Preface
Multilingual
study is not a new thing in India, but it is a paradox that in a nation of so many
languages, many of which are well developed, the amount of theoretical
orientation in the field of bilingual or multilingual study is practically
negligible. So far, no serious attempts have been made to bring together any
two languages through a comprehensive syslematic
contrastive grammar. The present work, with its limitations, is a modest
attempt in this direction.
Hindi and
Tamil are two most important languages of India, genetically far apart from
each other and showing a lot of difference in their formal structures. Hindi as
the most widely used Indo-Aryan language of North India, and Tamil as the most
representative among the Dravidian languages spoken in South India, have
special importance among the languages of India.
It is
generally believed that Hindi and Tamil are structurally nearer to each other
than either Hindi and English, or Tamil and English. This, however, is true
only to a very limited extent, and should not lead one to the conclusion that
Tamil and Hindi are so near to each other, that the speaker of one does not
encounter serious problems while attempting to learn the other. Though there
are some similarities, especially in Syntax, the differences are nevertheless
alarming. This is true of all levels from phonology to semantics. While the
phonemic pattern of the two languages are quite different, creating extremely
difficult, if not unsurmountable, problems for the
speaker of one to learn the other, the differences in morphological formations,
and the semantic variations are also considerable. Even in the case of syntax,
the similarity should not be over estimated. Except perhaps in 'the order of
word' in a phrase or a clause, there is nothing that can be said to be specially similar with regard to 'the syntactic features.
Even small sentences like 'This
is a book' or
The mango fruit is sweet' show a
syntactic difference in the two languages, Tamil expressing the idea without a
copula verb, while Hindi having it as obligatory.' A single morphological form
in some syntactic contexts in one language may have diverse equivalents in the
other. Thus the' contexts covered by the Infinitive of the verb (which is never
inflected) in Tamil are covered in Hindi by (1) the root, (2) the un-inflexible
infinitive, (3) the inflexible infinitive, (4) the oblique infinitive and (5)
the oblique infinitive followed by a case-marker. A study of the Cases will
reveal many differences in the areas of their meanings and uses. At the
semantic level, several Sanskrit words used in both the languages may show
superficial similarity, but have entirely different meanings or different
semantic fields. All these make it imperative to make a contrastive study of
both the languages at all levels, namely phonology, morphology, syntax and
semantics. This work is the outcome of realising such a requirement.
Though the
author was contemplating a sort of bilingual comparative grammar without much
formalisation, while teaching the students of South Travancore Hindu College, Nagercoil, during 1950-'54 and 1958-'60, and had actually
prepared most part of it, the work could be done with more comprehension and
precision only after taking it up as a full time departmental work in the
University of Madras. His association with the Summer Schools of Linguistics
and contact with the scholars connected with them gave him the courage to take
up the work. Meanwhile, a few papers dealing with some marginal aspects of
contrastive grammar were either presented in linguistic conferences or
published in journals. The reception they got also was encouraging.
On taking up
the grammar as a departmental work, fairly exhaustive study of both the
languages was made with the definite purpose in view and using all available
sources, casually heard conversations, formal speeches, broadcastings, newspaper
reports, creative writings and grammars. One of the biggest difficulties was to
decide which forms of the languages were to be taken as standard to be
described, and contrasted. Dialectal variations are many, and it is difficult
to take anyone regional form as the representative standard form. What is
chosen for analysis here is the common-place literary not too elite language
which is used in formal talks and common correspondences, and this language in
its spoken and written forms has been analysed and described with emphasis on
the contrastive features. This is true in the case of either of the languages.
At times dialectal variations have been noted, if they were found important.
Highly literary Hindi and Tamil, the former using a larger measure of Sanskrit
words and forms, and the latter preserving several features of ancient Tamil,
show some slight variations, though the grammatical core remains the same in
either case.
The author has
had before him no model of a complete contrastive grammar, nor even complete
structural analyses of the two languages under study. However fragmentary
studies are available in a fairly large number. Excepting the limited material
available .in these studies, the contrastive study was mostly done
independently without any commitment or inhibition towards any model or either
of the languages.
Aim and Form
The study is
not a purely theoretical one. The main purpose of bringing out the contrastive
elements being providing practical aid in learning and teaching of language,
this practical use has also been kept in view while analysing and presenting
the material. Even where description can be done with more economy, it has been
preferred to give plain longer statements rather than more-compact but abstruse
enunciations.
Though a
little more theorising using modern theories of linguistic analysis would have
given a more precise and more accurate description, no such attempt has been
made, because it, is desired that the language
teachers, and writers of practical grammars with some knowledge of modern
linguistics may also use the book. Complicated mathematical formulae have been
avoided, Full and strict fermalisation
has not been resorted to, but copious examples are given. The auther is fully aware of the limitations and even some
inaccuracies in the various sections imposed by the attempt to make the book
not too theoretical.
It is also not
claimed that the book] can be used as a direct practical aid in learning or
teaching of either of the languages. Graded lessons introducing constituent
elements and structures in a phased manner with adequate drilling exercises are
indispensable for learning a language. This work does not provide these. The
intention has been to give a theoretical
foundation to learning Hindi or Tamil as a second language, by providing
a full and in comprehensive analysis of grammatical features which are
important from a practical point of
view. It is hoped that the book will be of use in preparing teaching
material and devising methodologies for instruction.
The
descriptive approach has been adopted in general and the contrastive features
at various levels pointed out. Areas and nature of interferences have been
detailed for the most part. The interferences have been mostly discovered from
actual speech and written material. Where interferences have not been
explicitly shown, it is assumed that the description of contrasts will enable
one to predict the probable interferences.
A strictly
synchronic-descriptive grammar should avoid references to historical
developments and earlier sources. This has not however been fully possible
especially in the case of Hindi which shows different structural behaviours in
the layers of Native-Hindi, Sanskrit and Arabic-Persian, of which it is
composed.
The analysis
has been done with reference to the sources in many places. The alternate
possibility is to list exhaustively the items under various classes, without
reference to the sources. But such a classification also will be indirectly
based on the sources. As such exhaustive lists are unwieldy and beyond the
scope of this work, the multi systemic analysis with reference to the sources
has been resorted to in some places.
A very large
amount of material has been collected from various sources, and the analysis of
the individual languages will show that many points not dealt with in ordinary
grammars find a place here. But this does not mean that every structural
peculiarity of the languages has been brought in. The fields are so vast, that
they can be hardly scanned comprehensively in a work like this. However, it is
hoped that all grammatical forms basically needed for handling the languages
have been adequately dealt with.
Subject
The
Introductory Chapter is a historical sketch dealing in short with the
development and growth of the two languages under study.
The First
Chapter gives a complete PHONEMIC ANALYSIS of
the two languages and shows the diaphonic relations, with a view to emphasise
the points and kinds of interferences. The analysis is in the usual way, but
some problems in the overlapping of nasals, in both the languages, are perhaps
pointed out for the first time. Though a complete phonemic analysis is not
fully relevant for a contrastive study, it was considered necessary in order to
make the phonemic studies readily available for the users. Especially, the
allophonic distribution of Tamil will be useful for the learners.
A list of
consonant clusters with examples given at the end of this chapter not only
brings out the possible interferences but also gives the correspondences. This
has been necessitated by the presence of a good number of words common to Hindi
and Tamil (mainly from Sanskrit), which show some phonological variations.
Preface
Multilingual
study is not a new thing in India, but it is a paradox that in a nation of so many
languages, many of which are well developed, the amount of theoretical
orientation in the field of bilingual or multilingual study is practically
negligible. So far, no serious attempts have been made to bring together any
two languages through a comprehensive syslematic
contrastive grammar. The present work, with its limitations, is a modest
attempt in this direction.
Hindi and
Tamil are two most important languages of India, genetically far apart from
each other and showing a lot of difference in their formal structures. Hindi as
the most widely used Indo-Aryan language of North India, and Tamil as the most
representative among the Dravidian languages spoken in South India, have
special importance among the languages of India.
It is
generally believed that Hindi and Tamil are structurally nearer to each other
than either Hindi and English, or Tamil and English. This, however, is true
only to a very limited extent, and should not lead one to the conclusion that
Tamil and Hindi are so near to each other, that the speaker of one does not
encounter serious problems while attempting to learn the other. Though there
are some similarities, especially in Syntax, the differences are nevertheless
alarming. This is true of all levels from phonology to semantics. While the
phonemic pattern of the two languages are quite different, creating extremely
difficult, if not unsurmountable, problems for the
speaker of one to learn the other, the differences in morphological formations,
and the semantic variations are also considerable. Even in the case of syntax,
the similarity should not be over estimated. Except perhaps in 'the order of
word' in a phrase or a clause, there is nothing that can be said to be specially similar with regard to 'the syntactic features.
Even small sentences like 'This
is a book' or
The mango fruit is sweet' show a
syntactic difference in the two languages, Tamil expressing the idea without a
copula verb, while Hindi having it as obligatory.' A single morphological form
in some syntactic contexts in one language may have diverse equivalents in the
other. Thus the' contexts covered by the Infinitive of the verb (which is never
inflected) in Tamil are covered in Hindi by (1) the root, (2) the un-inflexible
infinitive, (3) the inflexible infinitive, (4) the oblique infinitive and (5)
the oblique infinitive followed by a case-marker. A study of the Cases will
reveal many differences in the areas of their meanings and uses. At the
semantic level, several Sanskrit words used in both the languages may show
superficial similarity, but have entirely different meanings or different
semantic fields. All these make it imperative to make a contrastive study of
both the languages at all levels, namely phonology, morphology, syntax and
semantics. This work is the outcome of realising such a requirement.
Though the
author was contemplating a sort of bilingual comparative grammar without much
formalisation, while teaching the students of South Travancore Hindu College, Nagercoil, during 1950-'54 and 1958-'60, and had actually
prepared most part of it, the work could be done with more comprehension and
precision only after taking it up as a full time departmental work in the
University of Madras. His association with the Summer Schools of Linguistics
and contact with the scholars connected with them gave him the courage to take
up the work. Meanwhile, a few papers dealing with some marginal aspects of
contrastive grammar were either presented in linguistic conferences or
published in journals. The reception they got also was encouraging.
On taking up
the grammar as a departmental work, fairly exhaustive study of both the
languages was made with the definite purpose in view and using all available
sources, casually heard conversations, formal speeches, broadcastings, newspaper
reports, creative writings and grammars. One of the biggest difficulties was to
decide which forms of the languages were to be taken as standard to be
described, and contrasted. Dialectal variations are many, and it is difficult
to take anyone regional form as the representative standard form. What is
chosen for analysis here is the common-place literary not too elite language
which is used in formal talks and common correspondences, and this language in
its spoken and written forms has been analysed and described with emphasis on
the contrastive features. This is true in the case of either of the languages.
At times dialectal variations have been noted, if they were found important.
Highly literary Hindi and Tamil, the former using a larger measure of Sanskrit
words and forms, and the latter preserving several features of ancient Tamil,
show some slight variations, though the grammatical core remains the same in
either case.
The author has
had before him no model of a complete contrastive grammar, nor even complete
structural analyses of the two languages under study. However fragmentary
studies are available in a fairly large number. Excepting the limited material
available .in these studies, the contrastive study was mostly done
independently without any commitment or inhibition towards any model or either
of the languages.
Aim and Form
The study is
not a purely theoretical one. The main purpose of bringing out the contrastive
elements being providing practical aid in learning and teaching of language,
this practical use has also been kept in view while analysing and presenting
the material. Even where description can be done with more economy, it has been
preferred to give plain longer statements rather than more-compact but abstruse
enunciations.
Though a
little more theorising using modern theories of linguistic analysis would have
given a more precise and more accurate description, no such attempt has been
made, because it, is desired that the language
teachers, and writers of practical grammars with some knowledge of modern
linguistics may also use the book. Complicated mathematical formulae have been
avoided, Full and strict fermalisation
has not been resorted to, but copious examples are given. The auther is fully aware of the limitations and even some
inaccuracies in the various sections imposed by the attempt to make the book
not too theoretical.
It is also not
claimed that the book] can be used as a direct practical aid in learning or
teaching of either of the languages. Graded lessons introducing constituent
elements and structures in a phased manner with adequate drilling exercises are
indispensable for learning a language. This work does not provide these. The
intention has been to give a theoretical
foundation to learning Hindi or Tamil as a second language, by providing
a full and in comprehensive analysis of grammatical features which are
important from a practical point of
view. It is hoped that the book will be of use in preparing teaching
material and devising methodologies for instruction.
The
descriptive approach has been adopted in general and the contrastive features
at various levels pointed out. Areas and nature of interferences have been
detailed for the most part. The interferences have been mostly discovered from
actual speech and written material. Where interferences have not been
explicitly shown, it is assumed that the description of contrasts will enable
one to predict the probable interferences.
A strictly
synchronic-descriptive grammar should avoid references to historical
developments and earlier sources. This has not however been fully possible
especially in the case of Hindi which shows different structural behaviours in
the layers of Native-Hindi, Sanskrit and Arabic-Persian, of which it is
composed.
The analysis
has been done with reference to the sources in many places. The alternate
possibility is to list exhaustively the items under various classes, without
reference to the sources. But such a classification also will be indirectly
based on the sources. As such exhaustive lists are unwieldy and beyond the
scope of this work, the multi systemic analysis with reference to the sources
has been resorted to in some places.
A very large
amount of material has been collected from various sources, and the analysis of
the individual languages will show that many points not dealt with in ordinary
grammars find a place here. But this does not mean that every structural
peculiarity of the languages has been brought in. The fields are so vast, that
they can be hardly scanned comprehensively in a work like this. However, it is
hoped that all grammatical forms basically needed for handling the languages
have been adequately dealt with.
Subject
The
Introductory Chapter is a historical sketch dealing in short with the
development and growth of the two languages under study.
The First
Chapter gives a complete PHONEMIC ANALYSIS of
the two languages and shows the diaphonic relations, with a view to emphasise
the points and kinds of interferences. The analysis is in the usual way, but
some problems in the overlapping of nasals, in both the languages, are perhaps
pointed out for the first time. Though a complete phonemic analysis is not
fully relevant for a contrastive study, it was considered necessary in order to
make the phonemic studies readily available for the users. Especially, the
allophonic distribution of Tamil will be useful for the learners.
A list of
consonant clusters with examples given at the end of this chapter not only
brings out the possible interferences but also gives the correspondences. This
has been necessitated by the presence of a good number of words common to Hindi
and Tamil (mainly from Sanskrit), which show some phonological variations.