Re: [tied] Re: Gypsies again

Richard Wordingham wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Grzegorz Jagodzinski"
> <grzegorj2000@...> wrote:
>> Richard Wordingham wrote:
>
>>> But _Doma_ has a very un-Tamil initial letter:
>>>
>>> 1) It's a voiced stop - a mark of a foreign word.
>>>
>>> 2) Unlike Indic languages, Tamil does not allow words to start with
>>> retroflex stops.
>>>
>>> Richard.
>>
>> Perhaps it is not Tamil but Dravidian - why not? See Dravidian
> words, ex. on
>>
> http://ehl.santafe.edu/cgi-bin/response.cgi?root=config&morpho=0&basename=/data/drav/dravet&first=281
>> with both voiced stops and cerebrals/retroflexes in initial position.
>
> Maybe the retroflexes are strangely encoded

Did you change viewing parameters into UTF-8? (see at the top of the page)
It should help during using EHL databases. And is Arial Unicode font present
on your system?

>, but I could find just two
> Dravidian roots starting with an underdotted d or t - and that was by
> using LATIN LETTER CAPITAL D plus COMBINING UNDERDOT. In fact, the
> retroflex initials are very rare (no more than 2 instances) for any of
> the proto-levels.

On the page whose address is seen above, there are more than 2 instances for
sure. They are *d.ip- 'hill', *d.ok- 'lizard', *d.ok- 'breastbone', *d.ol-
'lie down', *d.oN- 'thief', *d.op- 'a kind of basket'

> A Munda origin does seem more plausible.
>
> Richard.

And you are probably right in this point, I have only noticed that voiced
retroflex initials are not rare in Dravidian, at least according to EHL
authors.

Sorry if somebody feels that we violate prohibitions of this list here. We
have started from possibilities concerning the etymology of one IE word. And
I believe that both indicating possible sources of borrowing into IE
languages and sharing observations on technical problems with sources are
not off-topic too much.

Grzegorz J.





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