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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