--- In cybalist@..., "Ash" <equinus100@...> wrote:
> retroflexes. Does Dr Kalyanaraman know a good on-line account?
Here is an URL:
http://www.hindunet.org/saraswati/mleccha/hurrian01.htm
MB Emeneau: "...Most of the languages of India, of no matter which
major family, have a set of retroflex, cerebral, or domal consonants
in contrast with dentals. The retroflexes include stops and nasal
certainly, also in some languages sibilants, lateral, tremulant, and
even others. Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Munda and even the far northern
Burushaski, form a practically solid bloc characterized by this
phonological feature... Even our earliest Sanskrit records already
show phonemes of this class, which are, on the whole, unknown
elsewhere in the Indo-European field, and which are certainly not
Proto-Indo-European. In Sanskrit many of the occurrences of
retroflexes are conditioned; others are explained historically as
reflexes of certain Indo-European consonants and consonant clusters.
But, in fact, in Dravidian it is a matter of the utmost certainty
that retroflexes in contrast with dentals are Proto-Dravidian in
origin, not the result of conditioning circumstances..."
Another:
http://www.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ch34.htm
"As for the alleged Dravidian substratum influence on Indo-Aryan
phonetics, viz. the retroflex or cerebral consonants in Indo-Aryan
(as well as in Dravidian), there has always been a school which
rejects the hypothesis of a Dravidian origin. According to Eric
Hamp, the phonetic conditions favouring the differentiation
dental/retroflex "can be traced in the Indo-European patrimony of
Sanskrit".31 Though Hamp is not yet prepared to discard a Dravidian
influence in cerebralization altogether, he does note certain facts
which plead against a Dravidian origin, e.g. the absence of
retroflexes in initial position. The debate is still open, but the
case for an indigenous IE origin is getting stronger. Also, a
Dravidian origin of the retroflexes would not prove the Aryan
invasion, merely that the interaction of Dravidian and Indo-Aryan
happened later than the latter's separation from its IE sister
branches."