--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> 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.