Re: Witzel and Sautsutras (was: Mapping the Origins and Expansion of

Brian M. Scott:

> At 3:00:03 PM on Thursday, October 25, 2012, shivkhokra wrote:
>
>> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister
>> <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:
>
>> [..]
>
>>> Among items that I offered, Shiv doesn't tell why
>>> retroflexed consonant sets do not show up in IE languages
>>> that are not from the subcontinent.
>
>> For the same reason:
>
>> a) That British after living in India for many years did
>> not pick up retroflex consonants. See the hindi spelling
>> of Pune where the n is retroflex and contrast it with how
>> british wrote it.
>
> Not comparable: the British were a superficial layer of
> Indian society that maintained continuous close ties with
> England.

Actually it's a good example, but not the way he thinks. You just have
to take it a little longer, to current Indian English. The language of a
ruling elite from outside is acquired by speakers of local languages,
who bring substrate features into the language.

>> b) That people in south east asia (thailand/burma/cambodia
>> etc) who were taught religious texts both in Sanskrit and
>> Pali did not pick up retroflex consonants.
>
> Not comparable: they weren't living amongst large numbers of
> native speakers of languages with retroflex consonants.

Are there (still) local varieties of Pali that are spoken natively (or
from childhood in certain classes) in SE Asia? If so, those will of
course be heavily influenced by local phonology.

>> c) And most importantly the Gypsies who migrated out of
>> India lost their retroflex consonants once they got to
>> Europe.
>
> Because they moved into regions occupied by speakers of
> languages that did not have retroflex consonants. This is
> precisely the same reason that the Indo-Aryans acquired
> retroflex consonants.

Or some of the reason. For Romany proper, I don't think there's been
widespread conversion of speakers in the regions it moved into. But the
case is different in many regional Romany-based languages.

>> d) Lastly do retroflex stops in Swedish and Norwegian
>> count?
>
> For what? They're retroflex stops. They have nothing to do
> with Rick's question, however.

But they do show that retroflexion can develop without substratal influence.

Wasn't there a serious suggestion a few years ago that the Indic
retroflexes could be an internal development, maybe acquired north of
the subcontinent, and the much stronger retroflexion in Dravidian either
independent or borrowed-and-developed?

--
Trond Engen