Estate Tamil : a morphosyntactic study
The primary objective of this dissertation is to provide a syntactic analysis of morphology in Estate Tamil, a dialect of Tamil spoken in tea estates, particularly in the Haputale area, in Sri Lanka. Tamil is significant for the theory of morphology not only because it is rich in a number of inflectional and derivational suffixes, but also because it exemplifies the co-occurrence of these two types of suffixes in the same lexical element, e.g. in participial and gerundive nouns. Further, these nouns have verbal morphology inside the nominal suffixes. Thus, the data from Tamil challenge the hypotheses that assume a distinction between inflection and derivation. Consequently, hypothesizing that all bound morphemes with selectional properties are functional heads, I explore morphosyntactic properties of deverbal nominals. In chapter 1, I claim that Estate Tamil is a distinctive dialect, contrary to the assumption that it is the same as Indian Tamil. Chapter 2 discusses some data and the questions that they raise for the theory of morphology. I argue that the criteria suggested for determining the distinction between inflection vs derivation and lexical rules vs syntactic rules are not adequate. Consequently,
Kadurugamuwe, Nagita
Estate Tamil : a morphosyntactic study. The primary objective of this dissertation is to provide a syntactic analysis of morphology in Estate Tamil, a dialect of Tamil spoken in tea estates, particularly in the Haputale area, in Sri Lanka. Tamil is significant for the theory of morphology not only because it is rich in a number of inflectional and derivational suffixes, but also because it exemplifies the co-occurrence of these two types of suffixes in the same lexical element, e.g. in participial and gerundive nouns. Further, these nouns have verbal morphology inside the nominal suffixes. Thus, the data from Tamil challenge the hypotheses that assume a distinction between inflection and derivation. Consequently, hypothesizing that all bound morphemes with selectional properties are functional heads, I explore morphosyntactic properties of deverbal nominals. In chapter 1, I claim that Estate Tamil is a distinctive dialect, contrary to the assumption that it is the same as Indian Tamil. Chapter 2 discusses some data and the questions that they raise for the theory of morphology. I argue that the criteria suggested for determining the distinction between inflection vs derivation and lexical rules vs syntactic rules are not adequate. Consequently,
estate tamil morphosyntactic study primary_objective provide syntactic_analysis morphology estate tamil dialect tamil spoken estate particularly area sri_lanka tamil significant theory morphology rich number inflectional derivational suffix also exemplify co_occurrence two_type lexical element participial noun nouns verbal_morphology inside nominal suffix thus data tamil challenge hypothesis assume distinction inflection derivation consequently hypothesize bound morpheme selectional property_functional head explore morphosyntactic property nominal claim estate tamil distinctive dialect contrary assumption indian tamil discus data question_raise theory morphology argue criterion suggest determine distinction inflection derivation lexical rule syntactic_rule adequate consequently