One of the very important differences between Malayalam and Yerava is that Malayalam does not have personal terminations in finite forms of the verbs. But Yerava has personal terminations.

The process of transitivization also differs between both the languages under comparison. Malayalam derives transitive verbs from intransitive by doubling of the stem final stops, by alternating stem final-, etc. Yerava does not share the feature of the doubling of the stem final stops in deriving transitive verbs.

In forming the imperative forms the -uu is used as suffix to the verb to derive polite imperative. The Yerava speech has different suffixes for plural, masculine, feminine imperative forms.

The causative marker of Yerava is -pi-. But Malayalam has -i:/-i-/-pi- as causative markers.

In order to derive the verbal participle form of the verbs in Malayalam -u is used after all the past tense markers other than -i. In case of the verbs taking -i past tense marker no suffix is added.

The suffixes used to derive conditional in both the languages are different. Yerava uses -ela and Malayalam uses -a:l/eNkil.

Syntax

Two important differences between Malayalam and Yerava sentences are to be noted.

Malayalam has copula sentences of the copula verb -a:u. Same types of sentences do not exist in Yerava.

Yerava, in order to derive negative sentences in case of synthetic negative sentences, uses the person—gender and