Passives in Modern Tamil

  • P Chandramohan Assistant Professor, Cas in Linguistics, Annamalai University, Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu, India
Keywords: Transitive, Intransitive, Explicit passive, Implicit passive

Abstract

Passivization is a very common phenomenon in most of the natural languages and Tamil is no exceptions. Passive sentences are derived from active kernel sentences by applying a set of passive transformation rules. These rules and their application are by and large similar in different languages. This paper mainly focuses on the development of passive constructions in modern Tamil. The process of passivation is found in a vast number of languages the manner in which it applies and its functions may differ widely. In transformational generative grammar passivation is treated as an equivalent to activization with reference to English. In Tamil passivation though found in old and middle Tamil periods, has been more commonly used in modern Tamil period. This has been used in very formal occasions and very rarely used in the spoken form of the language. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the types of passive constructions found in modern Tamil.

Published
2019-01-30
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