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Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2001 15:07:28 -0000
To: agathiyar@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Indian Retroflexion showing Tamil's reach and antiquity
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From: naga ganesan@...
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Please take a look at the map of Retroflexion
in Indian languages by Bertil Tikkanen at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CTamil/message/449
You can download the JPEG figure from above.
anbuDan,
N. Ganesan
--------------------------
For a clear picture, I went for Fig. 17 in
Asko Parpola, "Deciphering the Indus script:
Methods and select interpretations", Keynote
address delivered at the 25th Annual South Asia
conference, Univeristy of Wisconsin, 18-20 October 1996.
Published by Center for South Asia, University of Wisconsin,
Madison, WI 53706
On p. 6, prof. Parpola writes:
" The only remaining alternative is the Dravidian language
family, now mainly spoken in South India (fig. 15). One
Dravidian language, Brahui, has been spoken in Baluchistan
for at least a thousand years, as far as the historical
sources go. Kurukh-Malto, mainly spoken in the
Chota-Nagpur plateau, forms the only other member of the
North Dravidian group. Their split seems to have
taken place during the first millennium AD, as recently
suggested by Josef Elfenbein (1987) (fig. 16), but
Proto-North Dravidian must have branched off from the
rest of the family much earlier. Even the areal linguistics
of South Asia supports the hypothesis that the Indus
language belonged to the Dravidian family (see now
Tikkanen, in press). The retroflex consonants, which
constitute the most diagnostic feature of the South Asian
linguistic area, can be divided into two distinct
groups, and one of the groups is distributed over the
Indus valley as well as the Dravidian-speaking areas
(fig. 17)."
Bertil Tikkanen, 1997. Archaeological-linguistic correlations
in the formation of retroflex typologies and correlating
areal features in South Asia. In: Roger Blench and Matthew
Spriggs (eds.), Language and Archaeology, vol. 3: Combining
archaeological and linguistic aspects of the past.
London: Rotledge.
Regards,
N. Ganesan
>Please take a look at Fig 9.3 in Parpola's book.
>This has been scanned, and is attached.
>Bertil Tikkanen's study of retroflexion
>shows a clear declining gradient going from west
>to east in India. - N. Ganesan
>
>A. Parpola, Deciphering the Indus script, 1994
>p. 167
>" It goes beyond the scope of the present book to present
>to present a comprehensive and up-to-date summary of the
>major areal isoglosses in South Asia. However, figure 9.3
>charts the most important conclusion that Dr. Bertil
>Tikkanen has drawn from his ongoing (and so far mostly
>unpublished) analysisand synthesis of the currently
>available evidence. It concentrates on the only lingusitic
>feature that demarcates South Asia as a linguistic area
>in Asia, namely the presence of retroflex or (post)alveolar
>versus dental stops. Other retroflex constants, such as
>sonorants, sibilants and affricates, have either a narrower
>or a broader distrbution. It is possible to distinguish
>between two basic retroflex typologies (A and B) and subtypes
>within each of them. There is a convergence along the contact
>areas towards the less marked types (A). This retroflex
>typology correlates to some extent with other areal isoglosses.
>For the sake of clarity, however, these other areal features
>have not been indicated on the map, excepting just one
>isogloss most relevant for the theme of this book, namely
>the distinction between forms excluding and including the
>addressee in the pronoun of the first person plural, 'we'.
>
> Tikkanen's analysis suggests that Dravidian had once been
>spoken also in all those parts of the type A retroflex system
>area which are Indo-Aryan-speaking now. This distribution
>makes Dravidian the most likely language to have been spoken
>by the Harappans."
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