Standard Spoken Tamil: What is standard and what is not?

In the situation as it applies to Tamil, similar constraints apply. I can state that in most Tamil dialects as well as in SST there is very little variation in past tense formation of verbs, for example. Most verbs form past tenses as in LT, but in verb stems that end in a final -i sound (e.g. teri- know, utai `break') the past tense markers nt, tt that are typical of verb classes II, VI, and VII (Fabricius' and Dr. Graul's classification (Fabricius 1972) undergo palatalization to nj, cc in spoken Tamil. This is consistent in all dialects that I am familiar with. It is therefore possible to state that this is a standard feature of SST, even though it is not the same process as is found in LT. There is evidence of palatalization having begun earlier, in LT, and therefore incorporated into the orthography.

Another feature of SST that is quite regular, though different from LT is the use of what used to be considered to be an `emphatic' marker, the clitic form -ee as in naanee vandeen `I (emphatic) came' which contrasts with emphatic taan e.g. naan-daan vandeen `I alone came; only I came.' This `emphatic' marker is semantically complex and difficult to describe but it can be used expressively in many ways in both LT and SST. One way that is new, and is in fact a semantic change, is its use as a redundant marker of location. That is to say, wherever LT has forms that indicate location, such as the locative case il, the `deictic' adverbs inku, anku, enku, the points of the compass, postpositions such as meel `on, above', kiir `below, down, under', SST has these forms plus -ee, i.e. viitt(u)lee, in the house', ingee, angee, engee `here, there, where' meekke, tekke, vadakke, kirakke `west, south, north, east', meelee `on', etc. That this ee cannot be analyzed as simply an emphatic marker is shown by the fact that when emphasis is required, emphatic ee is added to forms already marked with ee: viittukkulee-yee `right in the house', angeeyee `right there', etc.

In fact I would argue that this ee is perhaps not semantically new, but maybe in fact old; in Old Kannada, to take the example of another Dravidian language, ee often functions as a locative marker. Whatever the case may be, the addition of ee to locatives and semantically-locative phrases in SST is quite regular, and moreover, semantically different from LT in this regard. (Here we run into another problematical area, that of instances where the grammar, syntax and/or semantics of SST differs from LT. To LT purists, there can be no such thing as SST having a different grammar or different syntactic rules, because this might lead to the notion that such a different system were somehow legitimate.)

There are many other examples of systematic regularities in SST that could be adduced; the point of this paper is not to enumerate them all, but rather to try to show what kind of a system or systems SST displays. We will often find one-to-one correspondences, that is where LT has x, SST has y; but we will also find cases where something found in LT is not found in SST (such as plural marking in neuters, like avai `those things') or the use of the aspectual verb vaa to indicate a historical or narrative past. On the other hand, we will also find examples of constructions that SST has that are not found in LT, or do not have direct equivalents. Such constructions as avan solraaple `as he says' , which seems to be derived from some form of a verb plus poola `like, as' has to go back to LT avan solrapatiyee `ibid.' but how forms like solraaple, irukkraaple, vandaaple, en kaale vaaraaple irukku arise has not been explained. SST has kitte as a postposition meaning `near, on the person of' e.g. avan-kitte (often reduced to avan-tte by deletion of ki, a regular process) but for this in LT we can only use avanitam.

Those who would require a standardized language to exhibit no variation whatsoever will quickly point out that there are areas of great variation in SST, and these can also be described quite accurately. One is in the use of kinship terms, which vary tremendously from caste to caste. In order to avoid caste-marked forms, Tamil speakers often have to resort to English, or to euphemisms, e.g. for `wife' there is no caste-neutral form, so we may hear people saying oyfu (<wife) or viittule `in the house' for `wife'. The same goes for many other terms, which are also used as address forms, e.g. annaacci `elder brother' may be used as an address form to give mild respect to a younger man, but it is not the `standard' form for `elder brother', which I would say is annaa or annan. The former is originally a `vocative' form of the latter, but many address forms (vocative) have become terms of reference also, e.g. ammaa has replaced taay for `mother', maamaa has replaced maaman as `uncle' (mother's brother). This form has now passed into Singapore English to refer to the kind of general store run by an person of Indian descent, selling newspapers and other sundries, i.e. the maamaa kade.

Other areas of variation are found in the following:

1.

Plural marking. Though plural-marking is not obligatory for nouns in SST, pronouns must be, and animate nouns tend to be, and some other nouns may also be optionally marked for plurality. The LT plural marker kal is rarely if at all realized in SST, instead intervocalic k is softened to phonetic [h] to begin with and is often deleted, especially in extended syllables (e.g. pookalaam may be shortened to [poo'laam] `let's go'). Beyond that, there seems to be a perception in some dialects that the most common plural marker is - ngal rather than kal, as in maram $\longrightarrow$ marankal, pronounced [maranga] so this -nga is extended to other nouns as well. This is reinforced by the fact that -nga is also (perceived to be) the plural of some pronouns, e.g. nii,/niinga; avan /avanga, naama/naanga. Therefore the commonest plural form we now see in SST is nga, e.g. korande `child' korandenga `children', tambi `younger brother', tambinga `younger brothers'. But note that the underlying form of nga should actually be nga(l) because when any other morpheme follows, e.g. the question marker -aa the retroflex lateral appears: korandengalaa? `children?' niingalaa? `you?' So we would want to retain a slightly more abstract form of this than the phonetic spoken form nga since it would simplify our grammar to do so. There are also some `irregular' plural forms like pasanga the plural of payyan `boy' that are difficult to explain according to the rules of LT, but nevertheless are just there. I believe the [s] of this form to be an old alternation with [y], going back to Proto-South Dravidian; i.e it is not just a modern `corruption'. In fact, many forms found in ST are old, but have existed in the nether regions of the language, never sanctioned by the grammars, but still ancient forms. Some other dialects use the ka(l) form as their plural marker, which comes out as nga(l) after words that end in nasals, and ha in other positions, e.g. korandeha `children'. But since intervocalic k (realized as [h]) is usually deleted in SST (e.g. in pookalaam becoming [poo'laam] `let's go', and all present tense markers of weak verbs have the ki deleted) this is not very stable as a plural marker. Some dialects are known to use English plurals in some (foreign) words, e.g. muslims `Muslims' or even both English s and a Tamil plural: muslims-nga. This would depend on whether the word was native or borrowed. Other speakers tend to substitute the quantifier ellaam `all' for a plural marker: andak kanakk-ellaam `(all) those bills' books-ellaam `(all) the books'. There is a tendency for some reduplication to be used where English would have plural marking: nyaayittukerame nyaayittukerame varraanga `they come on Sundays' but this may be more to express repetitive or distributive notions. But the fact is, perhaps because of the collapse of some distinctions in the pronominal system (pronouns like niir `you sg. polite' is now archaic) nga(l) has emerged as the strongest plural marker, much as English s emerged as one among many plurals (oxen, children, kine, geese) and has become the most productive marker in modern English. But because of the optionality of plural marking in nouns, and because plural marking in animate nouns (obligatory) often involves kinship terms (variation!), SST has not been able to settle on this totally as yet. We would need to survey speakers' ideas of what they consider preferable, and why they would prefer one form over another; if we did, we would often find that justifications based on LT would be given, since LT is perceived as the `real' language, and SST is not. Thus, ideas about the proper plural morphology would be derived from LT, which is of course a different system with different rules about plural formation.

2.

Past Neuters. Another area of variation is that of the past neuter forms of verbs. In LT this is simply -adu as in vandadu `it came' for all verbs except poo `go' and aaku `become' which have the forms pooyirru `it went' and aayirru `it became'. There are also some verbs, those classified as III in the Fabricius/Graul scheme, which optionally may have this last ending, e.g. tuunkirru `it slept', but may also have the `regular' ending tuunkinadu or tuunkiyadu `ibid.' In many forms of SST, however, especially those used in the Trichy-Tanjore area, the rru form, which palatalizes in SST to [ccu] (or [cci]) has spread from its restricted use with poo and aahu and as an optional marker of class III verbs, and is now used as a past neuter form of verbs with all forms: not just pooccu and aaccu, found in all dialects, but vanduccu, aruducci, saappiducci, and so on. This tendency is too strong to be excluded from notice; usually in SST when there is a proliferation of forms the `standard' choice has been to pick those that are closest to LT, but in this case the change cannot be ignored. Here we must admit variation. It may receive some stigmatization, but I have not tested this to find out.

3.

Aspectual Verbs. The area of Tamil syntax known as aspectual verbs vinai nookku is an area where SST has changed, expanding the aspectual system of LT in its inventory, in the level of grammaticalization of the system, and in the pragmatic use of the system. The system thus varies in a number of ways:

(a)

Dialectally: Different spoken dialects use different `main' verbs as aspectual verbs; the set is finite but somewhat open-ended;

(b)

Pragmatically: The way aspectual verbs are used, and for what purposes, i.e. what their illocutionary force might be, varies tremendously; the fact that aspectual verbs are not usually negated when declarative, but may be when imperative, or are more likely to be used in declarative sentences than in interrogative sentences, all make it difficult to write grammatical or syntactic rules for this part of the language.

(c)

Grammatically: this is the question of to what extent aspect is now an internal morphological device (probably derivational rather than inflectional), and no longer a purely syntactic phenomenon. Evidence for variable grammaticalization of aspect exists, but phonological variation indicates it is not complete.

The aspectual system is therefore a very difficult system to describe and to master, especially for non- native-speakers, but it is one of the more interesting and creative parts of the language, and is vastly more complicated than in LT, partly because LT is not used pragmatically for communication, or for negotiating meanings.

4.

Stigmatized forms. It may come as a surprise to some speakers that SST, which is thought of as a variety without prestige, with no rules and regulations, may not admit certain forms because it considers them too low. That is, there is also agreement in SST as to what is not allowed, or at least are `going a little too far'.

(a)

One of these is the tendency to round vowels when preceded by a labial consonant and followed (usually) by a retroflex consonant, as in potti (<petti) . What is interesting is that some forms with [o] are acceptable, e.g. ponnu (from LT pen) but some others are not, e.g. (v)uudu `house' is not acceptable to some but (v)uuttule `in the house' is acceptable. Studies need to be done of this phenomenon to determine how acceptable the rounding actually is.

(b)

Another tendency is the lenition of sequences of nasal plus consonant; in particular the sequence NT in some words but not in others. LT veentum regularly comes out as veenum but the negative form veendaam is not regularly realized as veenaam except when a brusque reply is required. That is, veendaam `means' '(I) don't want (something)' but veenaam is more casual or more emphatic; `I don't want any! Get lost!' This lenition of NT also occurs in some other places, e.g. kondaandu (from konduvandu `having brought') may be laxed to konnaandu as in ellaatteyum konnaandittrundeen `I brought all the stuff.' Interestingly, this lenition has long since been completed in other consonant plus nasal sequences in SST: [mp] can be laxed to [mm] or [m] as in kaanpikkollaveentum `I want to show' which comes out in SST as [kaamikkanu]. The alveolar sequence nr has long since become [nn] in Non-Brahman dialects (and [nn] in Br. dialects). The tendency is for this all to happen after long vowels, but not always. This process is complete in Tamil's sister language, Malayalam, but has not been discussed in print regarding Tamil. The same is true for sequences of nk $\longrightarrow$ [g] becoming [].

(c)

Case and Postpositions. A third area where there is great variation in SST is that of case-markers and postpositions. Though there is overall agreement as to what the traditional case system (the seven-cases plus vocative system of Tolkaappiyam) is now like, and what the forms are, it is not possible to hold to this eight-case system in SST (it probably isn't in LT, either, and was problematical even for Tolkaappiyanaar) where we must admit that the boundaries between what is a case marker (e.g. iliruntu though clearly made up of two pieces, il `locative' and iruntu `past participle of iru `be'' seems to be a case because Sanskrit had an ablative.) But there are many other situations .) But there are many other instances where postpositions can substitute for case markers (viittu-meele means something different from viittukku meele), or we get a case marker followed by a case-marked postposition (e.g. viitt-ukku pakkattu-le `near the house'). These kinds of variation are not a problem for SST per se, but they are perceived as a problem by those who see grammar as invariant and/or as governed by rules set down in the 13th century. In fact the seven-case system, as already mentioned, was problematical for Tolkaappiyanaar, who had to admit two markers in the instrumental, aal as instrumental, and utan and ootu, the latter being `sociative' because there was no place for them both in a seven-case system. Had Tolkaappiyanaar not bought the Sanskrit seven-case system lock stock and barrel, but opened up the Tamil system to let it fit the Tamil facts, we could now allow other facts of Tamil to be accounted for, and the case-postposition system is one of these. I note that the new syllabus for Tamil in Singapore schools, to be used from next year, no longer talks about seven (or eight) veerrumai, but treats each case marker as a kind of veerrumai. This is a welcome change; the system that has been used is unworkable, mainly because it has been kept in the seven case box for two long.