| 1.20.5. Morphology |
i) Presence of an inclusive and exclusive first person plural pronoun is noticed in Urali as against the Irula where the first person plural pronoun `na:nu’ serves both inclusive and exclusive functions. The presence of both inclusive (na:mu) and exclusive (na:me) in Urali may be due to the influence of Tamil which maintains a distinction between exclusive (na: ga) and inclusive (na:ma). |
| ii) Urali and Irula have only a two way distinction in the forms to denote tense, namely, past and non-past, whereas Tamil has also a future tense form. |
| iii) Instrumental case in Urali is marked with four suffixes, viz., -dara, -kku ~ -i, -li and -ili. The suffix -kku always occurs in free variation with -i. It is a peculiar phenomenon noticed in Urali that in nouns while taking the instrumental case suffix -kku, the final vowel gets lengthened. While taking the case suffix -i, the noun stem is inflected with inflectional increment -tt. |
| mara-kku |
mara:kku } |
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}`tree’ (Inst.) |
| mara-tt-i |
mara.tti } |
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| The instrumental case marker -a:le which is found in Irula is absent in Urali. Instead, Urali has -dara as an instrumental case suffix. |
| iv) It is noticed that the suffixes -i, -li and -ili, in addition to giving the instrumental meaning, give a locative meaning also. This characteristic feature is observed in Irula also. |
v) The use of sociative case suffixed is a peculiar character noticed in Urali. In Urali, sociative case is marked with two suffixes, viz., -o: ukku and - e. It is observed that the suffix -o:ukku is used only with pronouns and human nouns. |
| mammo:ukku
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`with us’ |
| re.siyo:ukku |
`with Resi’ |
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| The suffix -o:e is used in other environments |
| katteyo:e |
’with donkey’ |
| kuruviyo:e |
`with bird' |
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| In Irula, the sociative case is marked with only one suffix -o:e and it is used in all the places whenever sociative notion is expressed. |
| vi) Ablative case in Urali is marked with three suffixes, viz., -iruddu, -liruddu and -iliruddu. It is noticed that the sociative case suffix -o:ukkuvi) Ablative case in Urali is marked with three suffixes, viz., -iruddu, -liruddu and -iliruddu. It is noticed that the sociative case suffix -o:ukku precedes he ablative suffix -iruddu when the subject is either a pronoun or a personal noun. |
| nanno:ukkiruddu |
`from me’ |
ava o:ukkiruddu |
`from her’ |
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