Is Tholkappiam ‘yAppilakkaNam’, a grammar for Tamil prosody?

‘Tolkappiyam represents the older tradition in Tamil prosody.’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_prosody)

Prosody, the study of all the elements of language that contribute toward acoustic and rhythmic effects, chiefly in poetry but also in prose. The term derived from an ancient Greek word that originally meant a song accompanied by music or the particular tone or accent given to an individual syllable. Greek and Latin literary critics generally regarded prosody as part of grammar; it concerned itself with the rules determining the length or shortness of a syllable, with syllabic quantity, and with how the various combinations of short and long syllables formed the metres (i.e., the rhythmic patterns) of Greek and Latin poetry. Prosody was the study of metre and its uses in lyric, epic, and dramatic verse. In sophisticated modern criticism, however, the scope of prosodic study has been expanded until it now concerns itself with what the 20th-century poet Ezra Pound called “the articulation of the total sound of a poem.” (https://www.britannica.com/art/prosody)

The syllables employed in prosody are different from the musical syllables in the musically rendered lyrics.

'oli ’(ஒலி), 'Ocai' (ஓசை), and 'icai ’(இசை) with significant differences in their meaning, were explained by the commentaries to mean 'oli' (ஒலி- Sound), thereby failing to bring out the musical phonetics, which played a very significant role in the grammar rules of tholkAppiam. 

References in tholkAppiam and other ancient Tamil texts clarified that the musical sounding of the letters would lead to the musical formation of the syllables, the basic building blocks of a poem. The third part of the formula cited in tholkAppiam - ezuththu 1:33 unambiguously clarified that ‘icai’ meant only music by linking it with the musical note in the word ‘nharampu’. ('Musical Phonetics in tholkAppiam' - The journal from the International Institute of Tamil Studies, Taramani, Chennai; 2013 December http://www.ulakaththamizh.in/journal)

My application of ‘Physics of Music’ to the ancient Tamil texts had proved that the meanings of the music related words in the commentaries and lexicons, needed objective review to discover the Tamil musicology from the ancient Tamil texts. (‘DECODING ANCIENT TAMIL TEXTS – THE PITFALLS IN THE STUDY & TRANSLATION’; https://www.amazon.com/DECODING-ANCIENT-TAMIL-TEXTS-TRANSLATION/dp/9811419264)

I am looking for similar efforts in the study of the ancient Sanskrit texts and associate with those involved, to continue my research on the Kudumiyanmalai music inscription. 

The above inscription is one of the many evidences that led to my discovery of the ‘Musical Linguistics’ from the ancient Tamil Grammar tholkAppiam.

The above discovery attracted the attention of the world-renowned scholars with the following comments. 

“Very intriguing.  I hope all of this can become part of an emerging discipline of ‘musical linguistics’ " - Prof.Noam Chomsky 

” Very interesting. And happy to know that you are working on it.''

- Dr. Rajeev Sangal,  Professor (Area: Computer Sc & Engg), Language Technologies Research Center, IIIT Hyderabad 

The above discovery may lead to the world recognition of tholkAppiam as an important source for the emerging discipline of ‘musical linguistics’. 

pANini’s Ashtadhyayi had already gained world recognition for the well-established discipline of linguistics. 

‘By teaching phonetics and grammar to the West, Sanskrit gave rise to modern linguistics’;        

http://www.indiapost.com/flipbook/epaper31-08-2018/31_AUG_2018/index.html#book/25  

No doubt, world interest to study the ancient Texts in Sanskrit for the development of Science, Technology, Philosophy, etc are growing in modern times. (Spanish scholar Oscar Pujol Riembau;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTd8qIHbVLI) 

But in the case of Tamil, unfounded claims like Tamil Music as the source for Hindustani Music, Angor Watt was built by a Tamil King, etc led to a low estimation of Tamil scholars. This led to scholars like Sheldon Pollock to discard the findings of the Tamil scholars with respect to the origin of the Tamil literature in his book 'The Language of the Gods in the World of Men - Sanskrit, Culture and Power in Premodern India'.

Musical Linguistics rules for poems discovered in the ancient Tamil grammar tholkAppiam, are non-semantic and music related rules for poems, and hence applicable to the musically rendered poems in world languages. The rules of the musical phonetics are objective, involving measurable acoustic parameters and hence would help to devise the related algorithm for developing applications in computational musical linguistics; like lyrical text to music & vice versa, musical grammar check, transformation of musical forms, etc. 

The unique phonetic dimensions of the Sanskrit letters and the rules of joining the letters in pANini’s Ashtadhyayi, led to the development of the modern linguistics. 

The unique phonetic dimensions of the Tamil letters and the rules of joining the letters for composing the poems in tholkAppiam, will lead to the development of the musical linguistics. The above rules of joining the letters for composing the poems are non-semantic and hence language-independent, but musical structure dependent. 

I can very well foresee the convergence of the logic in Ashtadhyayi employed in the modern linguistics, and the logic in tholkAppiam to be employed in the musical linguistics, in the future research; 

addressing the criticisms of Chomsky’s universal grammar(UG)

(http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/capsules/outil_rouge06.html   & https://dlc.hypotheses.org/1269  ) and proving that “that structure-dependence follows from principles of universal grammar that are deeply rooted in the human language faculty”. (https://tamilsdirection.blogspot.com/2019/01/why-anti-sanskrit-is-harmful-to-tamil.html) 

Note: 'The Origins of Tamil Classical Music'; 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lGtWcwS7Ww&t=1221s