Comp. ling.: Tamil Prakrit???

[Michael Witzel]

A somewhat belated answer to the "Indian Linguistic Area" question, and
unfortunately not an April 1 message:

Dr. Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan:
>The views of ..@@##%%..  praising Tamil by calling it a Prakrit
>will be dismissed with outright contempt by even devout Tamilphile Hindu
>Tamils.

Dr. Palaniappan is of course right in denouncing the very idea of a "Tamil
Prakrit". As any beginner should know, Prakrit  always refers to  an
INDO-ARYAN LANGUAGE, Middle Indo-Aryan, to be precise. A Dravidian
"Prakrt", when used for Archaic Tamil, is imaginary and confusing, just as
a 'Dravidian Proto-Hindi', -Marathi or a 'Mundic Proto-Bengali' would be.

Dr. Kalyanaraman:
>Prof. Satya Swarup Misra endorses Prof. Swaminatha Aiyer's analyses
>of common features betweeen Aryan and Dravidian..."
>...from a linguistic point of view also, Dravidian is more
>comparable to Indo-Aryan than to any other language family in the world...

Unfortunately, Prof. SS Mira's recent book  (The Aryan Problem)  is based
on a large number of misunderstandings and outright mistakes, esp.  with
regard to the non_Indo-European linguistic evidence;  second, its IE
discussion he reverts, strangely for an IE linguist, to the state of the
art of the early 19th century.

He has already been criticised by HH Hock in HOS- Opera Minora 3, 1999.
Misra's earlier book, "New light on IE Comparative Grammar",  Varanasi 1975
(a decades-old "favorite" of mine, which I have simply neglected so far),
is pre-20th cent. as well:  it explicitly does not allow IE laryngeals in
spite of the written Hittite evidence!  However, it is not quoted by the
'usual suspects' as it is not fashionable: it still comes from Misra's is
pre-Out-of-India period.  (More on SS Misra separately).

The issue at hand is, of course,  whether there ever was such a thing like
a common S.Asian or Indian "Prakrit" or common Proto-language.  Well, in
spite of what Drs. Kalyanaraman, S. Kak, or SS. Misra might think and
print, there was *not*. They simply (or handily) confuse the relatively new
concept of a South Asian linguistic area (Sprachbund) with the 'genetic'
relationship of the languages involved.


The idea of a Sprachbund was developed early in the last century when
linguists where surprised that several disparate languages in the Balkans
shared many features. These include Rumanian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, (part
of) Serbo-Croatian, Greek and Albanian.
Now, these are Indo-European languages and thus have the same starting
point. But they come from 4 quite different sub-families:  Rumanian from
the Western IE  Vulgar Latin, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Serbo(-Croatian)
from the Eastern IE Southern Slavic, Greek from the Western IE Old Greek,
and finally Albanian from the vague Illyrian/Dalmatian subfamily. As such,
they are much more different from each other than Iranian and Indo-Aryan.

These languages just have *stayed together* for a long time, and have had
intermingled settlements (Albanian near Athens, Rumanian-type Romance
speech in Bulgaria/Macedonia, etc., etc.);  for 1500-2000 years.
Consequently, bilingual speakers have influenced each other a lot,
especially in syntax and by mutual  loan words.  Yet, there is no "new
Balkan language" or "Balkan language family" in sight. The basic vocabulary
of these 6 languages still is very different and most of the "grammar"
(forms), too.

The same applies to  S. Asia (pioneered by Emeneau, Kuiper in the Fifties).
But the starting point is *unlike* that of the Balkans:  S. Asia has at
least 3 well known (actually 5++) *different*  language families: IE,
Drav., Munda, etc. which have NOTHING in common. The case is similar to
Europe, with Uralic (Finnish, Esthonian, Hungarian, etc.), Basque, Altaic
(mod. Turkish), and the rest (= IE).  --  For details on
sprachbund/linguistic area/convergence area, see again, HH Hock, Principles
of Historical Linguistics, Berlin/NY  : Mouton de Gruyter  1986, pp.
491-512; esp.  for South Asia, p. 498-504, of course, *without*  any
Dravidian or South Asian "Prakrit".

Just test it yourself: you cannot start speaking Marathi or Oriya and think
that a speaker ofg   Kannada or Telugu will pick it up  -- just like that.
Just see how few if any basic words (I, you, hand, eye, water...) will be
understood.  The proponents of a 'common' South Asian Proto-language /
'Prakrt' and of a "new, emerging  S. Asian language family" confuse the
outcome of a long stay together  and  original, "genetic descent". Bad
linguistics.

In sum, whatever politicians and some (non-)linguists say, Dravidian
remains a separate language family, just as Munda (Austro-Asiatic) and
Indo-Aryan (Indo-European), ---  or as Uralic, Altaic, Basque and
Indo-European in Europe.
(Nostratic, or Greenberg's hot-of-the-press Eur-Asiatic, are another
matter, but that does not make Drav. and IE meso-/neolithic neighbors
INSIDE India either.)

Special pleading, as always, in the case of the Out-of-India theorists,
Hindutvavaadins, and similar- or  like-minded people...
==========
Michael Witzel
Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University
2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138

ph. 617-496 2990 (also messages)
home page:     www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm

Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies:         www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs
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