Re: Substrate language which contributed sarSapa to Indo Aryan

From: richardwordingham
Message: 71616
Date: 2013-11-20

In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <shivkhokra@...> wrote:

> The implication here is that any reconstructed proto
> Dravidian etymology which makes a word begin with "ச" will
> have to tell us why Tamil words cannot begin with "ச" but
> other Dravidian language words can.

From my reading of the secondary sources, the simple account is that Tamil dropped initial Proto-Dravidian *c.  I get the impression is that the reconstructed route is c > s > h > zero.  Why this should happen in Tamil and not in all other Dravidian languages is not an easy question to answer.  Different groups of speakers do different things to their common language.

Richard.