Retroflexion in IA

[Jacob Baltuch]

Vidhyanath Rao:

>I don't know who said that retroflexes are remarkably stable in
>Dravidian languages.

I was only wondering and I most certainly never meant that individual
retroflex phonemes were stable but that the use of that *feature* was!

It is probably better to say that "the use of retroflexion" appears
to have been extremely stable. I thought overal what I meant was
clear (I don't have my post anymore but didn't I say something like
"that's 5000 years of *retroflexion*"?) but apparently I was wrong.
Sorry for the sloppy wording.

In the same sense you might say that say a preference for CV and CVC
syllables (also CVCC in pausa) or the triconsonant root structure
have been remarkably stable features of Semitic languages. That of
course would not imply that individual syllables or roots didn't undergo
change!!