A Reference Grammar of Spoken Tamil
This is a reference grammar of the standard spoken variety of Tamil, a language with 65 million speakers in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore. The spoken variety is radically different from the standard literary variety, last standardized in the thirteenth century. The standard spoken language is used by educated people in their interactions with people from different regions and different social groups, and is also the dialect used in films, plays and the media. This book, a much expanded version of the author's Grammar of Spoken Tamil (1979), is the first such grammar to contain examples both in Tamil script and in transliteration, and the first to be written so as to be accessible to students studying the modern spoken language as well as to linguists and other specialists. The book has benefited from extensive native-speaker input and the author's own long experience of teaching Tamil to English-speakers.
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Contents
Phonology and Transliteration
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1 |
The Nominal System
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2 |
Nouns Ending in o
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25 |
Genitive
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39 |
The Tamil Verb Phrase
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45 |
vii
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56 |
2228
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73 |
44
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88 |
Adjectives
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123 |
Introduction
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139 |
WHINTERROGATIVES + 2
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160 |
Complex Syntax and Related Topics
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169 |
Literary Tamil Equivalents of Spoken Tamil
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197 |
References
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221 |
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Common terms and phrases
aahu action added adjectival participle adjectives adverbial alveolar aspect marker aspectual verbs avan avanga avanukku avar avaru CLEFT SENTENCES clitic dative deleted dialects enakku English epenthetic example express final position finite verb followed geminated grammar grammaticalization Graul's Class imperative infinitive interrogative intervocalic intransitive intransitive verbs irukku kiṭṭe languages lexical verb locative long vowels LT Version marked meaning morpheme morpheme-final morphophonemic naan nasal nasal consonants negative neuter niinga notion occur paaru paattu palatal Paradigms person phonetically phonological plural PNG marker poo go pooḍu pooneen postpositions Present Past Future pronouns retroflex retroflex consonant rhotics sandhi semantic sentence short vowels sollu speakers Spoken Tamil Stop Consonants Strong Verbs suffix syntactic Tamil verbs tense marker Tenses and PNG transitive transliteration usually vayyi verb stem verbal noun Version of Table viiḍu WH-INTERROGATIVES words அது அவரு அவன் இது இரு இருக்கு நான்
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Page iii - This is a reference grammar of the standard spoken variety of Tamil, a language with 65 million speakers in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore. The spoken variety is radically different from the standard literary variety, last standardized in the thirteenth century.