The Concept of ākupeyar in Tamil Grammar
A Historical and Comparative Perspective
Abstract
This paper traces the history of the concept of the syntactic category ākupeyar ‘referent shifting noun’ in Tamil grammatical tradition and its transformation into a semantic category and the role of Sanskrit grammatical thoughts in the transformation. Theoretically limited number of ākupeyars multiplies and the semantic (referential) shift between nouns becomes layered. A shared syntactic of ākupeyar with vēṟṟumai-p peyar ‘case carrying noun’ loses its importance when the discussion of the former turns to semantics. The discussion turns to the difference of the semantic shift in ākupeyar and the headless compound aṉmoḻittokai. In modern literary and other communication studies, ākupeyar is equated with trope.
Presentato: 27 Aprile 2026 | Accettato: 12 Maggio 2026 | Lingua: en
Keywords Lakṣaṇā • Ākupeyar • Semantic ambivalence • Tamil grammatical tradition • Trope • Denotative and connotative meanings
Copyright © 2026 E. Annamalai. 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/2785-5953/2026/01/001