Postpositions in a Dravidian Language: A Transformational Analysis of Malayalam

This book presents for the first time a detailed description of postpositions in a Dravidian Language within the framework of Transformational Generative Gramme proposed by Noam chomsky. It explores the power of generative technique to explain the derivation of postpositions from the underlying sentence structure. The conceptual and empirical problems on derivation of postpositions are discussed in detail in the light of modern linguistic theory. An exhaustive study on Malayalam positions has not been done previously and hence the present work is promising. Traditional as well as modern view points on the derivation of postpositions are discussed. It defines postpositions clearly and provides a practical test to distinguish them from other parts of speech. They are classified on morphological principles and the derivation of each postposition has been shown in the light of traditional as well as modern transformational points of view. It has been shown that all postpositions in Malayalam are derived from finite verbs by regular transformational operations. Thus the difference between verbs and postpositions is shown as superficial. It has also broken the traditional concept on case assignments and has shown that the nominals governed by postpositions are marked only by the deep structural verbs. This has great implication on the formulation of certain concepts in llinguistic theory and it opens up new vistas for further explorations. The exhaustive analytical technique used in this book will help the readers for easy comprehension. It required only basic knowledge of the theory of Transformational Generative Grammar on the part of the reader. This book will be of interest to all linguists and theoreticians.