[INDOLOGY] Second-syllable rhyme in Dravidian

[Kevin M. Ryan]

It's true, echo reduplication (ER) is found widely not only in South 
Asia but across the world (cf. e.g. Turkish tabak "dish", tabak-mabak 
"dishes and such").

My point in bringing it up in the context of second-syllable rhyme (SSR) 
was just that ER (in its specific form reconstructible to Proto-South 
Dravidian) and SSR (as amply attested in the oldest surviving Dravidian 
literature) work exactly alike phonologically in that they decouple 
quantity correspondence (which is required of the initial vowel) from 
quality correspondence (which is not required of the initial vowel), a 
property not shared by most ER systems of farther north and elsewhere in 
the world. I see this specific parallelism in phonology as adding some 
support to a Dravidian origin of SSR, though like I said, it's only 
suggestive.

The examples of ER from Pahari and Panjabi mentioned in this thread 
(cited from Annie Montaut's paper) seem to lack this phonological 
peculiarity: In those cases (as in Turkish, etc.), it appears that the 
initial vowels correspond completely, i.e., both in quantity and 
quality. I wouldn't be surprised if certain other northern South Asian 
languages have come to employ a more Dravidian-like version of ER, given 
areal convergence, but even if that were the case, it wouldn't speak 
against a Dravidian origin of the pattern unless it can be traced back 
at least as far in IA as it can in Dravidian, which seems unlikely.

Kevin Ryan