ஆறம வறறமயன கரகத தகதயம மழயயல மரணபடகளம: The Sixth Case in Tamil: Its Kāraka Status and Linguistic Contradictions — A Critical Study

Traditional Tamil grammar recognises eight cases. The second to the seventh cases relate a noun to the verb and so express kāraka (case) relations. The sixth case alone relates one noun to another, expressing possession (kizhamai), and has no direct link to the verb. This paper asks whether such a category belongs in the case system at all. The study draws on Tolkāppiyam and Naṉṉūl, Pāṇini's kāraka theory, modern case theory and grammaticalization theory. Five syntactic tests — head type, recursion, clitic attachment, word-order freedom and nominalisation — show the sixth case consistently behaving unlike the other cases. Its main modern marker, uṭaiya, is a relative participle derived from the verb root uṭai 'possess', which points to an adjectival origin. Comparative evidence from Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Tulu shows the same adnominal pattern across the Dravidian family. The paper also weighs the debate over the parallel between the Tamil eight-case scheme and the Sanskrit vibhakti system, noting that Pāṇini himself does not treat the genitive as a kāraka. It concludes that the Tamil sixth case is better analysed as a nominal (adnominal) modifier than as a kāraka case.