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/ p//ō//yi 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 tiruṭaṉōṭiviṭṭāṉ‘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 <[email protected]> on behalf of
Indology List <[email protected]>
*Reply-To: *"Hock, Hans Henrich" <[email protected]>
*Date: *Thursday, September 23, 2021 at 11:57 AM
*To: *Indology List <[email protected]>
*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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