From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
Message: 9705
Date: 2001-09-23
>--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:Based on what preceeds, surely you mean: "retroflexion as
>
>> Retroflexion is of course characteristic of Dravidian,
>
>I am not familiar with other languages of interest, but there is a
>major difference between Sans and Drav in retroflexion: In Sans,
>the most common retroflex is the retroflex sibilant (from ruki s),
>while Drav, as usually reconstructed, had no sibilants, retroflex
>or otherwise. Retroflex t are much rarer especially when not
>triggered by .s. [Interestingly enough, MIA merges .s, "s (palatal
>sibilant from PIE k') and dental s, while .t series becomes much
>more common, though much of it is due to .s.t > .t.t etc.]
>
>Retroflex sibilant is much more common than many Indologists
>realize(d). [Pre 70 writings implicitely assume that it is limited to
>South Asia. Masica, writing in mid 70's admitted its occurance in
>China, but did not mention any other.] However, T. A. Hall, in
>Lingua 102(1997) 203--221, argues that in (almost) all languages with
>two shibilants, one is apical the other laminal. In particular, he
>gives quite a list of languages with an apical shibilant.
>
>To sum up, retroflexion as "characterizing" Dravidian is a
>questionable claim.