[INDOLOGY] Kittel's list

[Nagaraj Paturi]

Sorry for going back to a week old post by Mr Suresh Kolichala

> The copula verb man- 'to be' is replaced by ir- 'to be' in the South
Dravidian languages. As you know, ir- 'to be' is not found in
South-Central, Central and North Dravidian languages. (ir- most likely a
local verb for 'to be')

It is true that 'ir-' is not the copula verb in south-central. In Telugu,
the major language of the south-central, the copula verb is 'agu' (<ak) =
to be as/ to become. unD =to be which is found in Malayalam in copula
situations is found in Telugu as an independent 'to be'  verb in
non-equational VP sentences.

>(ir- most likely a local verb for 'to be')

gives me the impression that you consider that the root 'ir-' is not found
in south-central. But the word iravu ( as in chImalu peTTina puTTalu
paamulakiravaina yaTlu- sumatIs'atakamu ) is a nominalization of the verb
root 'ir-' only. The words rEvu , rEvaDu/ rEvaDi etc. form from 'iravu'
(<ir-) through metathesis.

Another point is,is it not a good idea to count the number of
Proto-Dravidian features retained by Tamil and the other Dravidian members
to decide which is the 'most conservative among Dravidian languages' ? ( I
do not think that there was any claim that all the Proto-Dravidian features
are retained by Tamil only and no other Dravidian language retained
Protodravidian features.)

-N
-- 
Nagaraj Paturi

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.

Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies

FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education,

(Pune, Maharashtra, INDIA )


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