LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 8 : 10 October 2008
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         K. Karunakaran, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.

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Relative Compounds in Tamil

A. Boologarambai, Ph.D.


Introduction

Compounds are the combination of two words. In grammar, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc. are combined together to form compounds. Tolkaappiyar in his traditional grammar Tolkkappiyam classified the compounds into six types. In Tamil, there is another compound which is named as Doublets by P. S. Subramanyam (1984), Relative Compounds by K. Rangan, and ina aTukkuccoRkaL by A. Srinivasan.

The purpose of this paper is to high light the syntactic structures of the Relative Compounds and the semantic meanings conveyed by them.

In the Relative Compound construction, the combination of the words may be Noun+Noun, Noun+Verb, Verb+Noun and Verb+Verb. The following are the examples for this type of compounds.

i) viiDu vaasal - Noun+Noun viiDu means "House" and vaasal means "the front portion of the house". These two are combined together to frame a compound to give the meaning "Property," which is new to the basic meaning of the component words.

ii) uppu cappu - Noun+Verb. Uppu means "salt" cappu means "To lick." These two are combined together to frame a Relative compound which means "Taste," which is completely different to the basic meanings of the constituent words.

iii) koTTu meeLam - Verb+Noun. koTTu means "To beat or tap with knuckles." meeLam means "One kind of musical instrument used in various celebrations". These two words are combined together to frame a compound which gives the meaning "The publicity for the celebration".

iv) ONDi Othunki - Verb+Verb. ONDi means "To hide or be alone." Othunki means "To leave aside". These two are combined together to frame a Compound, which indicates the meaning "Without oneself getting involved in anything".

The Noun+Noun construction is further divided into

  1. Parallel Nouns combination,
  2. Opposite Nouns combination,
  3. Related Nouns combination
  4. Small + Big Nouns combination
  5. Big + Small Nouns combination
  6. Body parts Nouns combination
  7. Resultive nouns combination
  8. Different nouns combination and
  9. Opposite nouns combination etc.

This is only a part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.


What Determines the Choice of Language with Friends and Neighbours?- The Case of Malaysian University Undergraduates | Development and Validation of Needs Analysis Scale for Secondary School Teachers of English | Maya and Mohini in R. K. Narayan's The Guide and The Man-Eater of Malgudi | Merit or Demerit of ESL and EFL Context in Incidental Vocabulary Learning | Internet Usage and Its Effect on Reading Skill among the College Students - A Case Study of Coimbatore Region | Women and Beauty Aspects in the Selected Later Poems of Rabindranath Tagore | Relative Compounds in Tamil | Intuition and Insight for Professional Development - Reflective Practice Using Teaching Diaries | A Comparative Study of Truth, Revenge and Love in Thiruvalluvar's Thirukkural and Francis Bacon's Essays | HOME PAGE of October 2008 Issue | HOME PAGE | CONTACT EDITOR


A. Boologarambai, Ph.D.
Department of Tamil Language & Translation Studies
Dravidian University
Kuppam - 517 425
Andhra Pradesh, INDIA
arpudha_1@yahoo.co.in

 
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