Use of கொண்டு

[kuchintakitty]

Hi, I'm relatively new to learning Tamil. It's a fascinating language but the paucity of resources is highly frustrating.

Anyway, I'm trying to figure out the meaning / use of the word "கொண்டு" in this sentence: அவர் மரத்தைக் கொண்டு பல பொருள்களைச் செய்வார். I think the sentence means, "He makes things from wood," as the story is about a carpenter.

However, I'm completely confused as to how "கொண்டு" is used in that sentence. I understand that "கொண்டு" can be used in a reflexive manner to refer to a person doing something for himself (http://www.ibiblio.org/tamil/paadanool/lesson37.html) but that doesn't seem to be how it is used here. And the dictionary translation of "கொண்டு" doesn't fit either. It would be lovely if someone can explain this to me.

Thanks very much in advance!!

[vijayjohn]

Hi! I'm sorry, I meant to respond to this and then totally forgot!

So yeah, that link is saying it can be used for that and for simultaneous actions. But here, it's an instrumental case suffix, so you could translate that sentence as "he makes things from wood," but you could also say "with wood" (or "out of wood"). That is to say, he uses the wood to make things.

[kuchintakitty]

Thanks a million, vijayjohn.

[vijayjohn]

No problem. (I should probably mention, though, that I pretty much used Malayalam to figure out this one, too ).