INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

The present work is a syntactic analysis

of the case system of the Malayalam l a ngu a geI

1within the framework of Case Grammar .

The proposed analysis r quired a large

body of data from Malayalam both by elicitation

and by introspection . For this, an ext e n s i v e

list of sentences was prepa ed from both collo­

2quial and standard v ariety of Malayalam .

extensive list of verbs in Malayalam was also

3prepared so that herever necessary, sentences

which consists such verbs can be construct d

to facilitate suitable illustration of the

theoretical points involved in the discussion .

So s entences are prepared based on the different

4meanings of e ach verb o Those sentences are taken

as the data for the analysis .

Malayalam language

Malayalam is a member f the South Dravidian

f amily of l anguages . Among the four maj o r South

Draviddan languages , Malayalam is closely related

to Tamil and it has a rich literary tradition

dating from the 10th century .D . Malayalam i s

one of the rapidly g r owi ng languages of India. •

In the early times , the word Malayalam l denoted

the land itself and it is believed to be the

result of the combination of mala meaning I mountai n I

and alam meaning ' l a n d ' oo

Malayalam is spoken in Kerala and also in

Lakshadweep Islands. The 1971 census of India

reveals that 219 lakhs of people speak Malayalam.

Sanskrit was one of the early sources from which

Malayalam borrowed. large percentage of the

literary variety is Sanskritico

Grammatical tradition in Malayalam

The Malayalam language has a grammatical tra-

dition dating back to the 14th century .D . Lii-

laatilakam is considered to be the earliest among

Malayalam Grammars , which was written at the end

5of the 14th centuryo

A£ter Liilaatila am, at the end of the 19th

century, Dr. Hermann Gundert and Rev. George Mathen

published their works . A£ter that many European

6missionaries had done some works in Malayalam.

3

Dr. Angelos Francis , an Italian writer, Wrote a

grammar for spoken Malayalam at the beginnin g

of the 18th century?

Amos Paadri , a Polish missionary, wrote a

grammar 6f the literary language called "Gr a n dha-

bhaasayUte vyaakaranam~ Then, Paulinus, Fareso. •

Mooppan and Bishop Ildafanse also wrote Malayalam

8grammars.

There are also some grammatical works on

Malayalam, written by English authors . Robert

Drurnond published his work, IIGrammar of Malabar

Language" in 1749, F o Spring pusbl li.shed his "Outline

9of a grammar of the Malayalam Language" in 1839 ,..,d

Rev o Joseph Peet published his work, II Grammar

o f the Malayalam Language" in 1841.

Dr o Gundert's "Malayaalabhaasaavyaakaranam"o . 0

•came out tn 1851 0 It is very popular even now,

and it c an be said to be one of the best grammar

in Malayalam. At the same time , Garthwaite's ,

"The Essence of Malayalam Grammar derived from

the sentence" or "Malayaalabhaasaavyaakarana-•• •

sangraham"(1877), A. J . Arb u t h no t ' s , "Malayalam

4

selections with Translations, Grammatical a na-

lysis and Vocabulary" (18 64), Collin 's II Short

Grammar and Analysis of the Malayalam Language "

.( 18 64 ) are also worth mentioning .

In 1863 . Rev . George Mathen1s Grammar,

"Malayaalmayute vyaakaranamll carne out and "k e e --. 0

ralabhaasaavyaakaranam" by pachu Moothatb '.• 0 •

(1816) and "keerala kaumudi ll by Kovunni Nedungadi•

(1878) are also published:O

.R.Raja Raja Varma (Kerala Paanini) publi -o

shed his famous book "keerala paaniniiyamll ino •

18950 It is the most and very important book

in Malayalam which is written in Paaniniiyan•11

model 0 Varma's book is very useful for Malaya-

lam Scholars. L.J. Frohnmeyer's II Progressive

Grammar of the Malayalam Language for Europeans ll

appeared in 1889 and Prabhu's "Vyaakaranamitram"o

was published in 1904 .

Recent works in Malayalam Grammar

Following are some of the recent works in

Malayalam:

1 0 IIKeeralabhaasaa vijnaaniiyamll by K. Godavarmao •

(1951)

2 0 "Keeralabhaasayute vikaasaparinaarnannal " by. o. 0

II~ulam Kunjan Pillai (1952) ."

3 . "Ma l a y a l a rn Inscriptions" by A.C .5ekhar.

4 . "Ramacharitarn and the study of early Malayalam"

by K.M.George (1956) .

In recent times a number of works in Descri-

ptive Linguistics and a few works in Transforrnation -

al Grammar are available o Some of the works on

spoken dialects of Malayalam are given below :

1 0 "The Ernad Dialect of Malayalam" by G.K.panikkar

(1973) •

2 0 "Cochin Dialect of Malayalarn" by M.V .Sreedharoy

3 . "Mappila Malayalarn" by Sheela P . Upaadliaaya oI'

4. "Tiyya Dialect" by C.J.Roy.(1969) 0

5 0 "Cochin Dialect of Malayalarn" by P .Somasekharan

Nair (1969).

6 . liThe Lan8uage of Krishnagaatha" by

ViR,Probodhachandran Nayar(te 67)

7 . "Malayalam Verbal Forms" by V.R.Probodhachandran

Nayar (1972).

a8. "Language of Kannsa Raarnaayanarn" by

11.

P oRamachandran Pillai (1970)0

6

9 0 "La n guage of the Laccadive Islands (a Tran sfo ­

rmational statement)" by . P.An dre wsk utty

(1973) •

10 0 tl Di a l e c t study of the Hill Tribes of Travancore "

by E.V.Narayanan Namboodiri (1 97 4).

11." description of the Malayalam Dialect spoken

by Muslim Women at Trivand.L1lffi" by V"Mahilamma

(1977) 0

12 0 "Description of the Language of Mudugas " by

N.Rajendran (1978) .

13 0 "Phonological Reconstruction of South Dravi­

dian Languages" by B.Gopinathan Nair (1979) .

14 0 liThe Ezhava Dialect of Travancore" by

R.VoK.Tha~puran (1979) .

15. "Contrastive study of Malayalam and Russian

(a Phonological statement)" by Mariamma Chacko

(1980) •

Analysis of the data

The first step in the analysis is organi­

zation of the data o The data consist of a set

7

of sentences for each verb illustrating the v a r iou s

contrasting case configurations for a single verb.

The second step in the a nalysis is assign­

ment of cases. The sentence is broken into phra­

ses and a case label is assigned to every phrase .

except the verb phrase . The sentence is broken

simultaneously into subject, predicate . objects

and adjuncts . Objects may be further defined as

direct object and indirect objecto

Once the sentence is broken into parts, a

case label is given to each noun phrase in the

sentence . The case labels are like A, ,I . 0 ,

L, ~ etc.

As a third step in the analysis . case frame

for each sentence are proposed and then collated

this information into a single conflated case

frame.

Then deep structures are proposed for each

sentence . These deep structures are related to

surface structures by various transformational

rules.

Importance of the study of case

Case is a very important grammatical c a te-

gory in a language . Consistent work~ on c a s e has

been done by many grammarians from very early

time onwards .

The T r a di t i o na l Sanskrit qrammarian paanini•

(1891 ) had given a detailed study of case and

case relations (kaarakas). He defined kaarakas

as , II anything which helps towards the accompli -

shment of an action" (p o1"1'1) • Paanini defines•

and describes the seven kaarakas - karta, karma ,

karana, sampradaana, apaadaana, sambandham ando -

adhikaranam•

very clearly and elaborately so

that we get a clear picture about cases and kaa-

rakas .

Traditional Mala~am Grammarians regard

cases as inflexional affixes on nouns . They

gave importance to case affixes rather than case

relations. All of them classified the cases on

the basis of the form of the suffixes, without

id ' . 12cons er~ng mean~ng.

The Decriptive Grammarians have given the

description and distribution of the case suffixe s o

They only list the case suffixes and give their

. t f 13env~ronmen s 0 o c c u r r e nce.

In Transformational Generative Grammar , c a s e

is said to be present in surface structure , i n-

troduced by transformational rules . Chomsky

argues that case is not present in deep structure

but it is introduced in surface structure by diffe­

rent kinds of transformational rUles~4 According

to him the notions subject, object etc . are pre-

sent in deep structure as syntactic relations or

f. 15

unct~onso

Charles J . Fillmore questions Chomsky's

arguments and proposes a new theory called 'Case

Grammar' in which he discusses about case relations,

that is, the relations between the verb and the di~

16fferent NPs present in a sentence . ccording

to him subject, obj ect etc. are not deep stru-

cture notions but only surface structure pheno-

mena. No semantically relevant relations, he

says , resides in the surface structure relation .

~l semantically relevant relations between NPs

10

a nd ve r b occur in the deep structure in the

form of ' c a s e relations ' . ccording to him,

case relations are very important, not the

form of the case suffixes . In other~wards,

case uses are ~portant than case forms and

case relations are deep structure relationS

and the notions subject and object are only

surface structure phenomena .

Fillmore (1968a) defines case relations as ,

lithe semantically relevant syntactic relation-

ships involving nouns and the structures that

contain them" (p . 5).

Fillmore (1971) modified this definition

as , lithe propositional core of a simple sentence

consists of a predicator (verb, adjuctive or

noun) i n construct'on with one or more entities,

eacb of these related to the predicator i n one

of the semantic functions known as (deep stru-

cure) cases" {po 37) .

He named, defined and described the follow­

17ing cases o

11

a. Agentive

b. Instrumental

c. Dative (Experiencer)

d. Factitive

e. Locative

fo Objective

g. Source

h. Goal

He argues that a sentence in its base stru~

cture consists of a verb and one or more noun

phrases, each NP associated with the verb in a

case relationship and each case relationship

occurs ahly once in a simple sentence and when

occurs more than once the sentence will be co­

mplexo

The constituents of a sentence are Modality

(M) which, consists of negation. tense. mood,

aspect etc. and Proposition (p) which is a tense­

less set of relationship between ~erbs and nouns

and embedded sentences if there are any.

According to Fillmore. the first base rule

is as follows:

Sentence

S

--..--- -3>

------~

Modality

M

+

+

12

Proposition

P

proposition is expanded as a verb and one o r

more noun phrases.

P ----_...~ v + + + 0 ••• + Cn

P may be V + A. V + 0 + A, V + D, V + 0 +

D + A etco

Fillmore mentions about case frames. In a

sentence, there will be a verb and one, two or

more NPs. Each NP will be in a case relation

with the verb . The array of cases (Case re~ ~

tions) attached to the v~b is called the case

frame. We can classify the whole verbs of a

language based on the case frame into which they

. rt d 1 8are .in se e .

The case category C will be expanded as,

C K + NP

NP -------~ (Det) + N + (s)

See the deep structure diagram of Fillmore:

13

s

M

past beat

D

-<.K NP

\N

\to Gopi

Ar-.K NP

\N

by Revi

This is the structure of the sentence.

Revi beat Gopi

Fillmore mentions about hierarchy of cases,

that is, the ranking order of cases which can

occur as subject of the sentence. The case

hierarchy determines which noun phrase has the

higher priority in the subject selection processo

Fillmore (1971) gives the case hierarchy of

English as: E I 0 S G L T ~9

The deep structures are converted into surface

structures by applying various transformational

14

rules like SUbj~ctivization, Objectivization,

Selection of overt case forms, Registration of

particular elements in the verb, Nominaliza-

tion, Passivization, Causativization, Topi­

20calization etc.

Case Grammar and the present work

Eventhough the present work is based on

Fillmore's Case Grammar, it deals with a number

of problems in the analysis of Malay~am sente-

nces. It also presents a number of suggestions

f r the analysis of Malayalam. The work gives

opportunity to exa ine how far the Case Grammar

proposed for Englis~ can be applied well to

describe a Dravidian language like Malayalam.

Qrganization of the present thesis

The general organization of the present

dissertation is this: There are five Chapters

and an ppendix o Chapter I discusses the views

of Traditional Malayalam Grammarians regarding

cases and case relationships and also the Descri-

15

ptive Grammarians' views about cases. Chapter

II attempts to give a detailed description

about the origin and development of Fillmore's

Case Grammar. Chapter III makes an attempt

to define each case in Malayalam. In Chapter IV

he case frames of Malayalam verbs is given.

Chapter V discusses the deep structure of Mala­

yalam sentences, the hierarchy of Malayalam

cases and the v arious transformational rules

which are applied in order to convert the deep

structures into the surface structures of

sentences. The ppendix consists of the verbs

in Malayalam with their case frames and the

different sentences for each verb.

16 .

FOOTNOTES

1. The Case Grammar was proposed by Charles J.

Fill ore. By indicating various defects of

Chomsky's Generative Grammar, Fillmore put­

forward a new theory ,. c a l l e d •Case Granunar' in

which case relations, that is, the relation

between the NPs and verbs in the different

sentences in a language is described.

2. Most of the sentences were collected from

investigator's own speech. Others were collected

from informants ( Co \lo~a1. - ~ f l..-UY pO.5-e-8 cq...e.- .....-+ Cl\. I\-\~y..) .

3. The verbs are collected from the following

dictionaries.

i. '5abdataaraavali' by Sreekanteswararn G. Padmanabha

Pillai (1923), N.B.S., Kottayarn.

ii. 'Malayalarn English Dictionary' by Hermann Gundert

(1872), N.B.S., Kottayam.

iii. 'Malayalarn English Dictionary' by C. Madhavan

Pillai (1976), N.B.S., Kottayam.

iv. 'Sridevi Malayalarn English Dictionary' by

Madhava Menon, Vadakkekkara , (1960), sanatana

Dharmam printing Works, Ernakulam.

v. 'Malayalam Lexicon - Volos I, II, III' by

Sura~ad Kunjan Pillai (1970), The Government

17

press. Trivandrum.

4. Some verbs have so many meanings from which

different types of sentences can be prepared.

5. Liilaatilakam cannot be taken as a real

grammar. It was written as an id for the

writers of Manipravaalam poetry. But it is a• 0

very valuable work.

6. The works they done were meant for the use of

western missionaries, not for the Malayalam

Language.

70 Angelos Francis was the Arch Bishop (Metrapo1ita)

of vaaraappuzha. His work is suitable for the

study of the colloquial language only and not

for the literary language. mixed with Sanskrit.

8. Among them, Bisqop Ildafanse's work exists in

the Borgia Library and nothing is known about

the other books.

9. It is written for the benefit of EurOPeans, to

help the East lhdia Company Officers.

10. Kovunni Nedungadi incorporated portions of

Sanskrit Grammar also in h~work.

11. He published Baalavyaakaraqam, Madhyama Vyaa-~.

kara9am and sabda soodhini also for the use

of elementary,middle and secondary school students

respectively.

12. A detailed study of the cases in Traditional

Malayalam Grammars is given in Chapter I.

13. Refer Chapter I for details.

14. Refer Chomsky (1965, Footnote of Chapter II,

p. 221).

15. Refer Chomsky (1965, pp. 68-69).

16. For details, see Chapter II.

17. Refer Chapter II.

18. See Chapter IV for details.

19. For details refer Chapter V.

200 A detailed discussion of the various transforma-

tions in Malayalam is given in Chapter V.