Sonorant Gemination in Old Tamil
Abstract
Old Tamil exhibits two kinds of sonorant gemination, which were previously explained by two separate, linear phonological rules. We postulate that the rules explaining both these ‘separate’ phenomena are part of the same conspiracy. This study is devoted to exploring the optimality theoretic analysis of the phenomenon of morphologically derived geminates in Old Tamil, as depicted from Sangam poetic texts and the traditional Tamil Grammars (Tolkāppiyam and Naṉṉūl). We use optimality theoretic markedness or well-formedness constraints like Prosodic Word constraint (ProsWd) and faithfulness constraints like DEP-IO, MAX-IO, NoCoda, etc., as part of the explanatory apparatus. The analysis focuses on a unified ranking of constraints explaining the gemination phenomenon in Old Tamil.
Presentato: 25 Marzo 2025 | Accettato: 03 Giugno 2025 | Pubblicato 01 Luglio 2025 | Lingua: en
Keywords Optimality theory • Conspiracy • Old Tamil phonology • Sonorant Gemination • Morphology • Prosodic word constraint
Copyright © 2025 Ramprashanth Venkatakrishnan, Somdev Kar. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/bhasha/2785-5953/2025/01/005