[INDOLOGY] Hindi v Sanskrit

[Nagaraj Paturi]

1. > This freedom is often contrasted with the supposedly very rigid
structure of Modern Dravidian.

The rigidity or flexibility of word order or phrase order in Dravidian is
genre-specific rather than time period specific.

'a fair amount of phrase-order freedom, including structures that are
verb-initial, with all other elements extraposed to the right' are found in
modern Dravidian languages too in the literary genres such as plays,
novels, short-stories, poetry including free verse as much abundantly as in
old/classical literary versions of them. The impression of rigidity is
probably based on the rarity of liberty taken with word order or phrase
order in discursive writing in modern journalistic and non-literary prose
forms.

2. Another point of contrast is the passive voice. Sanskrit has abundance
of it. In Dravidian it does not exist in the speakers not influenced by
Sanskrit or English; even among those who are exposed, it does not exist in
the informal contexts such as day to day conversations.

3. One more aspect of contrast is the vs'Eshya-vis'EshaNa agreement
in linga, vibhakti and vachana found in Sanskrit not found in Dravidian.

4. Reconstruction of older/ pre-historic Dravidian syntax is done on the
basis of the points such as many verb forms in Dravidian being periphrastic
indicating their origin in a participle based predicate NP in an NP-NP
structure of pre-historic times; case marker suffixes having a history of
coming from independent words and always getting added to a nominal stem of
genitive case indicating the vibhakti forms of these languages being
shashThee samAsas in prehistoric times and similar such observations about
the possible past forms of the documented Dravidian expressions. .

5. 'k' of kA/kE/kI and kO in Hindi is suspected to be related to the dative
and possessive Dravidian  'kk' /k.

6. Phrase order in an NP-NP has a rigidity to the extent that always the
first NP is the subject and the second NP is the predicate.

 Let us compare

रामः कृष्णात् सुंदरतरः । कृष्णात् सुंदरतरः रामः।

रामः कीदृशः ? रामः कृष्णात् सुंदरतरः ।रामः is the subject. कृष्णात्
सुंदरतरः is the predicate.

कृष्णात् सुंदरतरः कः? कृष्णात् सुंदरतरः रामः।  कृष्णात् सुंदरतरः  is the
subject. रामः is the predicate.

Similar structure is in Dravidian NP-NP too.

- N
--
Prof.Nagaraj Paturi


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