Kusunda et al.

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

"Bh.Krishnamurti" <bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN> wrote:

>>Phonological environments?
>
>The phonological environments of the sound changes involving PD *k and *c in
>Kur.-Mlt.-Brah. are atypical and they are retained as such in all the three
>lgs. Sharing of atypical phonological environments in independent
>developments is unexpected [Ruhlen below is wrong]. Such environments
>remaining the same after 2000 years is also rare. What is most crucial is
>*v- to b- which was an IA sound change of Eastern and Central lgs. By their
>location all three ND lgs got influenced by this areal sound change. This is
>one of the arguments that Brahui speakers moved to N-W from east India.
>Because, the IA lgs that surround it now, Punjabi, Sindhi and Lahanda
>retained OIA *v. Brahui has many words with b- that it borrowed from Persian
>and Arabic. But where does it get the change of Drav. *w- becoming b-? It
>shares this with Kur.-Mlt.

Maybe it's because I'm Spanish, but I don't think w > v > b is
unexpected at all: it's rather commonplace.  The changes k > x
(except before i) and c > k (before u) are natural enough (the front
vowel prevents spirantization (<backing?), the back vowel causes
backing [was PDr. *c a palatal stop?]), but it is true that I have
never seen that particular combination of sound changes under those
particular conditions before.  We can see them, but certainly not not
w > b, as rather strong evidence of a Northern Dravidian group.  But
I still don't understand how that proves the direction or the date of
movement.

If I understand the argument about the phonological enviroment
properly, I take it that neither Proto-North-Dravidian *i(:) nor
*u(:) have changed since the two sound laws took place (although I
see that Zvelebil in the EB claims that: "Compared to the
reconstructed system of Proto-Dravidian phonemes (distinctive
sounds), the most striking developments in vowels are the gradual
elimination of the contrast between e and e: (long e) and o and o:
(long o) in Brahui, as a result of the influence of Indo-Aryan
languages or Iranian or both; the raising of Proto-Dravidian *e and
*o to i and u and the lowering of these protolanguage sounds in
Brahui").  But even if the Brahui vowels had not changed, such a
thing would not be amazing.  The pattern /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/ can be
remarkably stable: we know that Basque (except for the Souletin
dialect) has not changed its vowel system one bit in at least 2000
years.

>>>From hat? From the absence of Indo-Aryan loans? From that Brahui
>>>is more closely connected to N. Drav.?
>
>Who said there are no IA lws in Brahui? Wrong!--Bh.K.

Not me.

>To the best of my knowledge no body has seriously examined the closeness
>between Kur-Mlt and Brahui. Maybe Elfenbeim did, but I have not read his
>articles.  I have hit on some linguistic evidence which points to their
>being together until about a millennium ago. The change of *v- to b- is a
>Middle Indic change. I do not know the date but it would be around
>800-1000CE. [Kannada in the SD also has PD *w- to b- which is dated to the
>7th century. But it was an independent development unrelated to IA change.

Exactly...

>Marathi and Konkani, Kannada's neighbours do not share the change of v to b.
>This evidence does not help in saying that Brah also did the same thing!].

Why not?  If it's independent in Kannada (or Spanish), so it can be
in Brahui.

>Brah has some exclusive cognates with Kur-Mlt. be:/be:k 'salt', marg 'horn';
>The future morph -o: and the past -k is shared by all the three, and no
>others.

That's additional evidence for North Dravidian.  It doesn't tell us
where and when such an entity existed.  Andronov (I think) derived
his dates (6000 ~ 5000 years) for the split between Brahui and
(North-)Dravidian from glottochronology, which we all agree is
suspect.  But is the divergence between Brahui and Kur-Mlt really
consistent with a separation of a mere 1000 years ("800-1100 CE")?
Language families at such an extremely shallow time depth (e.g.
Romance [c. 2000 y.] or Tamil-Malayalam [< 1500 y.?]) are not usually
controversial.


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam