The use of vector verbs in early modern Tamil

The posthumous Vocabulario Tamúlico com a Significaçam Portugueza (VTCSP) compiled by Antam de Proença (1625-1666) was printed in 1679 in Ambalacatta (now in Kerala). Although the VTCSP contains 16,217 entries printed on 508 pages, it does not deal with 16,217 distinct lexemes because it is non-lemmatized and stands in fact between a grammar and a dictionary. A number of entries have to be grouped into families, scattered over several pages. Limiting ourselves to the verbal morphology, which takes up 39% of the total count, we can say that (almost) all families of entries contain a citation form (ending in -kkiratu, -kiŗatu, or -ŗatu) but that many families also contain a separate entry for the relative participle or for a verbal noun ending in -kai. The central focus of this paper is an indepth analysis of a group of 298 entries, in which we see the earliest clear attestation of the use of vector verbs in compound verbal expressions in Tamil. Fifteen distinct vector verbs are represented in the VTCSP, of which the most frequently attested are the following four: pōŗatu 'to go' (42%), koļļukiŗatu 'to take' (20%), irukkiŗatu 'to sit' or 'to be' (17%), and pōtukiŗatu 'to put' (10%). An additional important element of information provided by the VTCSP is the collection of Portuguese glosses that are provided with each of these entries, which are in some cases accompanied by concrete examples of use. These glosses and examples allow us to see how these compound forms were perceived to differ, or not to differ, from the corresponding simple forms.