Tamil Case Inventory

[Bla94b]

Tamil (Dravidian) has 8 cases with agglutinative suffixes: NOM (∅), ACC (-ai), DAT (-ukku), GEN (-in / -uṭaiya), LOC (-il), ABL (-ilirundu), INST / COM (-āl / -ōṭu), VOC (-ē).

The instrumental and comitative are sometimes syncretic (-ōṭu covers both functions), a pattern documented cross-linguistically ([Bla94b]; WALS Ch. 52).

def Tamil.Case.caseInventory : Finset Case

Tamil 7-case core inventory (excluding VOC).

Equations

• Tamil.Case.caseInventory = {Case.nom, Case.acc, Case.gen, Case.dat, Case.loc, Case.abl, Case.inst, Case.com}

def Tamil.Case.tamilComInstSync : Morphology.Case.Allomorphy.Syncretism

Tamil COM/INST syncretism (-ōṭu covers both functions). Uses the cross-linguistic pattern from Morphology.Case.Allomorphy.

Equations

• Tamil.Case.tamilComInstSync = Morphology.Case.Allomorphy.comInstSyncretism

theorem Tamil.Case.com_inst_adjacent : Case.com.HierarchyAdjacent Case.inst

COM/INST are strictly adjacent (ranks 1, 2).