The Indigenous Speech varieties of Tribal Communities of Tamil Nadu-A Study, in a way is a compilation of a Dictionary, comprising of the forms of eight indigenous tribal speech varieties spoken in Tamil Nadu. Following the model of Dravidian Etymological Dictionary (DED), the indigenous Tribal language forms, lexical as well grammatical, are chosen on the basis of similarities in form and meaning and presented in a linear order, with the Literary Tamil form as the head word, followed with its number in DED, provided the literary Tamil Form finds its occurrence in DED. Out of the 37 Tribal communities, one can identify broadly, two different sets on the basis of the mother tongue, they speak. One: The communities whose speech is an independent, indigenous tribal mother tongue such as Irula, Kattunayaka, Kota, Betta Kurumba (with other varieties), Paniya, Sholiga, Toda etc. Two: The other Tribal communities such as Adiyan, Irular known as Villiyan in Kancheepuram, Tiruvallur, Malayali with other subgroups etc., speak one or the other variety of Tamil as their mother tongue. From this view point, which is synchronic in nature, there are indigenous tribal varieties that form part of the Tamil dialects and there are indigenous tribal speech varieties that do not form part of Tamil dialects.
This work has been compiled by the author, viz. Dr. V. Gnanasundaram, keeping in view, the following objectives in mind: (1) The lexical and grammatical forms that appear to be not found in any other Dravidian Languages may draw one's attention, so as to be included in DED, when DED is undertaken for further revision; (2) On the basis of sample data provided in this work, other related studies such as 'Aerial Studies' etc., especially in the 'Nilgiris Biosphere Reseve' may be taken up, as there is ample scope to take up such studies that are related to historical linguistics. I hope, the work presented here may stimulate the other researchers in this field to take up similar works wherein the other left over indigenous tribal speeches, spoken in Tamil Nadu and elsewhere be taken up. In this context, I congrajulate the author of this work and as well the other linguists, especially the Linguists of CAS in Linguistics, Annamalai University, whose descriptive grammars in the indigenous tribal speeches of Tamil Nadu helped very much for the preset study.
1.0. THE LINGUISTIC SITUATION OF TRIBAL COMMUNITIES IN TAMILNADU
There are 36+1 Scheduled Tribes notified for the state of Tamil Nadu and their population is enumerated has 4.1. Lakhs (2011 Census). They in general appear to speak (a) an indigenous tribal speech variety or (b) a variety of Tamil/dialect or (c) a minority language like Telugu or Kannada etc. as the mother tongue. They are bilinguals. They live in Tamil Nadu. Some of the tribes live, besides Tamilnadu in other neighboring States such as Kerala and Karnataka contiguously.
Following is the list of Tribes with geographical distribution, population figure, their mother tongue, the other languages they speak and the kind of Linguistic works available as on today(Cf. Table:l).
In this list of these tribal communities it appears that the same tribal community has more than one name. For example the names Pallayan (30), Pallian (31) and Palliyar (32) appear to denote one and the same tribe.
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