But the Munda layer is thicker, and the Nahali verb system is reportedly Munda-like. The unidentified substrate is said to account for about 25% of the vocabulary. Perhaps the fairest description of Nahali would be this: an old creole language that has been decreolised in favour of its Indo-Aryan component.
Piotr
From: "Miguel Carrasquer" <
mcv@...>
To: <
cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2003 9:13 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: "Will the 'real' linguist please stand up?"
On Fri, 21 Feb 2003 10:29:39 -0000, "Piotr Gasiorowski
<
piotr.gasiorowski@...>" <
piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:
>> If three non-IE languages [assuming Nahali also to be one such --
>> even though Piotr considers this to be an Indo-Aryan language? --,
>> apart from Burushaski and Language 'x']
>
>I've discussed that before. Nahali is an IA language with a very thick
>layer of non-IA loans, many of which come from a language apparently
>unrelated to anything we know.
Another layer is Dravidian. Judging by the numerals, the Dravidian
layer is older than the Indo-Aryan one:
1 biDum
2 irar
3 moTho
4 na:lo
5 pãco
6 cha:h
7 sato
8 aTho
9 nav
10 das
The numbers 5-10 are clearly of IA origin. The numbers 1-5 are
Dravidian:
biDum cf. Toda wïD, Kota vodde, Irula vondu
irar cf. Toda e:D, Brahui ira:, Kolami i:ral, Kannada eraDu
moTho cf. Toda mu:D, Telugu mu:Du
na:lo cf. Toda no:N, Koya na:lu, Tulu na:l, Malayalam na:lu