Did Emeneau make plans for a DED3? (Re: Sanskrit and Tamil question

George Hart glhart at BERKELEY.EDU
Tue Oct 14 18:28:03 UTC 2008


Shortly after Emeneau's death, Bill Bright (sadly, since deceased)  
made arrangements to go to Emeneau's house to look over his papers and  
books.  I went with him and brought a high-speed scanning device to  
make copies of any important papers we might find.  We did find a  
treasure-trove of books, which were sent to Berkeley's Linguistics and  
South Asian library, depending on content -- Bill recorded every  
book.  To our surprise, we did not find any papers at all, and the  
scanner went unused.  Emeneau never in my hearing mentioned a third  
edition of DED.  It was quite moving to see the humble surroundings in  
which the great scholar had lived since he came to Berkeley in the  
30's -- his house, in poor repair, was quite small.  He lived there  
alone until his death at the age of 101.  His mind was clear until the  
end, and he apparently died in his sleep.  One can only marvel at the  
quantity and quality of what he produced without ever once having used  
a computer.  George Hart

On Oct 14, 2008, at 2:16 AM, Jean-Luc Chevillard wrote:

> As a side information concerning this thread,
> it may be useful to re-read the reviews which appeared in Language
> when the DED, the DEDS and the DEDR were released.
>
> The one by Bh. Krishnamurti:
>
> Reviewed work(s):
> A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary by T. Burrow ; M. B. Emeneau
> Source: Language, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1963), pp. 556-564
>
> Stable URL: <http://www.jstor.org/stable/411145>
>
> The one by William Bright:
>
> Reviewed work(s):
> A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary: Supplement by T. Burrow ; M. B.  
> Emeneau
> Source: Language, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Sep., 1969), pp. 680-683
>
> Stable URL: <http://www.jstor.org/stable/411453>
>
> The one by Sanford B. Steever
>
> Reviewed work(s):
> Toda Grammar and Texts by Murray B. Emeneau
> A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary by T. Burrow ; M. B. Emeneau
> Source: Language, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Jun., 1985), pp. 477-480
>
> Stable URL: <http://www.jstor.org/stable/414159>
>
> Also pertinent for the thread is the review which Emeneau wrote for
>
> Aryan and Non-Aryan in India by Madhav M. Deshpande ; Peter Edwin Hook
> Source: Language, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Jun., 1981), pp. 468-470
>
> Stable URL: <http://www.jstor.org/stable/413705>
>
> Did Emeneau, at the time of his death, have plans for a DED3 (or a  
> DEDR2)?
>
> What happened to his unpublished manuscripts?
>
> Thanks for any information on the topic
>
> -- Jean-Luc Chevillard (Paris)
>
>
> Michael Witzel a écrit :
>> [...]
>> What I  would like to see (no time myself now) is that someone  
>> would go through Burrow-Emeneau's DEDR and eliminate all late loans  
>> words, from Skt, Prakrit, even Munda.
>> [....]
>> That should be easier now that we have Bh. Krishnamurti's  
>> comparative treatment which allows to pinpoint words that do not  
>> have typical Drav. sounds or word formation.
>>
>> No one has paid any attention to it (as they assume Drav. has been  
>> there from times immemorial,so also Krishnamurti). Except for  
>> Zvelebil who lists some 5  words in the Nilgiris that do not fit  
>> and might be a substrate.
>>
>> But, South India has a long history just like any other region in  
>> Eur-Asia:
>> recent genetic results point to an ancient population, of some  
>> 40,000 y.a. that includes the Drav. speaking Kurumba (Nilgiri), the  
>> IA speaking Rajbamshis on the Nepal/Bengal border .. and the  
>> Andamanese (male Y chromosome haplogroup D), also found in many  
>> Tibetans... and Japanese/Ainu, a remnant of the first Out of Africa  
>> migration.
>>
>> Plus, remember FBJ Kuiper's 1962 list of a few words in Ainu that  
>> match Nahali? And, the isolated language of the Vedda in nearby Sri  
>> Lanka. And, the isolate and quiet aberrant Kusunda in C. Nepal, now  
>> linked with Andamanese and New Guinea by some.
>>
>> So we can several expect old strata in India, and some of them  
>> should show up in Dravidian.
>> Any takers?
>>
>> Best,
>> Michael
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Oct 12, 2008, at 7:58 AM, Dean Michael Anderson wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks for bringing all this up Michael.
>>>
>>> It looks like the few years may allow me to expand my Indological  
>>> and linguistic studies to include Tamil. Can you point me to some  
>>> references to the issues  you mentioned that still need to be  
>>> addressed so I can keep them in mind as I study?
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Dean Anderson
>>>
>>>
>>> --- On Sat, 10/11/08, Michael Witzel <witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU> wrote:
>>> From: Michael Witzel <witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU>
>>> Subject: Re: Sanskrit and Tamil question
>>> To: INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk
>>> Date: Saturday, October 11, 2008, 5:05 PM
>>>
>>> The article by Vaclav Blazek has already been published...
>>
>> Michael Witzel
>> witzel at fas.harvard.edu
>> <www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm>
>>
>> Dept. of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University
>> 1 Bow Street,
>> Cambridge MA 02138, USA
>>
>> phone: 1- 617 - 495 3295 (voice & messages), 496 8570, fax 617 -  
>> 496 8571;
>> my direct line:  617- 496 2990
>>





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