Companion Volume to the Cenavaraiyam on Tamil Morphology and Syntax. Le commentaire de Cenavaraiyar sur le Collatikaram du Tolkappiyam vol. 2 : English Introduction, glossaire analytique, appendices.

Jean-Luc Chevillard. Collection Indologie n° 84.2, IFP / EFEO, 2008, 526 p.
Language: English, French. Rs 900 ( 32 €)

This companion volume to a French translation of the Cenavaraiyam, also intended as a help to the reading of similar texts, is part of an endeavour to document the development of the Tamil scholarly tradition. The central part of the book is an analytic glossary of all technical words and phrases used by Cenavaraiyar while commenting on the Collatikaram, a task which required him both to describe the Tamil language and at the same time to explain what the author of the Tolkappiyam had revealed about it.

The original approach chosen by Jean-Luc Chevillard, a historian of linguistics, devotes as much attention to metagrammatical items as to grammatical ones. The focus is not on finding truths about language, but on examining for itself that ancient and interesting human rational activity: the building of grammars.

Keywords: Tamil, Tolkappiyam, Cenavaraiyar, metagrammatical