A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages c8.3

c8.3

In the colloquial dialects the neuter nouns of number are often used, without change, as numeral adjectives—e.g., in Tamil, we may say *iraṇḍu peyar*, two persons, though *iru peyar*, or the still more classical appellative noun *iruvar*, might have been expected to be used. This use of the numeral substantive instead of the numeral adjective is not ungrammatical, but is in accordance with the characteristic Dravidian rule that every noun of quality or relation, though in itself neuter and abstract, becomes an adjective by being prefixed to a substantive noun in direct apposition. The numeral noun *oṇḍru*, Tam., *okaṭi*, Tel., one, is the only numeral which is never used in this manner, even in the colloquial dialects, except in Canarese; the adjectival numerals, *oru*, *oka*, &c., being invariably prefixed to substantive nouns as numeral adjectives: the same forms are employed also as indefinite articles. In Canarese alone the abstract neuters are used freely as numeral adjectives—e.g., *ondu hei*, one hand. The abstract or neuter nouns of number are sometimes elegantly postfixed, instead of being prefixed, to the substantive nouns which they are intended to qualify—e.g., instead of *nâl' erudu*, Tam. four oxen, we may say not only *nâng' erudu* (using the noun of number *nângu*, instead of the numeral adjective *nâlu*), but also *erudu nângu*, a phrase which literally means a quaternion of oxen. This phrase affords an illustration of the statement that the Dravidian nouns of number are properly abstract neuters.