Mood and Verbals in North Common Tulu

Sammanfattning: In the Dravidian language Tulu, spoken in the south of present day India, in the states of Karnataka and Kerala, several verb forms exist which have hitherto been poorly described in the scientific literature. A set of these code different modal distinctions, and are thus labeled moods. Another set of non-finite verb forms are morphologically similar to the aforementioned moods, but do not code modality. For the purpose of this thesis, these are categorized under the umbrella term “verbals”. This thesis attempts to describe these forms, provide transparent, coherent and motivated terminology, describe their function, and provide some clarity as to their interplay within the paradigm of modality in the Tulu language. The moods discussed here have received different labels by different authors, often contradicting each other. Here, they will be called (in the order they are discussed in the thesis) the indicative, hypothetical, interrogative, imperative, prohibitive, hortative, permissive, potential, desiderative, optative and conditional moods. The non-finite forms that are here categorized as “verbals” have also been given various labels, again often contradicting each other and not being transparent in their meaning. One of the features that these forms have in common with each other is that they share some characteristics with other parts of speech (nouns, adjectives, adverbs). The names given to these forms in this thesis are the purposive, the perfective verbal adverb, the imperfective verbal adverb, the simultaneous verbal adverb, the negative verbal adverb, the verbal noun, and the verbal adjective. Furthermore, a distinction is made between finite and non-finite forms, finite being those verb forms that take subject index. The non-finite forms comprise all verbals and several moods. The function of finiteness is discussed, and is for moods found to possibly relate to the historical origin of the markers, whereas for the verbals it may be related to subordination, as is common cross-linguistically (Nikolaeva 2010:1).