The way Tol understands the important constituents of KiLavi - the minimal unit of meaningful discourse, and its constituents, the NP and VP is very peculiar and quite unparalleled to this day either by the linguists of the West or even the Sanskrit grammarians of India including PaNini.
We must remember the important chapter of KiLaviyaakkam, the genesis of Speech Acts and hence discourse and how and why they are coherent. It is only with the notion of coherence at the sentential level over and above at the discourse level, that the distinctions between the NP VP and the enclitics and so forth are entered into. A sentence gets used in a Speech Act and because of it becomes a KiLavi, something that is expressive or communicative of something.
Now looked at this way what is thus communicated are INTENTIONS and therefore the poruL, the substance of PoruLatikaaram, what we have called the MEANINGS as such are intention-meanings, the INTENTIONALITIES. Such intentionalities are NOT the same as word meanings that constitute the SEMIOTICS of a language but rather something ABOVE such word-meanings.
There appears to be a dynamic relationship between the two: the historically transmitted word-meanings help in the generation of a sentence that can be used as a KiLavi, effect a Speech Act and hence with that communicate an INTENTION. And it is the emergence of such intentional meanings that also gives rise to the development of word meanings and semiotics. This is quite clear in the natural situation where the effort is to get at what a person MEANS in saying something and for which we also use the paralinguistic and contextual factors. The INTENTION, what the person MEANS comes through the speech, helped along by the word meanings as well the implications of the paralinguistic and contextual factors.
The science of word meanings, part of the semiotics as such, is dealt with by Tol in his Uriyiyal and because of which it gave rise to the tradition of NikaNdu, the modern expressions of which are Dictionaries including Thesaurus, Etymological, Dictionaries and so forth.
But the meaning of PoruL is NOT exhausted by this for more importantly it means the Intentional Meanings and which is the substance of PoruLatikaaram, and which accomplishment to this day remains quite unparalleled both in India and the West.
Intentionalities and the Coherence of Discourses
The Collatikaaram of Tol contains within itself a Transformational Generative Grammar but quite different from that of Noam Chomsky and other such generative grammars and using which I have developed what I called the Process Grammar, where the primary linguistic process is that of COMMUNICATING and in that indicating also what is ASSERTED as opposed to what is being PRESUPPOSED. Even the normal communicative act has the intention structure of Presupposed: Asserted and it is this distinction underlies our perception that a sentence is a union of NP and VP and where the NP shows what is presupposed and VP what is asserted. This also shows that there are syntactically atomic or basic sentences, called simply Cuddu by Tol, the deictic as the building blocks of complex sentences or speech acts.
Let me illustrate the point by taking as example: King Raja Raja Chola was very brave. Here it is presupposed that there was King Raja Raja Chola whose truth is beyond doubt and then it is asserted as something unknown or NEW that he was also brave. Thus we can see this having the structure: {There was King Raja Raja Chola1) o (He1 was very brave) where the symbol “X o Y’ shows that ‘X” is presupposed and ‘Y’ is asserted. And the number ‘1’ indicates IDENTITY of the named and pronominally indicated.
Notice that:
1.
If ‘X’, the truth about King Raja Raja Chola is disallowed and there was no such a person, then the assertion as a whole FAILS as a Speech Act for it fails to elicit from others either as affirmation or denial.
2.
Now if the pronoun ‘he” in Y does not identify the SAME person as the named in X, then again the assertion as such will NOT materialize as a Speech Act, i.e. a KiLavi.
When Tol in KiLaviyaakkam says that one can only remain silent in the face of assertion of nonexistent objects, it is clear that he is having such discourse grammatical notions though he may not have spelt out explicitly.
Now when we look a bit deeper at the phenomenon of FAILURE of discourse in the face of non-existent objects, it also follows that in the case of discourses that proceed with a COHERENCE, what constitutes it is the INTENTIONAL- FUSION, the reply consistent with the intention of the question etc.
The Grammar of NP and VP
Now we are in a position to understand the grammar of NP and VP as observed in Tol. Simply put while the NP-s conjugate with case markers number gender markers and so forth but DO NOT CARRY or even implicate the time-related tenses aspects and so forth and which is the essence of the VP-s. Thus TEMPORALITY is brought in to clarify the grammatical intuitions that underly our grasp that a phrase is a NP and another VP. And also while VP may implicate case markers, e.g. adi-t-taan (he beat) implicating that the NP carries the Accusative Case Marker ‘ai’ (x-ai adittaan), a nominal stem like ‘maram, naay”and so forth may not implicate any specific verb etc.
But why this feature of sentence structure?
The information communicated by the NP also communicates that it is something being PRESUPPOSED as TRUE, generally agreed upon by all and that which is communicated by the VP, is not so but that it is which is being ASSERTED with the implicit demand that it be agreed upon by others as well.
The NP tears a certain understanding away from the world process and makes it ABOVE it as a TRUTH already accepted and hence something that can be PRESUPPOSED by the speaker and because of which it is time free and which is NOT the case with what is communicated by the VP. Of course the audience can question this very presupposition itself and in which case the discourse will develop in directions unintended by the speaker.
Thus we can see that implicit in Tol is this Process Grammar which unlike the TG Grammar of Chomsky does NOT make Linguistic Competence simply a mechanical process already innate and so forth. The Linguistic Competence in the Process Grammar of Tol comes with the ability to intentionalize notions ideas and so forth and muster the auxiliary skills and courage to communicate effectively.
ULLAGANAR
( editing and re-paragraphing by his student )
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