Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c27.s21: 7.18 Syllabic structure of stems

c27.s21.1

It is now well settled that Dravidian roots are all monosyllabic. The stems are, however, extended further with the addition of derivational suffixes. Simple (indivisible) stems (excluding loanwords) in the Corpus are found to be one to three syllables in length. Simple stems with three syllables are rare. Typical examples of the syllabic structure of simple stems are illustrated in Table 7.3.