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 )