Prof. V. Prakasham represents the Central Institute of English and Foreign Language. The presentation of Prof. Prakasham in Prof. M. B. Emeneau Centenary International Conference on South Asian Linguistics was titled "Phonological Variation-A Systematic View Point".

          In the explanation of his one-pointer paper, he says that though at the orthographic level Tamil does not have voiced stops. E.g. ba, ga etc. But this doesn't mean that the spoken form of Tamil language does not have voiced stops. There is a condition that is whenever these voiceless stops occur in between two vowels or occur after the homophonic nasals the concerned voiceless consonant becomes voiced. So Tamil has voiced stops at allophonic level. People who are not aware of this often have the feeling that Tamil does not have any voiced consonants in its phonetic system. Consequent to this often it is observed that several people mispronounce the words which lead to problems.

         Prof. V. Prakasham brings out the authenticity of phonology of different languages especially Tamil. He said that there is gradation in authenticity and Dravidians have voiced phonemes.

         Prof. Probal Dasgupta chaired the session.