The meaning of Case Grammatical Languages ( CGL )

Punai paalai kudithatu

Let me explain the meaning of Case Grammatical Languages, where through this, we can actually show that  almost all Indian languages are CGL’s while the European languages are not. 

In describing  the essences, I will be in fact stating briefly what Tolkaappiyar ( Tol ),c. 500 BC,  has in fact said in his second book, the Collatikaaram,  the Book on Syntax and Semantics.

1. The case markers appear as suffixes to the  Nouns and are called Karaka by Panini and VeeRRumai (differentiators) by Tol. But the notion of Karaka of Panini is also available in Tol when he says that the cases are Tozin mutal nilai -  the basic components of actions activities and so forth. This is a metaphysical notion whereby it is noted that case notions   such as Nominative, Accusative, Instrumental, Genitive, Causative, Ablative and so forth emerge in the first place in the analysis and understanding of ACTIONS. Thus the case notions hit the human consciousness in the course of doing something and only much later it becomes verbalized.

2. The cases appear only as suffixes of Nouns and do not occur at all with the verbs. In fact in Tol this is how the Nouns are distinguished from the Verbs. This goes along with another fundamental observation of Tol that the nouns do not carry time-related notions like tenses aspects and so forth and which are carried only by the Verbs and in CGL’s by a system of prefixes, infixes and suffixes. But this is only  linguistic  – the case notion is implicit in the verb itself.  For example the verb adi (to hit) already carries the accusative case as part of its meaning though linguistically it is the Noun that carries the  case marker.

3. The suffixation of Nouns with case markers frees the nouns in terms of relative positions in a sentence  to show the case notions as is the case with Inflectional languages like English ( and I guess the European languages in general) Thus as I have said earlier “ puunai paal-ai kudittatu’  carries the same meaning as Paal-ai puunai kudittatu ( the cat drank the milk)   Whether  the Nominative (puunai: the cat) or the accusative (paal-ai) gets  into the sentence initial position is a matter of style, topical interest and so forth. But grammatically   both are correct and carry effectively   the same meaning. This is quite   different  say in English where ‘ The cat drank the Milk,  and The Milk drank the cat”  are entirely different.  Here the case motions are indicated by sentential location   and not at all by suffixation of Nouns.

4. Now I also notice that in languages that are not CGL’s like  Malay, English and so forth, while the Nominative and Accusative are indicated  by relative position  but not so with other cases  like the instrumental, ablative, commitative ,causative and so forth. Here they resort to the use of prepositions like with, from, to and so forth.  So   the Tamil “ katti-aal veddinaan”  will be expressed in English as ‘ He cut with a knife’ where “with’ is a preposition that carries the case meaning as the Ta. case marker ”aal”  Now also the location of the words in Tamil does not make any great difference to the meaning and which is not the same with English. The ‘with’ has to precede the Noun that carries the   instrumental  case  notion here the “knife’

5. Now I am quite sure that Sumerian, Dravidian, Rigkrit and Sanskrit are CGL’s. I believe it applies to Pali and such other Prakrit languages. The point is that practically all Indian languages are CGL’s.   It is also interesting  that Rigkrit and Sanskrit languages have remained CGL’s and hence  not at all related to European languages which are not, as far as I can see, CGL’s.

We must also note that such syntactic features remain very stable across time even when a large number of lexemes from other  languages are incorporated into it.

Dr Loganathan @ Ullaganar

( revised 15-7-2010 )

Note : 

Punai paalai kudithatu.

Punai kudithatu paalai.

Paalai punai kudithatu.

Paalai kudithatu punai.

Kudithatu punai paalai.

Kudithatu paalai punai.

The meanings are all the same no matter how the words are arranged. Isn't it amazing? I wonder if any other language can do this.

( editing and re-paragraphing by his student )

( pic courtesy of https://pixabay.com/en/cat-drinking-milk-kitten-33595/ )