From: stlatos
Message: 62073
Date: 2008-12-15
> Yes, I found some time for continuing this discussion at last!The borrowing probably was from a Pashto dialect in which s. > x.
>
> 1) AKKADIAN UDRU-/UT.RU-/UTRU-
> Igor M. Diakonoff advanced an interesting linguistic hypothesis
> about the source of this (probable) loan into Akkadian. According to
> him, the source would be a proto-Dardic (viz. an Indo-Aryan, not an
> Iranian) form of PIIr. *us^tra-:
>
> "There is still another Akkadian gloss
> In Pashto (Afghan), however, we
> encounter u:s.^- [/s.^/ = voiceless retroflex fricative], borrowed
> into several Dardic dialects as u:x- (thus also in the Nuristani
> languages Ashkun, Dameli, Waigali [...]), and even as u:k-.
> goes back [...] to a proto-Dardic form such as *uhtra:-/*us.tra:-"I don't think it was the V that was nasalized. There are
> (I.M. Diakonoff, "Pre-Median Indo-Iranian Tribes in Northern Iran",
> _Bulletin of the Asia Institute -- Bloomsfield Hills_, N.S., Vol. 10
> [1996], pp. 12-13).
> 3) MUNDA AND DRAVIDIAN FORMS
>
> Robert Shafer ("Nahali: A Linguistic Study in Paleoethnography",
> _Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies_ 5 [1941], p. 353) lists the
> following South Asian words inherited or borrowed as loans from Old
> Indo-Aryan us.t.ra- `camel':
>
> Indo-Aryan u:~t-, ut.t.h- etc.
>
> Munda: Korku u:n.t.o-, Korwa u:n.t.-, most Kherwarish dialects
> (Mundari, Santali, etc.) u:~t.-
>
> Dravidian: Kurux un.t.-, Gondi u:n.t.-, Kannada on.t.e-
>
> Therefore, the nasal infix or the nasalization of the initial vowel
> in the above Munda and Dravidian words is an (unexplained) phonetic
> development that is also found in several northwestern Indo-Aryan
> terms for `camel' (including some Dardic ones) derived from Old Indo-
> Aryan us.t.ra-. The latter terms are commonly regarded as the
> sources for the similar Munda and Dravidian forms presenting a nasal
> infix or a nasalization of the initial vowel.