Dravidian languages
The Dravidian languages (sometimes called Dravidic[2]) are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in southern India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan.[1] Dravidian is first attested in the 2nd century BCE, as inscriptions in Tamil-Brahmi script on cave walls in the Madurai and Tirunelveli districts of Tamil Nadu.[3][lower-alpha 1]
| Dravidian | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution | South India, north-east Sri Lanka and south-west Pakistan |
Native speakers | 250 million (2020)[1] |
| Linguistic classification | One of the world's primary language families |
| Proto-language | Proto-Dravidian |
| Subdivisions |
|
| ISO 639-2 / 5 | dra |
| Linguasphere | 49= (phylozone) |
| Glottolog | drav1251 |
 Distribution of the Dravidian languages | |
| Part of a series on |
| Dravidian culture and history |
|---|
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| Portal:Dravidian civilizations |
The Dravidian languages with the most speakers are (in descending order of number of speakers) Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam, all of which have long literary traditions. Smaller literary languages are Tulu and Kodava.[4] Together with several smaller languages such as Gondi, these languages cover the southern part of India and the northeast of Sri Lanka, and account for the overwhelming majority of Dravidian speakers. Malto and Kurukh are spoken in isolated pockets in eastern India. Kurukh is also spoken in parts of Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh.[5] Brahui is mostly spoken in the Balochistan region of Pakistan, Irani Balochistan, Afghanistan and around the Marw oasis in Turkmenistan. During the colonial period, Dravidian speakers emigrated to Southeast Asia, Mauritius, South Africa, Fiji and the Caribbean.[6] There are more-recent Dravidian-speaking diaspora communities in the Middle East, Europe, North America and Oceania.
Dravidian place names along the Arabian Sea coast and Dravidian grammatical influence such as clusivity in the Indo-Aryan languages, namely, Marathi, Gujarati, Marwari, and Sindhi, suggest that Dravidian languages were spoken more widely across the Indian subcontinent before the spread of the Indo-Aryan languages.[7][8][9] Though some scholars have argued that the Dravidian languages may have been brought to India by migrations from the Iranian plateau in the fourth or third millennium BCE[10][11] or even earlier,[12][13] reconstructed proto-Dravidian vocabulary suggests that the family is indigenous to India.[14][15][16][lower-alpha 2] Despite many attempts, the family has not been shown to be related to any other.[18]
Dravidian studies
The 14th-century Sanskrit text Lilatilakam, a grammar of Manipravalam, states that the spoken languages of present-day Kerala and Tamil Nadu were similar, terming them as "Dramiḍa". The author does not consider the "Karṇṇāṭa" (Kannada) and the "Āndhra" (Telugu) languages as "Dramiḍa", because they were very different from the language of the "Tamil Veda" (Tiruvaymoli), but states that some people would include them in the "Dramiḍa" category.[19]
In 1816, Francis Whyte Ellis argued that Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Tulu and Kodava descended from a common, non-Indo-European ancestor.[20][21] He supported his argument with a detailed comparison of non-Sanskrit vocabulary in Telugu, Kannada and Tamil, and also demonstrated that they shared grammatical structures.[22][23] In 1844, Christian Lassen discovered that Brahui was related to these languages.[24] In 1856, Robert Caldwell published his Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages,[25] which considerably expanded the Dravidian umbrella and established Dravidian as one of the major language groups of the world.[26]
In 1961, T. Burrow and M. B. Emeneau published the Dravidian Etymological Dictionary, with a major revision in 1984.[27]
Name
Caldwell coined the term "Dravidian" for this family of languages, based on the usage of the Sanskrit word Draviḍa in the work Tantravārttika by Kumārila Bhaṭṭa:[28]
The word I have chosen is 'Dravidian', from Drāviḍa, the adjectival form of Draviḍa. This term, it is true, has sometimes been used, and is still sometimes used, in almost as restricted a sense as that of Tamil itself, so that though on the whole it is the best term I can find, I admit it is not perfectly free from ambiguity. It is a term which has already been used more or less distinctively by Sanskrit philologists, as a generic appellation for the South Indian people and their languages, and it is the only single term they ever seem to have used in this manner. I have, therefore, no doubt of the propriety of adopting it.
— Robert Caldwell[29]
The origin of the Sanskrit word drāviḍa is the Tamil word Tamiḻ.[30] Kamil Zvelebil cites the forms such as dramila (in Daṇḍin's Sanskrit work Avantisundarīkathā) and damiḷa (found in the Sri Lankan (Ceylonese) chronicle Mahavamsa) and then goes on to say, "The forms damiḷa/damila almost certainly provide a connection of dr(a/ā)viḍa" with the indigenous name of the Tamil language, the likely derivation being "*tamiḻ > *damiḷ > damiḷa- / damila- and further, with the intrusive, 'hypercorrect' (or perhaps analogical) -r-, into dr(a/ā)viḍa. The -m-/-v- alternation is a common enough phenomenon in Dravidian phonology".[31]
Bhadriraju Krishnamurti states in his reference book The Dravidian languages:[32]
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 BCE inscriptions cite dameḍa-, damela- denoting Tamil merchants. Early Buddhist and Jaina sources used damiḷa- to refer to a people of 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: 134–138). It appears that damiḷa- was older than draviḍa- which could be its Sanskritization.
Based on what Krishnamurti states (referring to a scholarly paper published in the International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics), the Sanskrit word draviḍa itself appeared 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.).
Classification
The Dravidian languages form a close-knit family. Most scholars agree on four groups:[33]
- South Dravidian (Tamil–Tulu, or South Dravidian I)[34][35]
- Tamil–Kannada
-
-
-
-
-
- Tamil languages, including Tamil
- Malayalam languages, including Malayalam
- Irula
-
- Kodava
-
- Toda
-
- Kota
-
- Kannada languages, including Kannada and Badaga
-
- Tamil–Kannada
There are different proposals regarding the relationship between these groups. Earlier classifications grouped Central and South-Central Dravidian in a single branch.[38] On the other hand, Krishnamurti groups South-Central and South Dravidian together.[39] There are other disagreements, including whether there is a Toda-Kota branch or whether Kota diverged first and later Toda.[40]
Some authors deny that North Dravidian forms a valid subgroup, splitting it into Northeast (Kurukh–Malto) and Northwest (Brahui).[41] Their affiliation has been proposed based primarily on a small number of common phonetic developments, including:
- In some words, *k is retracted or spirantized, shifting to /x/ in Kurukh and Brahui, /q/ in Malto.
- In some words, *c is retracted to /k/.
- Word-initial *v develops to /b/. This development is, however, also found in several other Dravidian languages, including Kannada, Kodagu and Tulu.
McAlpin (2003) notes that no exact conditioning can be established for the first two changes, and proposes that distinct Proto-Dravidian *q and *kʲ should be reconstructed behind these correspondences, and that Brahui, Kurukh-Malto, and the rest of Dravidian may be three coordinate branches, possibly with Brahui being the earliest language to split off. A few morphological parallels between Brahui and Kurukh-Malto are also known, but according to McAlpin they are analyzable as shared archaisms rather than shared innovations.[42]
In addition, Glottolog lists several unclassified Dravidian languages: Kumbaran, Kakkala (both of Tamil-Malayalam) and Khirwar
A computational phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family was undertaken by Kolipakam, et al. (2018).[43] They support the internal coherence of the four Dravidian branches South (or South Dravidian I), South-Central (or South Dravidian II), Central, and North, but is uncertain about the precise relationships of these four branches to each other. The date of Dravidian is estimated to be 4,500 years old.[43]
Distribution
Since 1981, the Census of India has reported only languages with more than 10,000 speakers, including 17 Dravidian languages. In 1981, these accounted for approximately 24% of India's population.[44][45]
In the 2001 census, they included 214 million people, about 21% of India's total population of 1.02 billion.[46] In addition, the largest Dravidian-speaking group outside India, Tamil speakers in Sri Lanka, number around 4.7 million. The total number of speakers of Dravidian languages is around 227 million people, around 13% of the population of the Indian subcontinent.
The largest group of the Dravidian languages is South Dravidian, with almost 150 million speakers. Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam make up around 98% of the speakers, with 75 million, 44 million and 37 million native speakers, respectively.
The next-largest is the South-Central branch, which has 78 million native speakers, the vast majority of whom speak Telugu. The total number of speakers of Telugu, including those whose first language is not Telugu, is around 85 million people. This branch also includes the tribal language Gondi spoken in central India.
The second-smallest branch is the Northern branch, with around 6.3 million speakers. This is the only sub-group to have a language spoken in Pakistan — Brahui.
The smallest branch is the Central branch, which has only around 200,000 speakers. These languages are mostly tribal, and spoken in central India.
Languages recognized as official languages of India appear here in boldface.
| Language | Number of speakers | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Brahui | 2,430,000 | Balochistan (Pakistan), Helmand (Afghanistan), Beluchistan. Kerman (Iran) |
| Kurukh | 2,280,000 | Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar (India) |
| Malto | 234,000 | Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal (India) |
| Kurambhag Paharia | 12,500 | Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha |
| Language | Number of speakers | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Kolami | 122,000 | Maharashtra, Telangana |
| Duruwa | 51,000 | Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh |
| Ollari | 15,000 | Odisha, Andhra Pradesh |
| Naiki | 10,000 | Maharashtra |
| Language | Number of speakers | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Khirwar | 26,000 | Chhattisgarh (Surguja district) |
| Kumbaran | 10,000 | |
| Cholanaikkan | 281 | Kerala (Malappuram district) |
| Kakkala | Kerala |
Proposed relations with other families
The Dravidian family has defied all of the attempts to show a connection with other languages, including Indo-European, Hurrian, Basque, Sumerian, Korean, and Japanese. Comparisons have been made not just with the other language families of the Indian subcontinent (Indo-European, Austroasiatic, Sino-Tibetan, and Nihali), but with all typologically similar language families of the Old World.[18] Nonetheless, although there are no readily detectable genealogical connections, Dravidian shares several areal features with the Indo-Aryan languages, which have been attributed to the influence of a Dravidian substratum on Indo-Aryan.[58]
Dravidian languages display typological similarities with the Uralic language group, and there have been several attempts to establish a genetic relationship in the past.[59] This idea has been popular amongst Dravidian linguists, including Robert Caldwell,[60] Thomas Burrow,[61] Kamil Zvelebil,[62] and Mikhail Andronov,[63] The hypothesis is, however, rejected by most specialists in Uralic languages,[64] and also in recent times by Dravidian linguists such as Bhadriraju Krishnamurti.[65]
In the early 1970s, the linguist David McAlpin produced a detailed proposal of a genetic relationship between Dravidian and the extinct Elamite language of ancient Elam (present-day southwestern Iran).[66] The Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis was supported in the late 1980s by the archaeologist Colin Renfrew and the geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, who suggested that Proto-Dravidian was brought to India by farmers from the Iranian part of the Fertile Crescent.[67][68] (In his 2000 book, Cavalli-Sforza suggested western India, northern India and northern Iran as alternative starting points.[69]) However, linguists have found McAlpin's cognates unconvincing and criticized his proposed phonological rules as ad hoc.[70][71][72] Elamite is generally believed by scholars to be a language isolate, and the theory has had no effect on studies of the language.[73] In 2012, Southworth suggested a "Zagrosian family" of West Asian origin including Elamite, Brahui and Dravidian as its three branches.[74]
Dravidian is one of the primary language families in the Nostratic proposal, which would link most languages in North Africa, Europe and Western Asia into a family with its origins in the Fertile Crescent sometime between the Last Glacial Period and the emergence of Proto-Indo-European 4,000–6,000 BCE. However, the general consensus is that such deep connections are not, or not yet, demonstrable.[75]
Prehistory
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 comparative linguistic research into the Dravidian languages. It is thought that the Dravidian languages were the most widespread indigenous languages in the Indian subcontinent before the advance of the Indo-Aryan languages.[9] Though some scholars have argued that the Dravidian languages may have been brought to India by migrations from the Iranian plateau in the fourth or third millennium BCE[10][11] or even earlier,[12][13] reconstructed proto-Dravidian vocabulary suggests that the family is indigenous to India.[15][14][lower-alpha 2]
Proto-Dravidian and onset of diversification
As a proto-language, the Proto-Dravidian language is not itself attested in the historical record. Its modern conception is based solely on reconstruction. It was suggested in the 1980s that the language was spoken in the 4th millennium BCE, and started disintegrating into various branches around the 3rd millennium BCE.[76] According to Krishnamurti, Proto-Dravidian may have been spoken in the Indus civilization, suggesting a "tentative date of Proto-Dravidian around the early part of the third millennium."[77] Krishnamurti further states that South Dravidian I (including pre-Tamil) and South Dravidian II (including Pre-Telugu) split around the 11th century BCE, with the other major branches splitting off at around the same time.[78] Kolipakam et al. (2018) give a similar estimate of 2,500 BCE for Proto-Dravidian.[79]
Several geneticists have noted a strong correlation between Dravidian and the Ancestral South Indian (ASI) component of South Asian genetic makeup.[80] Narasimhan et al. (2019) argue that the ASI component itself formed in the early 2nd millennium BCE from a mixture of a population associated with the Indus Valley civilization and a population resident in peninsular India.[81] They conclude that one of these two groups may have been the source of proto-Dravidian.[82] An Indus valley origin would be consistent with the location of Brahui and with attempts to interpret the Indus script as Dravidian.[82][83] On the other hand, reconstructed Proto-Dravidian terms for flora and fauna provide support for a peninsular Indian origin.[82][15][84]
Indus Valley Civilisation
The Indus Valley civilisation (3300–1900 BCE), located in the Indus Valley region, is sometimes suggested to have been Dravidian.[85] Already in 1924, after discovering the Indus Valley Civilisation, John Marshall stated that (one of) the language(s) may have been Dravidic.[86] Cultural and linguistic similarities have been cited by researchers Henry Heras, Kamil Zvelebil, Asko Parpola and Iravatham Mahadevan as being strong evidence for a proto-Dravidian origin of the ancient Indus Valley civilisation.[87][88] The discovery in Tamil Nadu of a late Neolithic (early 2nd millennium BCE, i.e. post-dating Harappan decline) stone celt allegedly marked with Indus signs has been considered by some to be significant for the Dravidian identification.[89][90]
Yuri Knorozov surmised that the symbols represent a logosyllabic script and suggested, based on computer analysis, an underlying agglutinative Dravidian language as the most likely candidate for the underlying language.[91] Knorozov's suggestion was preceded by the work of Henry Heras, who suggested several readings of signs based on a proto-Dravidian assumption.[92]
Linguist Asko Parpola writes that the Indus script and Harappan language are "most likely to have belonged to the Dravidian family".[93] Parpola led a Finnish team in investigating the inscriptions using computer analysis. Based on a proto-Dravidian assumption, they proposed readings of many signs, some agreeing with the suggested readings of Heras and Knorozov (such as equating the "fish" sign with the Dravidian word for fish, "min") but disagreeing on several other readings. A comprehensive description of Parpola's work until 1994 is given in his book Deciphering the Indus Script.[94]
Northern Dravidian pockets
Although in modern times speakers of the various Dravidian languages have mainly occupied the southern portion of India, in earlier times they probably were spoken in a larger area. After the Indo-Aryan migrations into north-western India, starting c. 1500 BCE, and the establishment of the Kuru kingdom c. 1100 BCE, a process of Sanskritisation of the masses started, which resulted in a language shift in northern India. Southern India has remained majority Dravidian, but pockets of Dravidian can be found in central India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.
The Kurukh and Malto are pockets of Dravidian languages in central India, spoken by people who may have migrated from south India. They do have myths about external origins.[95] The Kurukh have traditionally claimed to be from the Deccan Peninsula,[96] more specifically Karnataka. The same tradition has existed of the Brahui,[97][98] who call themselves immigrants.[99] Holding this same view of the Brahui are many scholars[100] such as L. H. Horace Perera and M. Ratnasabapathy.[101]
The Brahui population of Pakistan's Balochistan province has been taken by some as the linguistic equivalent of a relict population, perhaps indicating that Dravidian languages were formerly much more widespread and were supplanted by the incoming Indo-Aryan languages.[102][103][104] However, it has been argued that the absence of any Old Iranian (Avestan) loanwords in Brahui suggests that the Brahui migrated to Balochistan from central India less than 1,000 years ago. The main Iranian contributor to Brahui vocabulary, Balochi, is a western Iranian language like Kurdish, and arrived in the area from the west only around 1000 CE.[105] Sound changes shared with Kurukh and Malto also suggest that Brahui was originally spoken near them in central India.[106]
Dravidian influence on Sanskrit
Dravidian languages show extensive lexical (vocabulary) borrowing, but only a few traits of structural (either phonological or grammatical) borrowing from Indo-Aryan, whereas Indo-Aryan shows more structural than lexical borrowings from the Dravidian languages.[107] Many of these features are already present in the oldest known Indo-Aryan language, the language of the Rigveda (c. 1500 BCE), which also includes over a dozen words borrowed from Dravidian.[108]
Vedic Sanskrit has retroflex consonants (ṭ/ḍ, ṇ) with about 88 words in the Rigveda having unconditioned retroflexes.[109][110] Some sample words are Iṭanta, Kaṇva, śakaṭī, kevaṭa, puṇya and maṇḍūka. Since other Indo-European languages, including other Indo-Iranian languages, lack retroflex consonants, their presence in Indo-Aryan is often cited as evidence of substrate influence from close contact of the Vedic speakers with speakers of a foreign language family rich in retroflex consonants.[109][110] The Dravidian family is a serious candidate since it is rich in retroflex phonemes reconstructible back to the Proto-Dravidian stage.[111][112][113]
In addition, a number of grammatical features of Vedic Sanskrit not found in its sister Avestan language appear to have been borrowed from Dravidian languages. These include the gerund, which has the same function as in Dravidian.[114] Some linguists explain this asymmetrical borrowing by arguing that Middle Indo-Aryan languages were built on a Dravidian substratum.[115] These scholars argue that the most plausible explanation for the presence of Dravidian structural features in Indic is language shift, that is, native Dravidian speakers learning and adopting Indic languages due to elite dominance.[116] Although each of the innovative traits in Indic could be accounted for by internal explanations, early Dravidian influence is the only explanation that can account for all of the innovations at once; moreover, it accounts for several of the innovative traits in Indic better than any internal explanation that has been proposed.[117]
Phonology
Dravidian languages are noted for the lack of distinction between aspirated and unaspirated stops. Some Dravidian languages do have native aspirates formed due to the plosive + laryngeal clusters, for e.g. Telugu nalabhai, Kannada emb(h)attu, Adilabad Gondi phōṛd,[118] while many Dravidian languages have accepted large numbers of loanwords from Sanskrit and other Indo-Iranian languages in addition to their already vast vocabulary, in which the orthography shows distinctions in voice and aspiration, the words are pronounced in the Dravidian languages other than Brahui according to different rules of phonology and phonotactics: aspiration of plosives is generally absent, regardless of the spelling of the word. For instance, Tamil does not distinguish between voiced and voiceless stops. In fact, the Tamil alphabet lacks symbols for voiced and aspirated stops. Brahui is an exception among the Dravidian languages in this regard, and on the contrary it possesses the entire inventory of aspirates employed in neighboring Sindhi. While aspirates are particularly concentrated in the Indo-Aryan element of the lexicon, some Brahui words with Dravidian roots have developed aspiration as well.[119]
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. Currently the three-way coronal distinction is only found in Malayalam and the Nilagiri languages; others have merged the alveolar stops with dentals or retroflexes.
Proto-Dravidian
Proto-Dravidian had five short and long vowels: *a, *ā, *i, *ī, *u, *ū, *e, *ē, *o, *ō. There were no diphthongs; ai and au are treated as *ay and *av (or *aw).[120][121][122] The five-vowel system with phonemic length is largely preserved in the descendant subgroups,[123] but there are some notable exceptions. The Nilgiri languages (except Kota but including Kodagu) developing a series of central vowels which formed from vowels near retroflex and alveolar consonants. The short u phoneme (mostly word finally) became ŭ/ụ /ɯ~ɨ~ə/ and also became phonemic in Tulu and Malayalam, mostly caused by loaning words with rounded /u/. Brahui has slightly poorer vowel system, where short e and o merged with other vowels due to the influence of Indo-Aryan languages.
The following consonantal phonemes are reconstructed:[111][124][125]
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasals | *m | *n | (*ṉ)? | *ṇ | *ñ | ||
| Plosives | *p | *t | *ṯ | *ṭ | *c | *k | |
| Semivowel | *w | *y | *H | ||||
| Rhotic | *r | *ẓ[lower-alpha 3] | |||||
| Lateral | *l | *ḷ |
- The *ṯ developed into a trill (with *r being a tap) in South and South Central Dravidian.
- All non Tamil-Malayalam languages (including modern spoken Tamil) developed a voicing distinction for plosives, if loans are included, all of them have a voicing distinction.
Grammar
The most characteristic grammatical features of Dravidian languages are:[62]
- Dravidian languages are agglutinative.
- Word order is subject–object–verb (SOV).
- Most Dravidian languages have a clusivity distinction.
- The major word classes are nouns (substantives, numerals, pronouns), adjectives, verbs, and indeclinables (particles, enclitics, adverbs, interjections, onomatopoetic words, echo words).
- Proto-Dravidian used only suffixes, never prefixes or infixes, in the construction of inflected forms. Hence, the roots of words always occurred at the beginning. Nouns, verbs, and indeclinable words constituted the original word classes.
- There are two numbers and four different gender systems, the ancestral system probably having "male:non-male" in the singular and "person:non-person" in the plural.
- In a sentence, however complex, only one finite verb occurs, normally at the end, preceded if necessary by a number of gerunds.
- Word order follows certain basic rules but is relatively free.
- The main (and probably original) dichotomy in tense is past:non-past. Present tense developed later and independently in each language or subgroup.
- Verbs are intransitive, transitive, and causative; there are also active and passive forms.
- All of the positive verb forms have their corresponding negative counterparts, negative verbs.
Number and gender
The Dravidian languages have two numbers, singular and plural. The singular is unmarked, the plural is expressed by a suffix. The plural suffixes are -(n)k(k)a (cf. Kui kōḍi-ŋga 'cows', Brahui bā-k 'mouths'), *-ḷ (cf. Telugu goḍugu-lu 'umbrellas', Ollari ki-l 'hands') and the combination of these two *-(n)k(k)aḷ (cf. Tamil maraṅ-kaḷ 'trees', Kannada mane-gaḷ 'houses').[126]
The individual Dravidian languages have different gender systems. What they have in common is that the grammatical gender (genus) always corresponds to the natural gender of the word. In addition to individual special developments, there are three main types in which the categories "male" or "non-male" as well as "human" and "non-human" play a central role:[127]
- The South Dravidian languages distinguish between masculine (human, masculine), feminine (human, non-masculine) and neuter (non-human) in the singular, and only between human and non-human in the plural.
- The Central Dravidian and many South Central Dravidian languages distinguish only between masculine and non-masculine in both singular and plural.
- Telugu and the North Dravidian languages distinguish between masculine and non-masculine in the singular, and between human and non-human in the plural.
The three types are illustrated by the forms of the third-person demonstrative pronouns of the three languages:
| m. Sg. | f. Sg. | n. Sg. | m. Pl. | f. Pl. | n. Pl. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type 1: Tamil (South Dravidian)[lower-alpha 4] | avaṉ | avaḷ | atu | avar | avai | |
| Type 2: Kolami (Central Dravidian) | am | ad | avr | adav | ||
| Type 3: Telugu (South Central Dravidian) | vāḍu | adi | vāru | avi | ||
There is no consensus as to which of these three types is the original.[129]
The gender is not explicitly marked for all nouns. Thus in Telugu anna 'elder brother' is masculine and amma 'mother' non-masculine, without this being apparent from the pure form of the word. However, many nouns are formed with certain suffixes that express gender and number. For Proto-Dravidian, the suffixes *-an and *-anṯ could be used for the masculine singular (cf. Tamil mak-aṉ 'son', Telugu tammu-ṇḍu 'younger brother'), *-aḷ and *-i for the singular feminine (cf. Kannada mag-aḷ 'daughter', Malto maq-i 'girl') and *-ar for human plurals (cf. Malayalam iru-var 'two persons', Kurukh āl-ar 'men').[130]
Case
Case is expressed by suffixes and more loosely connected postpositions.[131][132] The number of cases varies between four (Telugu) and eleven (Brahui).
The nominative is always the unmarked base form of the word. The other cases, collectively called oblique, are formed by adding suffixes to a stem that can either be identical to the nominative or formed by certain suffixes (e.g. Tamil maram 'tree', oblique mara-tt-).[133] Several oblique suffixes can be reconstructed for Proto-Dravidian, which are composed of the minimal components *-i- , *-a- , *-n- and *-tt-.[134] In many languages, the oblique is identical to the genitive.[133]
Proto-Dravidian case suffixes can be reconstructed for the three cases accusative, dative and genitive. Other case suffixes only occur in individual branches of Dravidian.[135]
- Accusative: *-ay (Tamil yāṉaiy-ai 'elephant', Malayalam avan-e 'him', Brahui dā shar-e 'this village'); *-Vn (Telugu bhārya-nu 'wife', Gondi kōndat-ūn 'ox', Ollari ḍurka-n 'panther')[136]
- Dative: *-(n)k(k)- (Tamil uṅkaḷ-ukku 'you'; Telugu pani-ki 'for work', Kolami ella-ŋ 'to the house')[137]
- Genitive: -*a/ā (Kannada avar-ā 'to be', Gondi kallē-n-ā 'of the thief', Brahui xarās-t-ā 'of the bull'); *-in (Tamil aracan-iṉ 'of the king', Toda ok-n 'of the elder sister', Ollari sēpal-in 'of the girl')[138]
Pronouns
Personal pronouns occur in the 1st and 2nd person. In the 1st person plural there is an inclusive and exclusive form, i.e. a distinction is made as to whether the person addressed is included. There is also a reflexive pronoun that refers to the subject of the sentence and is constructed in the same way as personal pronouns. The personal and reflexive pronouns reconstructed for Proto-Dravidian are listed in the table below. In addition, there are special developments in some languages: The south and south-central Dravidian languages have transferred the *ñ initial sound of the 1st person plural inclusive to the 1st person singular (cf. Malayalam ñān, but oblique en < *yan). The differences between the forms for the inclusive and exclusive we are partly blurred; Kannada has completely abandoned this distinction. The languages of the Tamil-Kodagu group have formed a new exclusive 'we' by adding the plural suffix (cf. Tamil nām 'we (incl.)', nāṅ-kaḷ 'we (excl.)').[139]
| Nom. | Obl. | Meaning | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Sg. | *yān | *yan | I |
| 1. Pl. excl. | *yām | *yam | we (excl.) |
| 1. Pl. incl. | *ñām | *ñam | we (incl.) |
| 2. Sg. | *nīn | *nin | you |
| 2. Pl | *nīm | *nim | you all |
| Refl. Sg. | *tān | *tan | (he/she/it) himself |
| Refl. Pl. | *tām | *tam | (herself) |
The demonstrative pronouns also serve as personal pronouns of the 3rd person. They consist of an initial vowel expressing the distance and a suffix expressing number and gender. There are three levels of distance: the far distance is formed with the initial vowel *a-, the middle distance with *u- and the near distance with *i-. The same deictic elements also occur in local ('here', 'there') and temporal adverbs ('now', 'then'). The original threefold distinction of the distance (e.g. Kota avn 'he, that one', ūn 'he, this one', ivn 'he, this one') has only survived in a few languages spoken today, the yonder distance u- has mostly become obsolete instead a- and i- are used. Interrogative pronouns are formed analogously to the demonstrative pronouns and are characterized by the initial syllable *ya- (e.g. Kota evn 'which').[140]
Verbal morphology
The Dravidian verb is formed by adding tense, mood and personal suffixes to the root of the word. Thus the Tamil word varukiṟēṉ 'I come' is composed of the verb stem varu-, the present suffix -kiṟ and the suffix of the 1st person singular -ēṉ.
In Proto-Dravidian there are only two tenses, past and not past, while many daughter languages have developed a more complex tense system.
The negation is expressed synthetically by a special negative verb form (cf. Konda kitan 'he made', kiʔetan 'he did not').
The verb stem can be modified by stem-forming suffixes in many Dravidian languages. Thus Malto derives from the stem nud- 'to hide' the reflexive verb stem nudɣr- 'to hide'.
Infinite verb forms depend on either a following verb or a following noun. They serve to form more complex syntactic constructions.
Verbal compounds can be formed in Dravidian, for example the Tamil konṭuvara 'to bring' is composed of an infinite form of the verb koḷḷa 'to hold' and the verb vara 'to come'.
Syntax
Characteristic of the Dravidian languages is a fixed subject–object–verb word order (SOV). Accordingly, the subject comes first in the sentence (it can at most be preceded by circumstantial determinations of time and place) and the predicate always at the end of the sentence. As is characteristic of SOV languages, in the Dravidian languages, attributes always come before their noun, subordinate clauses before main clauses, main verbs before auxiliary verbs, and postpositions are used instead of prepositions. Only in the North Dravidian languages has the rigid SOV word order been relaxed.
A simple sentence consists of a subject and a predicate, which can be either a verb or a noun. There is no copula in Dravidian. The subject is usually in the nominative case, but in many Dravidian languages, in a sentence expressing a feeling, perception or possession, the subject is also in the dative case. In all Dravidian languages except Malayalam, a verbal predicate agrees with a nominative subject. Kui and Kuwi developed a system of congruence between object and verb. In some Dravidian languages (Old Tamil, Gondi) even a nominal predicate takes personal endings. Examples of simple sentences from Tamil:
- avar eṉṉaik kēṭṭār. (he asked me) 'He asked me.' (subject in nominative, verbal predicate)
- avar eṉ appā. (he my father) 'He is my father.' (subject in nominative, nominal predicate)
- avarukku kōpam vantatu. (him anger it-came) 'He became angry.' (subject in dative, verbal predicate)
- avarukku oru makaṉ. (him a son) 'He has a son.' (subject in dative, nominal predicate)
Complex sentences consist of a main clause and one or more subordinate clauses. In general, a sentence can contain only one finite verb. The Dravidian languages have no conjunctions; subordinate clauses are formed just like parataxes by infinite verb forms. These include the infinitive, the verbal participle, which expresses a sequence of actions, and the conditional, which expresses a conditionality. Relative clauses correspond to constructions with the so-called adnominal participles. Examples from Tamil:
- avarai varac col. (tell him to come) 'Tell him to come.' (infinitive)
- kaṭaikku pōyi muṭṭaikaḷ koṇṭuvā. (go-to-the-shop-having brought eggs) 'Go to the shop and bring eggs.' (verb participle)
- avaṉ poy coṉṉāl ammā aṭippāḷ. (he lie if-saying mother will-beat) 'If he lies, mother will beat him.' (Conditional)
- avaṉ coṉṉatu uṇmai. (he telling truth) 'What he says is true.' (adnominal participle)
These constructions are not possible for subordinate clauses with a nominal predicate, since no infinite forms can be formed for a noun. Here one gets by with the so-called quotative verb (usually an infinite form of 'to say'), through which the nominal subordinate clause is embedded in the sentence structure. Example from Tamil:
- nāṉ avaṉ nallavaṉ eṉṟu niṉaikkiṟēṉ. (I think he good saying) 'I think he's a good man.'
Vocabulary
Word roots seem to have been monosyllabic in Proto-Dravidian as a rule. Proto-Dravidian words could be simple, derived, or compound. Iterative compounds could be formed by doubling a word, cf. Tamil avar "he" and avaravar "everyone" or vantu "coming" and vantu vantu "always coming". A special form of reduplicated compounds are the so-called echo words, in which the first syllable of the second word is replaced by ki, cf. Tamil pustakam "book" and pustakam-kistakam "books and the like".
Today's Dravidian languages have, in addition to the inherited Dravidian vocabulary, a large number of words from Sanskrit or later Indo-Aryan languages. In Tamil, they make up a relatively small proportion, not least because of targeted linguistic puristic tendencies in the early 20th century, while in Telugu and Malayalam the number of Indo-Aryan loanwords is large. In Brahui, which was strongly influenced by its neighboring languages due to its distance from the other Dravidian languages, only a tenth of the vocabulary is of Dravidian origin. [16] More recently, like all the languages of India, the Dravidian languages also have words borrowed from English on a large scale; less numerous are the loanwords from Portuguese .
Dravidian words that have found their way into English are "orange" (via Sanskrit nāraṅga, cf. Tamil nāraṅkа̄y < nāram-kа̄y), "catamaran" (Tamil kaṭṭumaram "[boat made of] bound logs"), "mango" (Tamil māṅkāy, Malayalam māṅṅa, via Portuguese manga), "mongoose" (Telugu muṅgisa, Kannada muṅgisi) and "curry" (Tamil kaṟi).
| Word | Fish | I | Under | Come | One |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Proto-Dravidian | *mīn | *yān | *kīẓ ~ kiẓ | *waru ~ wā | *onṯu, *oru, *on |
| Tamil | mīṉ | yāṉ, (nāṉ) | kīẓ | varu, vā- | oṉṟu, oru, ōr |
| Malayalam | mīn | ēṉ, (ñāṉ) | kīẓ, kiẓu | varu, vā- | onnŭ, oru, ōr |
| Irula | (nā(nu)) | kiye | varu | ondu, or- | |
| Kota | mīn | ān | kī, kīṛm | vār-, va- | oḏ,ōr, o |
| Toda | mīn | ōn | kī | pōr-, pa- | wïd, wïr, oš |
| Badaga | mīnu | (nā(nu)) | kīe | bā-, bar | ondu |
| Kannada | mīn | (nānu) | kīẓ, keḷa | ba-, bāru- | ondu, or, ōr |
| Kodagu | mīnï | (nānï) | kï;, kïlï | bār-, ba- | ondï, orï, ōr, onï |
| Tulu | mīnɯ | yānu, yēnu | kīḷɯ | barpini | oñji, or, oru |
| Telugu | mīnu | ēnu, (nēnu) | kri, k(r)inda | vaccu, rā- | oṇḍu |
| Gondi | mīn | anā, (nanna) | vaya | undi, or- | |
| Konda | mīn | (nān(u)) | vā-, ra- | unṟi, or- | |
| Kui | mīnu | ānu, (nānu) | vāva | ro- | |
| Kuwi | mīnu | (nānu) | vā- | ro- | |
| Manda | ān | vā- | ru- | ||
| Pengo | mīn | ān, āneŋ | vā- | ro- | |
| Kolami | ān | var-, vā | |||
| Parji | mīni | ān | kiṛi | ver- | |
| Gadaba | mīn | ān | var- | ||
| Malto | mīnu | ēn | bare | ort-, -ond | |
| Kurukh | ēn | kiyyā | barnā- | ort-, on | |
| Brahui | ī | ki-, kē- | bar-, ba- | asi(ṭ), on- | |
Numerals
The numerals from 1 to 10 in various Dravidian and Indo-Iranian languages (here exemplified by Indo-Aryan language Sanskrit and Iranian language Persian).[141][142]
| Number | South | South-Central | Central | Northern | Proto-Dravidian | Indo-Aryan | Iranian | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tamil | Malayalam | Kodava | Kannada | Tulu | Toda | Beary | Telugu | Gondi | Kolami | Kurukh | Brahui | Sanskrit | Persian | ||
| 1 | oṉṟŭ, oṇṇŭ 6 | onnŭ | ondï | ondu | onji | wïd̠ | onnu | okaṭi 7,
oṇḍu |
undi | okkod 7 | oṇṭa | asiṭ | *onṯu 1 | éka | yek |
| 2 | iraṇṭŭ, reṇḍŭ 6 | raṇḍŭ | daṇḍï | eraḍu | eraḍŭ, iraḍŭ | ēḍ | jend | reṇḍu | raṇḍ | irāṭ | indiŋ | irāṭ | *iraṇṭu 2 | dvi | do |
| 3 | mūṉṟŭ, mūṇŭ 6 | mūnnŭ | mūndï | mūru | mūji | mūd̠ | mūnnu | mū̃ḍu | muṇḍ | mūndiŋ | mūnd | musiṭ | *mūnt̠u | tri | seh |
| 4 | nāl, nālku, nāṉkŭ, nālŭ 6 | nālu | nālï | nālku | nālŭ | nōng | nāl | nālugu | nāluṅg | nāliŋ | nāx | čār (II) | *nāl, *nālnk(k)V, *nānk(k)V | catúr | cahār |
| 5 | aintŭ, añjŭ 6 | añjŭ | añji | aidu | ayinŭ, ainŭ | üɀ | añji | ayidu,
ēnu |
saiyuṅg, hayuṅ | ayd 3 | pancē (II) | panč (II) | *caymtu | pañca | panj |
| 6 | āṟŭ | āṟŭ | ārï | āru | āji | ōr̠ | ār | āṟu | sāruṅg, hāruṅg | ār 3 | soyyē (II) | šaš (II) | *cāṯu | ṣáṣ | śeś |
| 7 | ēḻŭ, yēḷŭ6 | ēḻŭ | ë̄ḷï | ēḷu | ēḍŭ, ēlŭ, ēḷŭ | öw | ēl | ēḍu | yeḍuṅg, ēṛuṅg | ēḍ 3 | sattē (II) | haft (II) | *ēẓ | saptá | haft |
| 8 | eṭṭŭ | eṭṭŭ | ëṭṭï | eṇṭu | enma, eṇma, eḍma | öṭ | ett | enimidi | aṛmur | enumadī 3 | aṭṭhē (II) | hašt (II) | *eṇṭṭu | aṣṭá | haśt |
| 9 | oṉpatŭ 4 5 ombadŭ6 | oṉbadŭ, ombadŭ 5 |
ombay 5 | ombattu 5 | ormba 5 | wïnboθ 5 | olimbō 5 | tommidi | unmāk | tomdī 3 | naiṃyē (II) | nōh (II) | *toḷ, *toṇ | náva | noh |
| 10 | pathŭ | pattŭ | pattï | hattu | pattŭ | pot | patt | padi | pad | padī 3 | dassē (II) | dah (II) | *paHtu | dáśa | dah |
- This is the same as the word for another form of the number one in Tamil and Malayalam, used as the indefinite article ("a") and when the number is an attribute preceding a noun (as in "one person"), as opposed to when it is a noun (as in "How many are there?" "One").
- The stem *īr is still found in compound words, and has taken on a meaning of "double" in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. For example, irupatu (20, literally meaning "double-ten"), iravai (20 in Telugu), "iraṭṭi" ("double") or iruvar ("two people", in Tamil) and "ippattu" (ipp-hattu, double ten", in Kannada).
- The Kolami numbers 5 to 10 are borrowed from Telugu.
- The word toṇṭu was also used to refer to the number nine in ancient Sangam texts but was later completely replaced by the word oṉpatu.
- These forms are derived from "one (less than) ten". Proto-Dravidian *toḷ/*toṇ (which could mean 9 or 9/10) is still used in Tamil and Malayalam as the basis of numbers such as 90 and 900, toṇṇūṟu (9⁄10*100 = 90) as well as the Kannada tombattu (9*10 = 90).
- Because of shared sound changes that have happened over the years in the majority of the Tamil dialects, the numbers 1–5 have different colloquial pronunciations, seen here to the right of their written, formal pronunciations.
- In languages with words for one starts with ok(k)- it was taken from *okk- which originally meant "to be united" and not a numeral.
- Words indicated (II) are borrowings from Indo-Iranian languages (in Brahui's case, from Balochi).
Literature
Four Dravidian languages, viz. Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam, have lengthy literary traditions.[144] Literature in Tulu and Kodava is more recent.[144] Recently old literature in Gondi has been discovered as well.[145]
The earliest known Dravidian inscriptions are 76 Old Tamil inscriptions on cave walls in Madurai and Tirunelveli districts in Tamil Nadu, dating from the 2nd century BCE.[3] These inscriptions are written in a variant of the Brahmi script called Tamil Brahmi.[146] In 2019, the Tamil Nadu Archaeology Department released a report on excavations at Keeladi, near Madurai, Tamil Nadu, including a description of potsherds dated to the 6th century BCE inscribed with personal names in the Tamil-Brahmi script.[147] However, the report lacks the detail of a full archaeological study, and other archaeologists have disputed whether the oldest dates obtained for the site can be assigned to these potsherds.[148] The earliest long text in Old Tamil is the Tolkāppiyam, a work on Tamil grammar and poetics preserved in a 5th-century CE redaction, whose oldest layers could date from the late 2nd century or 1st century BCE.[149]
Kannada's earliest known inscription is the lion balustrade (Simhakatanjana) inscription excavated at the Pranaveshwara temple complex at Talagunda near Shiralakoppa of Shivamogga district, dated to 370 CE which replaced the Halmidi inscription in Hassan district (450 CE).[150] A 9th-century treatise on poetics, the Kavirajamarga, is the first known literary work.[151] The earliest Telugu inscription, from Erragudipadu in Kadapa district, is dated 575. The first literary work is an 11th-century translation of part of the Mahābhārata.[151] The earliest Malayalam text is the Vazhappally copper plate (9th century). The first literary work is Rāmacaritam (12th century).[3]
See also
Notes
- Earlier fragmentary finds have been claimed, e.g. at Keezhadi near Madurai, Tamil Nadu, but have not been conclusively established (see § Literature).
- Renfrew and Bahn conclude that several scenarios are compatible with the data, and that "the linguistic jury is still very much out."[17]
- may also be represented as ḻ or r̤
- Tamil also has different forms for honorific pronouns: avar (human singular) and avarkaḷ (human plural).
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most scholars have taken the 'Dravidian hypothesis' seriously
- Cole, Jennifer (2006). "The Sindhi language" (PDF). In Brown, K. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd Edition. Vol. 11. Elsevier. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 January 2007.
Harappan language...prevailing theory indicates Dravidian origins
- Subramanium 2006; see also A Note on the Muruku Sign of the Indus Script in light of the Mayiladuthurai Stone Axe Discovery Archived 4 September 2006 at the Wayback Machine by I. Mahadevan (2006)
- Subramanian, T.S. (1 May 2006). "Significance of Mayiladuthurai find". The Hindu. Archived from the original on 30 April 2008. Retrieved 27 August 2017.
- Knorozov 1965, p. 117
- Heras 1953, p. 138
- Edwin Bryant (2003). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate. Oxford. p. 183. ISBN 9780195169478.
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Further reading
- Vishnupriya Kolipakam et al. (2018), A Bayesian phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family, Royal Society Open Science. doi:10.1098/rsos.171504
External links
- Dravidian Etymological Dictionary. Burrow and Emeneau's A Dravidian etymological dictionary (2nd ed., 1984) in a searchable online form.