SOME FEATURES OF CEYLON TAMIL

by KAMIL ZVELEBIL Praha

0.1. The material. The analysis and description is based on data col- leered between 1958-1962 in direct field-work with eleven Ceylon Tamil speakers. These informants must be classified into four groups: a. spea- kers from , b. from , c. from , d. speakers of mixed common Ceylonese. a. JAFFNAinformants: (1) K. Sithamparanathan, male, age 24, from Tunnale, Jaffna; (2) K. Sivasithamparam, male, age 24, High Caste Tamil, from Karaveddy, Jaffna; (3) K. P. Balasingham, age 21, vel.l.dla, from Karaveddy, Jaffna. b. TRINCOMALEEinformant: (4) Tilakam Selvamani Vadivelu, female, age 17, ef. w0.3. c. BATTICALOAinformant: (5) K. Manikkam, male, age 23, Hindu velldla, born in Kannankuda, Batticaloa. d. Speakers of MIXEO COMMON CEYLONESE: (6) Kokilam Subbiah, female, age 32, Hindu veil.dr[a, born in South , living in Jaffna, , , cf. w0.3. (7) M. Tambinayakam, male, age 22, Catholic vel.l.al.a, born in ftrkava_r_ru_rai,Jaffna, who had lived in Colombo for ten years. (8) T. Gunaraja, male, age 21, veilS[a, born in Malaya from Jaffna parents, who had lived in Jaffna and Colombo since 1950. These data were supplemented by material gathered from three other informants picked up among Ceylonese Tamilians studying in Madras and Trivandrum. The material consists of several hundred test-sentences and a few texts, as well as of lists of test-words and stretches of conversation and narratives, tape-recorded on Grundig, speed 3,75 inch/s, and on Start Tesla ANP 402, speed 4,76 cm/s.

0.2. Way of presentation. The material is presented so that the typical, selected features of phonology, morphology and vocabulary of the three 114 KAMIL ZVELEBIL territorial subdialects (Jaffna, Trincomalee, Batticaloa) plus mixed Ceylonese are given first, and then Ceylonese Tamil as a major regional dialect is described in its diagnostic features. The treatment is purely synchronic and descriptive with only very occasional excursions into historical and comparative spheies.

0.3. Bibliographic Preview. Recently, several papers were published directly or indirectly concerned with Ceylonese Tamil. They are K. Kana- pathi Pillai's "The Jaffna Dialect of Tamil", lnd. Ling., Turner Jub. Vol., I (1958), pp. 219-227; Susumu Kuno's "Phonemic Structure of Colloquial Tamil", Gengo Kenkyu, No. 34 (1958), p. 41ff.; my own "Dialects of Tamil, I", Ar. Or., 27 (1959); pp. 286-96 contain the material for Trincomalee dialect; my own "Dialects of Tamil II App.", Ar. Or., 28 (1960), pp. 220-4 with what I then called Jaffna material but today would rather prefer to call mixed common Ceylonese. Further cf. Kamil Zvelebil, "Notes on Two Dialects of Ceylon Tamil", in Trans. Ling. Circle of Delhi, Dr. Siddhesw. Parma Jub. Vol. (1959-60), pp. 28- 36; M. Andronov, Razgovornyj tamil'skij jazyk i ego dialekty (Moskva, 1962). For a historical treatment of some important aspects of Ceylonese Tamil of. F. B. J. Kuiper, "Note on Old Tamil and Jaffna Tamil" in IIJ, vol. V, No. 1 (1962), pp. 52-64. M. Shanmugam Pillai's Tamil Dialect in Ceylon was made accessible to me in manuscript form, very kindly sent by the author in 1959. Cf. also S. Thananjayarajasingham, "Some Phonological Features of the Jaffna Dialect of Tamil", Univ. of Ceylon Rev., XX, 2 (1962), pp. 292-302.

1. JAFFNA

1.1. Phonology 1.11. Vowels 1 1.11.11. One of the most striking features of Jaffna Ta. vocalism is the realization of/a/ initially and in first syllables very frequently as [~i] to [a], i.e., compared with most continental dialects and common CT which have [A], the Jaffna (in particular) and Ceylonese (in general) /a/ in this position is much more fronted and low. ~ Instances: [~tVA.1,

Space and time do not permit me to give a full description of the entire phonemic and phonetic systems of the different subdialects. Only typical, characteristic, se- lected features are given, which may prove diagnostic for this or that sub-dialect. Cf. my paper "The Vowels of Colloquial Tamil", Ar. Or., 31 (1963), p. 227.