--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard.wordingham@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@>
> wrote:
>
> >
> > What are the boundries of retroflexed consonants in and around
> > the Indian Subcontinent? My understanding is that Pashto picked
> > them up. Wiki says Baluchi did. Any languages north of the
> > Himalayas?
>
> Tibetan seems to have mostly lacked them, though they seem to have
> made an appearance *after* the adoption of writing. Tibetan
> reverses letters to represent Indic retroflexes, just as it
> reverses the vowel <i> to represent Sanskrit syllabic laterals.
> Austroasiatic is reconstructed without retroflexes, so it is by no
> means certain that they are ancient for Munda.
>
> Dravidian is of course quite different to the Indic dental-
> retroflex contrast. It has a dental-alveolar-retroflex contrast,
> and it has been suggested that this contributed to the *loss* of
> some dental-retroflex contrasts in Prakrits.
>
> Going farther afield, retroflexes are reconstructed for Tai-Kadai,
> though I don't know the details.
See again Witzel:
http://azargoshnasp.net/history/Aryan/EJVS-7-3.pdf (pp. 58-59)
<< While the feature of retroflexion (t., t.h, d., d.h, s., n.) is sporadically found also in some other parts of the world (Hock 1986), such as in Scandinavia or Australia (innovative in both cases), it is typical for S. Asia when compared to its neighboring regions, that is Iran, West/Central Asia, the Himalayas, S.E. Asia [Note 136: The map in Parpola 1994 includes Tibetan, but this development is late, and typical for the Lhasa dialect. However, Khotanese Saka, just north of the Pamirs, has retroflexes]. In the autochthonous scenarios discussed above, the hypothetical emigrants from India would have lost the S. Asian "bending back of their tongues" as soon as they crossed the Khyber or Bolan Passes: not even Old Iranian (East Iran. Avestan) has these sounds [Note 137: This has indeed happened to the Gypsies: in Turkey, N. Africa, Europe]. But, conversely, the Baluchi, who originally were a W. Iranian tribe, have acquired retroflexion -- just in _some_ of their dialects -- only _after_ their arrival on the borders on the subcontinent, early in the second millennium CE (Hoffmann 1941, cf. Hock 1996, Hamp 1996). The same happened to other late, incoming groups such as Parachi, Ormuri (from W. Iran) that are found in E. Afghanistan, and also to some local Iranian Pamir languages such as Wakhi. Clearly, retroflexion affects those _moving into_ the E. Iranian borderland/Indus plain. Importantly, the most widespread appearance of retroflexes is among the cluster of Hindukush/Pamir languages, that is the languages surrounding these mountains in the east (Nuristani/Kafiri, Burushaski, Dardic and the rest of these northernmost IA languages) as well as in the north (some of the Iranian Pamir languages: Wakhi, Yigdha, Sanglechi, Ishkashmi, Khotanese Saka), as detailed by Tikkanen (in Parpola 1994: 166). Retroflexes _may_ also have belonged to a _part_ of the Central Asian/ Afghanistan substrate of the RV (Witzel 1999a,b). Retroflexion clearly is a northwestern regional feature that still is strongest and most varied in this area. Had retroflexion indeed been present in the pre-Iranian or the Proto-Iranian coeval with the (R.g)Vedic period, its effects should be visible in Old Iranian, at least in Avestan which was spoken in East Iran, that means in part on the territory of modern Pashto (which has retroflexes indeed). [â¦] Retroflexion in Vedic must have been a regional feature, acquired, just as it was by the Pashtos and the more recently arrived the W. Iranian Baluchis, at the time of immigration. In sum, retroflexion affects all those moving into the E. Iranian borderland, the Indus plain and the subcontinent. but this does not work vice versa: those who move out of India, sooner or later, loose it. >>
Regards,
Francesco