The Tamil Auxiliary Verb System

This book introduces the syntactic process of auxiliary formation and applies it to the grammatical analysis of the indicative, or non-modal, auxiliary verbs of Modern Tamil. Using data from spoken and written registers gathered over several years, the book demonstrates for the first time the systematic nature of auxiliary verb phenomena, and how they are integrated into the grammar of the language.

Including fresh information on new verb constructions, verbal categories and tenses, this book will be a welcome addition to the current general linguistics literature, in particular the study of verbal categories and the morphosyntactic processes that instantiate them.

Sanford B Steever holds three degrees in Linguistics and a diploma in Tamil. The author of four books and fifty articles on Historical Linguistics, Syntax, Dravidian Linguistics and Tamil, he spent three years of study and fieldwork in India. He has been a member of the Linguistics Society of America for thirty years and is a life member of the Dravidian Linguistics Association.