Tamil verb stems may be inclusive of a voice morpheme that encodes the degree of agency of the verb. Hence, using Paramasivam’s (1979) terminology, these kinds of verbs are paired verbs of which one is the affective and the other its effective counterpart. In the former, the action expressed by the verb is realised by an agent and affects a patient, whereas in the latter the consequences of the action fall on the subject who realises the action.This paper intends to analyse how missionaries described the verb system of Tamil which differed substantially from their own model of reference (Latin and Portuguese), and how they understood paired verbs, as defined above. As such, taking into account the Western sources that missionaries used to compose and organise their descriptions, this paper focuses on both verb conjugations and paired verbs in Tamil. It also demonstrates how the Latin grammatical framework was applied for the description of Tamil verbs and discusses the Indian grammatical sources available to missionaries.Given that the present classification of Tamil verbs is based on the one offered by a missionary, Karl Friedrich Leberecht Graul (1814–1864), this study highlights how earlier missionaries’ descriptions contributed to the current classification.

中文翻译：

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传教士如何在泰米尔语动词变位和配对动词的分类和解释中应用葡萄牙语和拉丁语的描述性类别

泰米尔语动词词干可能包含一个语音语素，该语素对动词的代理程度进行编码。因此，使用 Paramasivam (1979) 的术语，这些类型的动词是成对的动词，其中一个是情感的，另一个是有效的对应物。前者，动词所表达的动作是由一个能动者来实现的，并影响病人，而后者，动作的后果落在实现动作的主体身上。本文旨在分析传教士如何描述泰米尔语与他们自己的参考模型（拉丁语和葡萄牙语）有很大不同，以及他们如何理解配对动词，如上所述。因此，考虑到传教士用来撰写和组织描述的西方资料，本文重点介绍泰米尔语中的动词变位和配对动词。它还展示了拉丁文语法框架如何应用于描述泰米尔语动词，并讨论了传教士可用的印度语法来源。鉴于目前泰米尔语动词的分类是基于传教士 Karl Friedrich Leberecht Graul（1814 年）提供的分类–1864），这项研究强调了早期传教士的描述如何促成了当前的分类。