The Introduction gives the necessary geolinguistic data and oulines the general principle s of Prosodic Phonology. Chapters 1 and 2 provide the phonetic and grammatical frameworks required for the presentation of phonological statements undertaken in chapter 3 - 7. Different types of phonetic and phonological syllable as well as prosodic and phonematic systems to be set up for the language are discussed in the third chapter.

Native systems of phonological and grammatical units have been handled separately from marginal (i.e. borrowed) systems at every stage.

The generalized structures of stem, suffix and junction are examined in chapters 4, 5 and 6 respectively. This is followed in the seventh chapter by a full discussion of the phonological exponents of all grammatical categories relevant to the verbal piece of the language. Many percptionlly based statemnents included in earlier chapters are shown to be supported by insturmental evidence in the last chapter.

There are three appendices: The first is a table of phonological formulae: the second a sample text with translation into English and the third an index of future forms derived from 1061 verbstems common in present day Malayalam.