Tamil Aytam and orthography (was Re: Tamil aaytam)

[Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan]

In a message dated 97-10-14 02:52:28 EDT, bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN (Bh.
Krishnamurti) writes:

<< 3. Tolk. sandhi h in muTTiitu, kaRRiitu is a case of reverse spelling.
Since
 h assimilates to the following voiceless stop, the geminate in external
 (non-case)
 sandhi is spelt as h+T, or h+R. Phonetically there is no way how the first
 member of a geminate becomes lenitioned. This was posited as a spelling
 convention in word sandhi to keep the identity of the conjoined words. >>

There is a basic problem with this analysis. The case for "reverse spelling"
rests on the assumption that the underlying form for "kahRitu" and "muTTItu"
are "kaRRItu" and "muTTItu" respectively. But there is no evidence to
indicate this. As any linguist or grammarian does, tolkAppiyar was working
with two forms "kaRRItu" and "kahRItu" and he was reconstructing the original
conjoining words as "kal" and "tItu" for both. Since, even tolkAppiyar (or
any of his predecessors) was not infallible, we could question the
reconstruction but not the existence of the two forms. As T. Burrow has
observed, "..in view of the general accuracy of Indian alphabets it is
usually the best policy to believe that they meant what they wrote."  If
there existed two forms, "kahRItu" and "kaRRItu", then one cannot posit
"kahRItu" as a case of reverse spelling to keep the identity of the conjoined
words. Moreover, if one wanted to keep the identity of the original conjoined
words, why should one go for a different letter, "h"? One might as well keep
the letter in the orginial word "l" or "L". (Malayalam does it anyway.) Also
keeping the same letter "h" to indicate different original letters such as
"l" or "L" or "v" does not make any sense. Finally, as is clear from V. S.
Rajam's discussion of Classical Tamil morphophonemics, the distinction of
external sandhi and internal sandhi are irrelevant for Classical Tamil. In
that case, how are we to explain the forms pahRi and pan2Ri or ahku and
aruku? Are we to assume that these are also cases of reverse spelling where
the identity of the root was being preserved? I don't think we can attribute
such super-linguistic motives to those poets or scribes.  It will be really
good if the reconstruction of a PD laryngeal can explain forms like kahRItu,
etc., without resorting to the explanation of "reverse spelling".


Regards

S. Palaniappan