Etymon: paTTaN, pattan, patan

[Bh. Krishnamurti]

Although Dr. Sarma is not a Dravidain linguist, he is talking sense. How can
Tamil be equated with Proto-Dravidian? The kinds of questions that are asked
as well as answered in the list sometimes strike me very naive and not
basically scholarly questions. Caldwell used the term Dravidian for the
whole family of languages and not for Tamil. It is also true that DraaviDa
was originally used to designate Tamil. No body questions the antiquity of
Tamil literature. But it has nothing to do with its preserving the
Proto-Dravidian features. Tamil- Malayalam-Telugu palatalized
Proto-Dravidian *k- before front vowels (with some constraints) but all
other languages have preserved the older *k, e.g. *key: Ta. Ma.cey, Te.
ceeyu; but Ka. gey, etc. Ta. Ma.u in pukai is later than o *pokay. Features
that  Tamil had changed several centuries ago are preserved in some other
languages including some tribal languages. Toda-Malayalam-Konda- Jaffna
Tamil preserve r/R distinction. Modern Tamil has lost it as well as Telugu
and Kannada. The Listserve should not degenerate into an undergraduate class
in comparative linguistics, a field that ssome of the correspondents do not
seem to be familaiar with. Why are you wasting your time? If you are
interested, please let me know (not through through listserv but
individually) I will tell you what to read. Bh. Krishnamurti.






At 16:30 22/11/97 +0000, you wrote:
>At 09:04 AM 11/22/97 -0500, you wrote:
>>In a message dated 97-11-22 00:51:18 EST, Sarma wrote:
>>
>><< I hope in the last line you mean Dravidian rather than Tamilian. As
>>somebody
>> pointed out earlier on this list this appears to be due to the subconscious
>> identification Tamil with Dravidian. >>
>>
>>The 6 conditions are attributed to Dr. Caldwell and the last line is a direct
>>quote from the book of Dr. Ilakkuvanar.
>>In this context, I give below a quotation from A comparative grammar of the
>>Dravidian Languages by Dr. Caldwell as quoted by Prof. Madhhu.S.
>>Vimalanandham in his book in Tamil, History of Tamil Literature:
>>"Tamil however the most highly cultivated Ab-intra of all Dravidian idioms,
>>can dispense with its Sanskrit altogether, if need be and not only stand
>>alone, but flourish withhout its aid." Dr. Caldwell.
>>
>>
>
>I do not think Dr.Caldwell's certificate to Tamil is relevent here. Everyone
>of Dravidian languages has its own protagonists and admirers. What all
>I meant to say was Tamil is one of the languages in the Dravidian group of
>languages. As some one on this list pointed out, perhaps  it has retained
>some of the archaic forms than the other languages of the same group . That
>does not give it the right to claim that it is identical with the
>proto-dravidian out of which all the dravidian languages have evolved.
>
>
>regards,
>sarma.
>
>