ABSTRACT
Tulu speakers have also migrated within India in pursuit of commercial opportunities they are consequently found in most major cities even though the Census of India generally counts them as Kannada speakers. The Netravati river divides Tulunad into two nearly equal parts, a division that has produced distinct north and south dialect areas. Several irregular formations and dialectal variations complicate the allomorphy of verbal suffixes. The debates in the specialist literature generally focus on ways in which Tulu phonology and morphology differ from those of other Dravidian languages. Save these and some other writings, Tulu script has been primarily used by Brahmins to transcribe Sanskrit texts, a practice that continues to the present. It is otherwise no longer used for writing or publishing Tulu texts. Tense marking is thus obligatory and pervasive in the language while modal and aspectual marking may be optional. This distinction characterizes finite and non-finite verbs alike.
