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6. The Four Stages Of Development Of Tamil
Tamil,
as an original and highly cultivated language, has passed through four
stages of development, viz., (1) Mono-syllabic or Isolating, (2) Compounding,
(3) Inflexional and (4) Poly-inflexional. During the Monosyllabic or Isolating
stage, all words, with the exception of some imitatives, had been monosyllables.
e.g. mƒ, beast; …
to give.
During
the compounding stage, the mode of combining two or more simple words
together in order to express a compound idea, had been in vogue, and the
components had remained without change of form or loss of meaning and
independence.
e.g:
il-ƒ˜, housewife, lit. ‘house-woman’; nƒ-i.
(…), dog,
lit. that which has a long tongue.
The
word ƒ˜i seems to have originally denoted
a female person.
…
or i, as an ancient pronoun, corresponds to the modern …du
or idu.
Compounding
of words or stems has been called Aggluti-nation by many authorities.
During
the Inflexional Stage, the succeeding or final components of many compound
words had lost their original signification, and become mere formative
suffixes.
e:g.
illƒ˜, wife; nƒy,
dog.
During
the Poly-inflexional Stage, more than one inflexion had taken place in
the same compound word.
e.g.
perumƒn (peru+maga+ƒŒ.)
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