bones and flesh

[Paul Kekai Manansala]

Michael Witzel wrote:
>
> There have been a number of questions put in my direction, but I did not
> have any time during the past month to answer in detail. The many points
> made by Dr Ganesan, I have just answered to him privately (11k) .You can
> ask him or me personally if you are interested in wheat, KarkoTa,  etc etc.
>
> At 12:34 -0800 11/19/99, Paul Kekai Manansala wrote:
>
> >> Prof. Witzel, Substrates in OIA, 1999, p. 14
> >> "Munda originally had no retroflexes".
> >> On the same page, "In short, the people of the (northern)
> >> Indus language must have spoken with retroflexes".
>
> >Last I read, the idea that Munda did not originally have retroflexes
> >is based on the fact that retroflexes are not universal in Munda, with
> >one language given as an exception. This theory does not take
> >linguistic drift into adequate account.
>
> Well, one simply cannot *reconstruct* them for Proto-Munda, with the
> exeption of retroflex D, -- which is a strange dissymetry in the consonant
> system ( t : no d , no T but D...).

That seems difficult to believe, but I'm not one for reconstruction
anyway.

Munda has retroflexion in its infix system which we know did not
come from "Aryan" or modern Dravidian. Of course, it come have come
from another extinct language, but this is doubtful since infixation is
found throughout Austro-Asiatic and even Austric.

Generally speaking, I would agree with SK Chatterji that people
tend to borrow words or languages but retain their own sound systems.
This was the reason the latter gave for retroflexion in "Aryan"
languages (Munda Dravidian people speaking foreign language).

If retroflexion was not native to Munda, then we either have to accept
that modern Munda speakers were originally non-Munda speakers who
borrowed  Munda languages, or that all Munda languages, but one,
borrowed extensive retroflex sounds into their own language. These
sounds would even have been incorporated into native infixes and
vocabulary.


> See Zide in  Current Trends in
> Linguistics 1969 p. 414. -- Who and what is "drifting here"?  One cannot
> use modern data and assume that they are the same as in 1500 BCE,  e.g.
> Hindi/Nepali have retroflex r as in ghoRaa "horse" but Vedic did not  (e.g.
> Late Vedic ghoTaka 'horse').   ---
> (Mod.) description is one thing, reconstruction another.
>
> >Also, the use of initial retroflexes in Munda and "Aryan" languages
> >as opposed to the non-initial retroflex system in the south.
>
> Modern IA and modern Munda. Not in Vedic.  Just a time difference of some
> 3500 years....
> Check out the Latin of 150 BCE and modern Rumanian or French and behold...
> Lat. camera = French chambre  [sha~br ]. No  sh- in Latin...
>

Well,  my point is the North-South division of retroflexion.
If we subscribe to the theory that Dravidian was "pushed" southward
by invading Indo-Aryans, when did they lose (or did northerners gain?)
initial retroflexion?

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala

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