This book covers the morphological and syntactic structures of the Dravidian languages from a comparative point of view. All new data available on the individual languages and recent advancements in the comparative study are incorporated in it. Though it is primarily a research work, it is designed as a textbook for students and is written with full coverage of each of the topics along with enough examples and with as much clarity as possible.
Chapter 1 serves as a concise introduction to the structure of the Dravidian languages from a comparative point of view covering important aspects of phonology, morphology and syntax. Chapters 2 to 7 treat the morphological and syntactic aspects of the nominal system including pronouns, adjectives, adverbs and clitics. Chapters 8 to 15 cover the morphosyntax of the verb system. While discussing the formations of the older stages of Tamil, Kannada and Telugu, I have given citations from the classics (most of them selected by myself) with the hope that they, apart from serving as live illustrations, will create interest in the classics in the minds of the readers. In giving illustrations for syntactic use an attempt has been made to give semantically equivalent sentences in the four literary languages; sentences from Kodagu and Tuļu are also added in most of the cases,
The basic work on the section comprising Chapters 8 to 12 was done under a project of the Central Institute of Classical Tamil, Chennai, which was sanctioned for a year but completing the book took about four years. My thanks are due to Mr. P. Sreekumar (Dravidian University, Kuppam) for the Malayalam sentences, to Dr. B.S. Shivakumar (Dravidian University, Kuppam) for the Tulu sentences. to Mrs. Nanjamina Chinnappa (Bangalore) for the Kodagu sentences and to Mrs. P.N. Lalitha (Bangalore) for the Kannada sentences. My thanks also go to the authors of the grammars of the languages for providing the data for my comparative work; their statements are summarized or occasionally presented with necessary modifications in the present work.
Since the part of the work that deals with the morphosyntax of the verb is a revised version of my Dravidian verb morphology: a comparative study (Annamalai University, 1971), which in its turn is based on my Ph.D. thesis (Andhra University. 1964), a few words on the course taken by my research work during this long period may not be out of place here. I started work on the comparative study of the verb morphology of the Dravidian languages at the Andhra University in 1959 under the guidance of Professor Bh. Krishnamurti and Professor G.J. Somayaji. When I joined the Department of Linguistics, Annamalai University (on January 25, 1962), I found it to be the ideal place to continue my research. Scholars were readily available there for helping me in collecting information and for discussion on Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada; this greatly supplemented the data available from the books. Professor SV. Shanmugam, Professor K. Murugaiyan and Professor N. Kumaraswami Raja (who joined a little later) helped me regarding Tamil (even the papers of L.V..
I am glad to introduce Dr. P.S. Subrahmanyam's work The Morphosyntax of the Dravidian Languages to the research scholars and scholarly world. He is an eminent linguist in India and one of the world's renowned historical and comparative linguists. He made a pioneering contribution to modern linguistic study. His field of specialization is Dravidian linguistics. For the last five decades, he has been contributing for the development of Comparative Study of Dravidian Languages and Indian Grammatical Tradition. Descriptive Grammar of Gondi, Dravidian Verb Morphology - A Comparative Study, Dravidian Comparative Phonology, Dravidian Comparative Grammar, Aspect of Dravidian Linguistic. and A Supplement to Dravidian Etymological Dictionary are some of his scholarly contributions to the area of Dravidian Linguistics.
The present work contains 15 chapters Linguistic Structure of the Dravidian Languages. Nouns, Pronouns, Numerals, Adjectives, Adverbs, Clitics, Transitive-Causative Suffixes, Past Suffixes, Non-past Suffixes, Negative Suffixes, Pronominal Suffixes, Infinitive Suffixes, Imperative Suffixes and Auxiliaries and Pe-KW Extended Bases, respectively.
Chapter I starts with a brief introduction to the structure of Dravidian languages from a comparative point of view, covering important aspects of Phonology. Morphology and Syntax. Chapters 2 to 7 treat the Morphological and Syntactic aspects of the nominal system including pronouns, adjectives, adverbs and clitics. Chapters 8 to 15 cover the Morphosyntax of the Verb system.
I appreciate his scholarly contribution to the field of Linguistics
I thank Dr. G.K. Panikkar who went through the manuscript and corrected many of the typographical errors and also made some valuable suggestions.
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