Morphology

Tamil nouns (and pronouns) are classified into two super-classes (ti?ai) the "rati
onal" (uyarti?ai), and the "irrational" (ak?i?ai) which include a total of five cl
asses (pal, which literally means gender'). Humans and deities are classified as
"rational", and all other nouns (animals, objects, abstract nouns) are classifie
d as irrational. The "rational" nouns and pronouns belong to one of three classe
s (pal) masculine singular, feminine singular, and rational plural. The "irrationa
l" nouns and pronouns belong to one of two classes: irrational singular and irra
tional plural. The pal is often indicated through suffixes. The plural form for
rational nouns may be used as an honorific, gender-neutral, singular form.[110]
Suffixes are used to perform the functions of cases or postpositions. Traditiona
l grammarians tried to group the various suffixes into eight cases corresponding
to the cases used in Sanskrit. These were the nominative, accusative, dative, s
ociative, genitive, instrumental, locative, and ablative. Modern grammarians arg
ue that this classification is artificial,[111] and that Tamil usage is best und
erstood if each suffix or combination of suffixes is seen as marking a separate
case.[99] Tamil nouns can take one of four prefixes, i, a, u, and e which are fu
nctionally equivalent to the demonstratives in English.