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The Dravidian and northeastern Sri Lanka , as well as certain areas in Pakistan , Nepal , Bangladesh , and eastern and central India , as well as in parts of Afghanistan and Iran , and overseas in other countries such as the UK , US , Canada , Malaysia and Singapore . Origins of the word ''Dravidian'' The English word Dravidian was first employed by '' also forms the root of the word '' Tamil '' (Dravida -> Dramila -> Tamizha or Tamil).
Zvelebil in his earlier treatise (Zvelebil 1975: p53) states: "It is obvious that the Sanskrit ''dr(a/ā)viḍa'', Pali ''damila'', ''damiḷo'' and Prakrit ''d(a/ā)viḍa'' are all etymologically connected with ''tamiẓ''" and further remarks "The ''r'' in ''tamiẓ'' > ''dr(a/ā)viḍa'' is a hypercorrect insertion, cf. an analogical case of DED 1033 Ta. ''kamuku'', Tu.''kangu'' "areca nut": Skt. ''kramu(ka)''.". Further another eminent Dravidian linguist Bhadriraju Krishnamurti in his book ''Dravidian Languages'' (Krishnamurti 2003:p2, footnote 2) states: "Joseph (1989: IJDL 18.2:134-42) gives extensive references to the use of the term ''draviḍa'', ''dramila'' first as the name of a people, then of a country. Sinhala inscriptions of BCE Christian Era cite ''dameḍa''-, ''damela''- denoting Tamil merchants. Early Budhdhist and Jaina sources used ''damiḷa''- to refer to a people of in south India (presumably Tamil); ''damilaraṭṭha''- was a southern non-Aryan country; ''dramiḷa''-, ''dramiḍa'', and ''draviḍa''- were used as variants to designate a country in the south (''Bṛhatsamhita-'', ''Kādambarī'', ''Daśakumāracarita-'', fourth to seventh centuries CE) (1989: 134-8). It appears that ''damiḷa''- was older than ''draviḍa''- which could be its Sanskritization." Based on what Krishnamurti states referring to a scholary paper published in the International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics the Sanskrit word ''draviḍa'' itself is later than ''damiḷa'' since the dates for the forms with -r- are centuries later than the dates for the forms without -r- (''damiḷa'', ''dameḍa''-, ''damela''- etc.). So it is clear that it is difficult to maintain Dravida -> Dramila -> Tamizha or Tamil. The Monier-Williams Sanskrit Dictionary {Link without Title} lists for the Sanskrit word ''dravia'' a meaning of "collective Name for 5 peoples, viz. the Āndhras, Karāakas, Gurjaras, Tailagas, and Mahārāras". Dravidian languages are spoken by more than 200 million people. They appear to be unrelated to languages of other known families like Indo-European , specifically Indo-Aryan , which is the other common language family on the Indian subcontinent. Some Linguistic Scholars incorporate the Dravidian languages into a larger Elamo-Dravidian Language Family , which includes the Ancient Elamite Language (''Haltami'') of what is now south-western Iran. Dravidian is one of the primary linguistic groups in the proposed Nostratic language system, linking almost all languages in North Africa, Europe and Western Asia into a common family with its origins in the Fertile Crescent sometime between the last Ice Age and the emergence of Proto-Indo-European 4-6 thousand years BC. Dravidian grammatical impact on the structure and syntax of Indo-Aryan languages is considered far greater than the Indo-Aryan grammatical impact on Dravidian. Some linguists explain this anomaly by arguing that Middle Indo-Aryan and New Indo-Aryan were built on a Dravidian Substratum .Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2003) ''The Dravidian Languages'' Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-77111-0 at p. 40-41. HISTORY See Also: Proto-Dravidian The origins of the Dravidian languages, as well as their subsequent development and the period of their differentiation are unclear, partially due to the lack of .Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2003) ''The Dravidian Languages'' Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-77111-0 at p. 43. Many linguists, however, tend to favour the theory that speakers of Dravidian languages spread southwards and eastwards through the Indian Subcontinent , based on the fact that the southern Dravidian languages show some signs of contact with linguistic groups which the northern Dravidian languages do not. Proto-Dravidian is thought to have differentiated into Proto-North Dravidian, Proto-Central Dravidian, Proto South-Central Dravidian and Proto-South Dravidian around 500 BC, although some linguists have argued that the degree of differentiation between the sub-families points to an earlier split. The existence of the Dravidian language family was first suggested in and M. B. Emeneau was a landmark event in Dravidian linguistics. LIST OF DRAVIDIAN LANGUAGES "DRAVIDIAN LANGUAGES." ENCYCLOPæDIA BRITANNICA. 2007. ENCYCLOPæDIA BRITANNICA ONLINE. 13 MARCH 2007 <HTTP://SEARCH.EB.COM/EB/ARTICLE-9109791> Those recognized as National Languages Of India are in boldface: Southern
South Central Central The languages formally enumerated by linguists (Zvelebil 1990:p xiv, Subrahmanyam 1983) as belonging to the Central Dravidian subfamily are: Other possible enumerations are:
Northern The languages formally enumerated by Dravidian linguists (Zvelebil 1990:p xiv, Subrahmanyam 1983) as belonging to the North Dravidian subfamily are the three below: Some other enumerations are:
GRAMMAR The most characteristic features of Dravidian languages are:
PHONOLOGY Historical Phonology:
Consonants: Proto-Dravidian is reconstructible with the following consonantal phonemes (Subrahmanyam 1983:p40, Zvelebil 1990, Krishnamurti 2003) : Alveolar stop ''ṯ'' in many daughter languages developed into an alveolar trill ṟ. It still retains the stop sound in Kota and Toda (Subrahmanyam 1983). Malyalam still retains the original (alveolar) stop sound in gemination. (''ibid''). In Old Tamil it takes the enunciative vowel like the other stops. In other words, ''ṯ'' (or ''ṟ'') does not occur word-finally without the enunciative vowel (''ibid'').
The glottal fricative ''H'' has been proposed by Bhadriraju Krishnamurti to account for the Old Tamil Aytam (''Āytam'') and other Dravidian comparative phonological phenomena (Krishnamurti 2003). Dravidian languages are noted for the lack of distinction between aspirated and unaspirated stops. While some Dravidian languages (especially Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu) have accepted large numbers of loan words from and aspiration of plosives is generally absent, regardless of the spelling of the word. This is not a universal phenomenon and is generally avoided in formal or careful speech, especially when reciting. For instance, Tamil, like Finnish , Korean , Ainu , and most Indigenous Australian Languages , does not distinguish between voiced and unvoiced stops. In fact, the Tamil Alphabet lacks symbols for voiced and aspirated stops. Dravidian languages are also characterized by a three-way distinction between Dental , Alveolar , and Retroflex places of articulation as well as large numbers of Liquids . Words starting with vowels A substantial number of words also begin and end with vowels, which helps the languages' agglutinative property. karanu (cry), elumbu (bone), adu (that), awade (there), idu (this), illai (no, absent) adu-idil-illai (that-this-in-absent = that is absent in this) Numbers The numbers from 1 to 10 in various Dravidian languages. #This is the same as another word meaning "one" in another sense in Tamil and Malayalam - the distinction is as between Spanish "un" and "uno". #This is still found in compound words, and has taken on a meaning of "double" in Tamil and Malayalam. For example, irupatu (20, literally meaning "double-ten") or "irai" ("double") or Iruvar (meaning two people). #Kolami numbers 5-10 are borrowed from Telugu
Stability and Continuity of Dravidian The Dravidian language family has been considered remarkably stable. Some aspects of its stability are:
Dravidian substratum influence on Sanskrit Dravidian and Sanskrit have influenced each other in various ways. Some earlier views in this interrelationship tended to view it as one-way from Sanskrit to Dravidian as evidenced in the following statements: "While the origins and initial development of Dravidian languages was independent of Sanskrit,Kittel (1993), p1-2 during later centuries, however, Dravidian languages like Kannada , Malayalam , Tamil and Telugu have been greatly influenced by Sanskrit in terms of vocabulary, grammar and literary styles."Literature in all Dravidian languages owes a great deal to Sanskrit, the magic wand whose touch raised each of the languages from a level of patois to that of a literary idiom" (Sastri 1955, p309)" The above views must be considered in the light of the well-known Indologist and linguist (Zvelebil 1975: pp50-51): "... the period of the high water mark of Tamil classical literature was one in which the two great Sanskrit epics were already completed, but the Sanskrit classical poetry was barely emerging with Aśvaghoṣa." More importantly he continues: "''No stylistic feature or convention could have been borrowed by the Tamils (though of course there are borrowings of purāṇic stories''" (emphasis added). Zvelebil remarks:"Though the dominance of Sanskrit was exaggerated in some Brahmanic circles of Tamilnadu, and Tamil was given unduly underestimated by a few Sanskrit-oriented scholars, the Tamil and Sanskrit cultures were not generally in rivalry". However more recent research has shown that Sanskrit has been influenced in certain more fundamental ways than Dravidian languages have been by it: It is by way of phonology and even more significantly here via grammatical constructs. This has been the case from the earliest language available (ca. 1200 B.C.) of Sanskrit: the Ṛg Vedic speech. The Ṛg Vedic language has retroflex consonants even though it is well known that the Indo European family and the Indo-Iranian subfamily to which Sanskrit belongs lack retroflex consonants (ṭ/ḍ, ṇ) with about 88 words in the Ṛg Veda having unconditioned retroflexes (Kuiper 1991, Witzel 1999). Some sample words are: (''Iṭanta'', ''Kaṇva'',''śakaṭī'', ''kevaṭa'', ''puṇya'', ''maṇḍūka'') This is cited as a serious evidence of substrate influence from close contact of the Vedic speakers with speakers of a foreign language family rich in retroflex phonemes (Kuiper 1991, Witzel 1999). Obviously the Dravidian family would be a serious candidate here (ibid as well as Krishnamurti 2003: p36) since it is rich in retroflex phonemes reconstructible back to the Proto-Dravidian stage Subrahmanyam 1983:p40, Zvelebil 1990, Krishnamurti 2003 . A more serious influence on Vedic Sanskrit is the extensive grammatical influence attested by the usage of the quotative marker ''iti'' and the occurrence of gerunds of verbs, a grammatical feature not found even in the c the Avestan language a sister language of the Vedic Sanskrit. As Krishnamurti states: "Besides, the Ṛg Veda has used the gerund, not found in Avestan, with the same grammatical function as in Dravidian, as a non-finite verb for 'incomplete' action. Ṛg Vedic language also attests the use of iti as a quotative clause complementizer. All these features are not a consequence of simple borrowing but they indicate substratum influence (Kuiper 1991: ch 2)". The noted Indologist Zvelebil remarks : "Several scholars have demonstrated that pre-Indo-Aryan and pre-Dravidian bilingualism in India provided conditions for the far-reaching influence of Dravidian on the Indo-Aryan tongues in the spheres of phonology (e.g., the retroflex consonants, made with the tongue curled upward toward the palate), syntax (e.g., the frequent use of gerunds, which are nonfinite verb forms of nominal character, as in “by the falling of the rain”), and vocabulary (a number of Dravidian loanwords apparently appearing in the Rigveda itself)" SEE ALSO
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