Peculiar Verbal System in Jaffna Tamil

Abstract

The Jaffna Tamil variety, which is found in the northern region of Sri Lanka—specifically, the Jaffna peninsula—is widely regarded as the most “characteristic” of all Sri Lankan Tamil dialects. Jaffna Tamil has evolved as an own personality because it has been sufficiently separated from Indian variety of the language. A variety of verbal system characteristics contribute to this unique character. Thus, this analysis can be seen as an initial attempt to identify and characterize a unique feature of the Jaffna Tamil verbal system. The following characteristic is specific to the Jaffna dialect, even though certain individual features may be shared by others. The creation of a subsystem of finite, agreement of verb forms based on the present and past tense of the verbal adjective for combined with the personal pronouns (sometimes called the relative participle). While similar sequences might exist in other languages, they don’t, as far as we know, form a finite subsystem with the same purposes as those in Jaffna Tamil. Pronominal verbs have present and past tenses, and each has an associated negative. Utilizing a hybrid approach, this work aims to investigate finite verb systems with instances that can be used in verbal adjectives, question forms, negative forms, and pronominal verbs. Finally, the analysis explored with examples of these unusual characteristics using spoken forms of Jaffna Tamil.