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Old Tamil

Mangulam Tamil Brahmi inscription


Main article: Old Tamil language
Old Tamil is the period of the Tamil language spanning the 5th century BCE to th
e 8th century CE. The earliest records in Old Tamil are short inscriptions from
between the 5th and 2nd century BCE in caves and on pottery. These inscriptions
are written in a variant of the Brahmi script called Tamil Brahmi.[59] The earli
est long text in Old Tamil is the Tolkappiyam, an early work on Tamil grammar an
d poetics, whose oldest layers could be as old as the 1st century BC.[51] A larg
e number of literary works in Old Tamil have also survived. These include a corp
us of 2,381 poems collectively known as Sangam literature. These poems are usual
ly dated to between the 1st and 5th centuries AD,[51]
Middle Tamil
Main article: Middle Tamil language
Thanjavur Tamil Inscription
The evolution of Old Tamil into Middle Tamil which is generally taken to have be
en completed by the 8th century,[51] was characterized by a number of phonologic
al and grammatical changes. In phonological terms, the most important shifts wer
e the virtual disappearance of the aytam (?), an old phoneme,[60] the coalescenc
e of the alveolar and dental nasals,[61] and the transformation of the alveolar
plosive into a rhotic.[62] In grammar, the most important change was the emergen
ce of the present tense. The present tense evolved out of the verb kil (????), m
eaning "to be possible" or "to befall". In Old Tamil, this verb was used as an a
spect marker to indicate that an action was micro-durative, non-sustained or non
-lasting, usually in combination with a time marker such as ? (??). In Middle Ta
mil, this usage evolved into a present tense marker
ki??a (?????)
which combined
the old aspect and time markers.[63]

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