Identifying Basic Constituent Order in Old Tamil: Issues in historical linguistics with Special Reference to Tamil Epigraphic texts (400-650 CE)
Résumé
Why and how languages change over time have been the major concerns of the historical linguistics. The Dravidian comparative linguistics in the last few decades has arrived at excellent results at different levels of language change: phonology, morphology and etymology. However the field of historical syntax remains to be explored in detail. Change or variation in word order type is one of the most important areas in the study of historical linguistics and language change.
We can roughly identify two different views on the word order in Old Tamil: (1) Zvelebil claims in general a SOV word order, but adds “if not disturbed by stylistic or emphatic shifts…” (Zvelebil, K. 1997.43), (2) Andronov suggests a free word order (1991) and in a more recent work Suzan Herring proposes SOV as the basic order (Herring 2000). We are not sure to what extent the Greenbergian six-way typology (SOV/OSV/SVO/OVS/VSO/VOS), can be applied in the case of Old Tamil, despite its proved pertinence for several world languages. We need a vast empirical study before reaching any definite conclusion in the case of Old Tamil. In this paper on Tamil epigraphic texts, we will show that the constituent order is neither free nor strictly of SOV type and the variation in constituent order is motivated by pragmatic factors.
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