Lexical problems.

LT verbs such as ´Ô kaa `wait' now occur almost exclusively with (aspectual) Ø´Ô koo or aspectual Éç iru attached, i.e ´Ô¢â¡Ø´Ô kaattukkoo or ´Ô¢»Õç kaattiru. In such cases, the aspectual value of Ø´Ô koo is weakenedI would prefer a better term than this but if we see aspect as a still-variable category in Tamil, we have to place it on a continuum with two poles, and variation in between. and the compound simply represents the relexicalized form of the verb. Thus there can be a sort of `sliding scale' from lexical to grammatical, with some combinations of main verb and Ø´Ô koo being primarily lexical, with very little aspectual `meaning', but at the other end of the scale the occurrence of Ø´Ô koo will be minimally lexical but maximally aspectual.

This is also the case with the verb ´§ kal `learn' which now occurs only with Ø´Ô koo or Éç iru attached: ´¢âØ´Ôõ´ kattukoonga `(please) learn (it)'. This contrasts semantically with ´§ kal with Éç iru attached: ´¢»Õç kattiru `be learning'; the illocutionary force of this combination is sarcastic or ironic, since »¾Õ° Íõ×´ ´¢»Õç¡´Öõ´ tami= to0pt.25ex ##= by .25ex enge katt-irukkiinga (which literally means `Where did you learn Tamil?') has the illocutionary force of `Where (the hell) did you learn Tamil? (i.e., you don't know Tamil.)' Use of Ø´Ô koo with some other verbs, as noted above, also contrasts with non-use in an almost purely lexical way: ؽÔà poodu `put, drop' means `put on' clothing, but ؽԥàØ´Ô poottu-koo implies the result of putting on, i.e. `wearing'.

SubsectionSummary Let us summarize some of what is known about Tamil aspect as follows:

• There seems to be a category of aspect that must be recognized for Tamil that involves a continuum of grammaticalization from none (i.e. pure lexical or syntactic concatenation) to aspect as a full-fledged category.

• Most dialects (and LT) recognize a subset of aspectual markers that are clearly aspectual, and have little or no overlap with their lexical analogs. Indeed, the lexical verb can often be followed by the corresponding aspectual verb.

• Most dialects also show a set of aspectual verbs that involve a component of aspect, but also an attitudinal notion of some sort. This set varies more from dialect to dialect, but nevertheless language-wide and even family-wide features are shared. For example, Tamil ؽÔà poodu `malicious intent' (lexically `put') has as its analog in Kannada the verb haaku, which has the same aspectual and lexical meanings in Kannada, even though the two verbs are quite different phonologically. This seems to be a feature of the Indian linguistic area that has been noted for many languages, i.e. the lexical-aspectual-attitudinal polarity will be found in languages as different as Tamil and Bengali; one even notes some carry-over into Indian English.

• Theories of syntax that require categorical rules, or fixed grammaticality, cannot capture generalizations about aspect in these languages.

• In the case of the aspectual auxiliaries that are unambiguously aspectual, we often find that they are phonologically different from their lexical analogs, undergoing certain phonological rules that do not apply to lexical verbs because the conditions for their application are not met there. That is, these unambiguously aspectual verbs act like grammatical morphemes, rather than separate verbs, and phonological rules that operate across morpheme boundaries of concatenated verbs do not have the same application when what is concatenated is a verb and a separate quasi-aspectual verb.