agglutination Agglutination In contemporary linguistics, agglutination usually refers to the kind of morphological derivation in which there is a one-to-one correspondence between affixes and syntactical categories. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative languages... (such as the introduction of y in this case) |
| nuzhainthaar | entered | nuzhainthaar | verb Verb A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive... |
third, gender-neutral, past Past tense The past tense is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment , or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future... |
honorific plural | In an honorific context, the masculine and feminine equivalents nuzhainthaan and nuzhainthaaL are replaced by the collective nuzhainthaar | |
| avar | He | avar | pronoun Pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he... |
third, gender-neutral, n/a | nominative | honorific plural indicated by suffix ar | In honorific contexts, the masculine and feminine forms avan and avaL are not used |
| uLLE | inside | uLLE | adverb | n/a | n/a | ||
| nuzhainthavudan | upon entering | nuzhaintha + udan |
adverb | n/a | n/a | Sandhi Sandhi Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries . Examples include the fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of sounds due to neighboring sounds or due to the grammatical function of adjacent words... rules require a v to be inserted between an end-vowel and a beginning-u during agglutination Agglutination In contemporary linguistics, agglutination usually refers to the kind of morphological derivation in which there is a one-to-one correspondence between affixes and syntactical categories. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative languages... . |
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| maaNavarkaL | students | maaNavarkaL | collective noun | n/a, masculine Masculine Masculine or masculinity, normally refer to qualities positively associated with men.Masculine may also refer to:*Masculine , a grammatical gender*Masculine cadence, a final chord occurring on a strong beat in music... , often used with gender-neutral connotation, n/a |
nominative | plural Plural In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one... indicated by suffix kaL |
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| ezhunthanar | got up | ezhunthanar | verb | third, gender-neutral, past | plural | ||
| VaLavan | VaLavan (name) | VaLavan | proper noun Proper noun A proper noun or proper name is a noun representing a unique entity , as distinguished from a common noun, which represents a class of entities —for example, city, planet, person or corporation)... |
n/a, masculine, usually indicated by suffix an, n/a | nominative | singular Grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions .... |
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| mattum | only | mattum | adjective Adjective In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified.... |
n/a | n/a | ||
| than | his (self) own | than | pronoun | n/a, gender-neutral, n/a | singular | ||
| arukil | near (lit. "in nearness") | aruku + il | adverb | n/a | locative | n/a | The postposition il indicates the locative case Locative case Locative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"... |
| ninRu kondiruntha | standing | ninRu + kondu + iruntha | adverb | n/a | n/a | The verb has been morphed into an adverb by the incompleteness due to the terminal a | |
| maaNavi | student | maaNavi | pronoun | n/a, feminine, n/a | singular | ||
| kanimozhiyudan | with Kanimozhi (name of a person) | kanimozhi + udan | adverb | n/a | comitative | n/a | The name Kanimozhi literally means sweet language |
| pEsik kondirunthaan | was talking | pEsi + kondu +irunthaan | verb | third, masculine, past continuous | singular | Continuousness indicated by the incompleteness brought by kondu | |
| naan | I | naan | pronoun | first person, gender-neutral, n/a | nominative | singular | |
| avanai | him | avanai | pronoun | third, masculine, n/a | accusative | singular | The postposition ai indicates accusative case Accusative case The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions... |
| echarithEn | cautioned | echarithEn | verb | first, indicated by suffix En, gender-neutral, past | singular, plural would be indicated by substituting En with Om |