Streams of Language : Dialects in Tamil.

Edited by Kannan M., Hors série n° 6, IFP, 2008, xxii, 335 p.
Language: Tamil, English, French. 500 Rs (18 €)

This volume is the outcome, independent, extended and enlarged, of an international conference, "Dialects in Tamil" held on August 23-25th 2006 at the French Institute of Pondicherry. Dialects in Tamil emerge from a configuration of the following elements shared by people: caste, region, landscape and the material culture which sustains them...

This book is arranged in sections with the idea that rays of light from different fields will fall on the single subject before us. The order in which the sections are arranged indicates how the problematic of dialects in Tamil has been addressed in different contexts (by international scholars to linguists to Tamil creative writers). This arrangement also underlines the holistic, multidisciplinary approach undertaken in this volume. Tamil papers contain English abstracts and vice versa, so that both Tamil and English readers can benefit from the volume

Keywords : Dialects, Tamil, literature, linguistics