Tamil grammar
overall description of structure of Tamil language
Much of Tamil grammar is extensively described in the oldest available grammar book for Tamil, the Tolkāppiyam (dated between 300 BCE and 300 CE). Modern Tamil writing is largely based on the 13th century grammar Naṉṉūl, which restated and clarified the rules of the Tolkāppiyam with some modifications.
Parts of Tamil grammar
Traditional Tamil grammar consists of five parts, namely eḻuttu, sol, poruḷ, yāppu and aṇi. Of these, the last two are mostly applicable in poetry. The following table gives additional information about these parts.
Eḻuttu (writing) defines and describes the letters of the Tamil alphabet and their classification. It describes the nature of phonemes and their changes with respect to different conditions and locations in the text.
Sol defines the types of the words based on their meaning and the origin. It defines the gender, number, cases, tenses, classes, harmony etc. This chapter also provides rules for compounding the words.
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