SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The present work analyses verbal syntax in Ceylon Tamil. The model it uses for the purpose is the transformational model. Allowing for the fact that it is particularly concerned with the verb, it seeks to generate all and only the sentences of Ceylon Tamil. It carries out the task in three parts, the first two of which deal with the base structure of the language, and the third, with its surface structure. The first part, the categorial sub-component, contains the phrase structure rules which explicitly characterise a restricted set of elementary structures (grammatical formatives, their functions, relations, and order). This sub-component generates pre-terminal strings consisting of grammatical formatives and complex symbols, the latter being sets of specified features into which the symbols representing lexical categories are analysed. The lexicon, the second part of the grammar, consists of an unordered list of entries of verbs, each of which is made up of a pair, the first member of which is a phonological "spelling" of the item concerned, and the second, a complex symbol, a set of specified features. These lexical entries are substituted for the complex symbols in the pre-terminal strings in accordance with a lexical rule which will be stated in the main body of the work. This procedure has the effect of converting the pre-terminal strings into terminal strings. The terminal strings contain the elementary content elements from which the semantic interpretations of actual sentences are constructed. They do not, however, constitute the full range of sentences of the language, which will be produced only when the deep structures generated by the first two parts of the work are mapped by the transformational rules of the third part into surface structures.