ABSTRACT
Lehmann (Chapter 3) traces both continuities and discontinuities from one stage to the next in the historical development of Tamil. Greater continuity may be observed between Old Tamil and modem Sri Lankan Tamil than between the old language and the modem mainland dialects spoken in India. Sri Lankan Tamil preserves the medial deitic series in μ - , as in u-van ‘man in between’, and the synthetic present perfect in -an-, as in con.n-än-än ‘I have said’. The main land dialects have lost these forms. Modem Sri Lankan Tamil has also resisted the borrowing of contrastive voiced stops in the spoken register: mainland döcai ‘rice pancake’ corresponds to Sri Lankan töcai ‘id.’.
