Brahmin Tamil/Grammar3

The verb forms uhlla, thangara and thaamasikara in the above Thanju and Paalu passages are present participial adjective forms.

The phrases containing these forms are equivalent to a relative clause in English:

Hotel le thaamasikara puhlleiahl means 'the boys. who stay in a hotel' or 'the boys staying in a hotel'.

In Braahmik there is no relative clause, there are only participial adjectival phrases that precede the head noun.

Participial adjectives can be formed from the present and past tense bases by just adding the suffix -a. The future 3 rd p n form itself serves as the future adjectival participle, but that form is very rarely used in Braahmik.

A few verbs like iru 'to be', poo 'to go' or aa 'to be, become' have these forms formed irregularly. They are listed below :

Irukara, irundha, irukum, poora / poohara, poona, poohum and aara / aahara, aana, aahum

Dilli ki poora vandi means 'the Delhi bound train'

Poona varsham means 'last year, the year that went by'

Naan poona varsham Madras le irundha poodhu means 'when I was in Madras last year'

The participial adjectives are the same for all genders and numbers.

Padikara paian, padikara paszangahl, padikara pohnnu all mean 'student(s)'.

Padicha manushan, padicha pohnnu mean 'the educated man, the educated girl'

For the future tense, instead of using the form ending in -um, the construction made up of the infinitive of a verb plus the present adjectival participle poora is used:

Nie padicha paadam 3 (muuhn) aavadhu, nie padika poora paadam 4 (naal) aavadhu means 'the lesson you studied is the 3 rd, the lesson you are going to study is the 4 th'.