The phonology of verbal forms in colloquial Ceylon Tamil

Abstract

This thesis describes the phonology of the verbal forms in colloquial Ceylon Tamil, for the first time within the framework of generative phonology.It consists of an introduction, seven chapters, two appendices and a bibliography.The introduction includes a brief outline of the main features of Ceylon colloquial Tamil, a criticism of the previous work done in Ceylon Tamil, a brief note on the data that is taken up for investigation, and a discussion of the merits of generative phonology.In Chapter 1, the model that has been proposed to describe the phonology of the verbal forms in colloquial Ceylon Tamil is taken up for discussion. The present model differs from that of Chomsky and Halle (1968) in a number of respects.Chapter 2 provides the forms that have to be accounted for by the rules of the phonology. The constituent structure of a verb form, classification of verbal stems, the grammatical formatives, namely, the suffixes and the tense markers, the derivation of the verbal bases and the nominals and the formation of a complex verb are discussed in detail. All the phonological matrix insertion rules (PMIR) are found in this chapter.Chapter 3 deals with the positive conditions and the traffic rules. The redundancy rules and the phonological rules are dealt with in Chapters 4 and 5 respectively.In Chapter 6, the output of the phonological component (i.e. the systematic phonetic representation) is informally related to articulatory terms of traditional phonetic description. While discussing the phonetic quality of each phoneticc segment, reference has been made to palatographic and kymographic evidence.Chapter 7 provides a summary of the rules of the phonology and a few examples to test the validity of these rules. Each example begins with its underlying surface syntactic form and ends with its systematic phonetic representation. The derivation of the latter from the former is illustrated step by step.Appendix I lists the verbal stems accounted for in the description. Appendix II lists the grammatical. formatives. These two are informally regarded as lexicon 1 and lexicon 2 respectively.