V. R. Prabodhachandran Nayar (also spelled Prabodhachandran Nair), popularly known as VRP Nayar, is a Phonetics expert of Kerala. He is the pioneer in the study of the phonology of the Malayalam language. Apart from phonology, he is also interested in syntax and stylistics.
VRP Nayar commenced his professional career in 1959 when he was 20, as a lecturer in Malayalam in the South Travancore Hindu College Nagercoil (Kanyakumari District, Tamil Nadu), the then southernmost college in India. He retired as Head of the department of Linguistics, University of Kerala, Trivandrum, in August 1998. However, he is active as a teacher and was working as a Visiting Professor-cum-Coordinator, at Department of Linguistics, Central University of Kerala, Kasaragod during the years 2012 and 2013.
Association with South Travancore Hindu College, helped him have exposure first to colloquial Tamil and in due course, to the classical language and literature in Tamil. Concurrently he progressed with his PhD program as a part-time Research Scholar under the guidance of Dean Professor / Dr PK Narayana Pillai, in the Department of Oriental Studies, University of Kerala. He was the first recipient of University Grants Commission (India)'sâÂÂs Junior Research Fellowship in the Faculty of Oriental Studies in the University. In May 1963 he joined as the only Lecturer in the University's newly established Department of Linguistics and in 1965 submitted his PhD thesis entitled Descriptive Grammar of Krishnagatha, one of the oldest and classic poetic works by the legendary Malayalam poet Cherusseri Namboothiri. In 1967 Dr Nayar was granted a Commonwealth Scholarship for research in Phonetics and Linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London. His studies in London overshot their stipulated aims, in the sense that he successfully completed another thesis called Malayalam Verbal Formsâ A Phonetic and Phonological Study Supported by Experimental Findings which fetched him his second PhD. During this period of research he could make a study tour of a number of libraries and speech-laboratories in the UK as well as in France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Rejoining his parent Department in Thiruvananthapuram, Dr Nayar was promoted as Reader and subsequently as Professor and in 1981 as Chair-Professor, which position he held till his retirement in 1998. Simultaneously he served on several occasions in the following positions also: Member / Chair, Board of Studies in Linguistics; Member / Dean of the Faculty of Oriental Studies; Director of the International Center for Kerala Studies; Member of the Advisory Committee for the Oriental Research Institute and Manuscripts Library and the Department of Malayalam Lexicon; the first Vice-Chairman of the Council Monitoring the Choice â based Credit and Semester System, introduced for the first time in any University in Kerala.
During his tenure as Professor of Linguistics in the University of Kerala, Dr Nayar organized a number of Seminars, Symposiums, Conferences and Workshops at the regional, state and national levels and successfully completed several Research Projects. After his retirement from the University of Kerala, Dr Nayar served the following institutions as a Visiting Professor and in various capacities as presented here:
Malayalam