Historical dictionary of Classical Tamil
TamilexHistorical dictionary
of Classical Tamil
of Classical Tamil
Tamilex monthly seminar: Surya Sanjay
2 June 2026
Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Morphology in Tamil Tense Stems
Nearly two centuries ago, Karl Graul classified Tamil verbs into seven classes, a scheme that’s still ubiquitously used today. Since Tamil is the Dravidian language with the richest literary history, Graul’s classes carry particular weight amongst the attested evidence in reconstructing the Proto-Dravidian verb. Conversely, to account for systems in related languages, Dravidian linguists have, on a few occasions, attempted to revamp it. The unfortunate result: historical Dravidian verb morphology remains an open question, and there is little consensus on which classification best captures the rules that lead to the diverse variation in Tamil tense stems.
In this session, I examine the hypothesized morphemes that form tense stems in Tamil, in order to shed more light on prehistoric stages of Dravidian. Focus is placed on the dental past and its contextual variants. Finally, I present my working hypothesis for the origins of the Tamil verb paradigm.
The Tamilex monthly seminar will take place on 2 June 2026, exceptionally at 14:00 CET (17:30 IST). This will be hybrid event; for the Zoom link, please contact Charles Li(charles.li"AT"uni-hamburg.de).
