ABSTRACT
Causation, for example, is expressed lexically in Old Tamil, morphologically in Middle Tamil and syntactically in Modem Tamil. Old Tamil has verb bases whose causative stem is idiosyncratic and must be listed in the lexicon, e.g. iru ‘sit’ and iruvu ‘make sit’, akal ‘disappear’ andakarru ‘make disappear’. In Mid dle Tamil causative stems are productively formed by suffixing -vi, -pi or -ppi to a verb base where the suffix chosen depends on the phonology of the base, e.g. cey ‘do’ and cey-vi ‘make do’, aru ‘cut’ and aru-ppi ‘make cut’. And in Modem Tamil causation is expressed periphrastically by means of the auxiliary verbs vaikka ‘place’, ceyya ‘do’ and panna ‘make’ following the infinitive of the main verb, e.g. arukk-a vaikka ‘make cut’. The techniques used to form causatives in Middle and Modem Tamil occur sporadically in Old Tamil, e.g. cèr-vi ‘make join’ (pari 12.74) and väz-a.c cey ‘make live’ (pura 367.10). Thus, despite the grammatical individuality of each stage of the language, many features of Mid dle and Modem Tamil are anchored in Old Tamil, demonstrating a grammatical continuity from the old to the modem language.
