Re: Witzel and Sautsutras (was: Mapping the Origins and Expansion of

shivkhokra:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Trond Engen <trond@...> wrote:
>>
>> Brian M. Scott:
>>
>>> At 3:00:03 PM on Thursday, October 25, 2012, shivkhokra wrote:
>>>
>>>> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister
>>>> <gabaroo6958@> wrote:
>>>
>>>> [..]
>>>
>>>>> Among items that I offered, Shiv doesn't tell why
>>>>> retroflexed consonant sets do not show up in IE languages
>>>>> that are not from the subcontinent.
>>>
>>>> For the same reason:
>>>
>>>> a) That British after living in India for many years did
>>>> not pick up retroflex consonants. See the hindi spelling
>>>> of Pune where the n is retroflex and contrast it with how
>>>> british wrote it.
>>>
>>> Not comparable: the British were a superficial layer of
>>> Indian society that maintained continuous close ties with
>>> England.
>>
>> Actually it's a good example, but not the way he thinks. You just
>> have to take it a little longer, to current Indian English. The
>> language of a ruling elite from outside is acquired by speakers of
>> local languages, who bring substrate features into the language.
>
> Are you suggesting Aryan invaders had retroflexes and they passed
> it onto the "native" IndianS?

By this? No, I'm suggesting that the Indo-Aryan language acquired
retroflexes from the language of those ""native" Indians" who shifted to
the prestige language, just like contemporary Indian English has
acquired retroflexes from the language of those ""native" Indians" who
shifted to the prestige language.

>>>> b) That people in south east asia (thailand/burma/cambodia
>>>> etc) who were taught religious texts both in Sanskrit and
>>>> Pali did not pick up retroflex consonants.
>>>
>>> Not comparable: they weren't living amongst large numbers of
>>> native speakers of languages with retroflex consonants.
>>
>> Are there (still) local varieties of Pali that are spoken natively
>> (or from childhood in certain classes) in SE Asia? If so, those will
>> of course be heavily influenced by local phonology.
>
> But does this explain why Thais, Burmese and Cambodians not
> learn retroflexes?

The point isn't retroflexes, it's substrate.

>>>> c) And most importantly the Gypsies who migrated out of
>>>> India lost their retroflex consonants once they got to
>>>> Europe.
>>>
>>> Because they moved into regions occupied by speakers of
>>> languages that did not have retroflex consonants. This is
>>> precisely the same reason that the Indo-Aryans acquired
>>> retroflex consonants.
>>
>> Or some of the reason. For Romany proper, I don't think there's been
>> widespread conversion of speakers in the regions it moved into. But
>> the case is different in many regional Romany-based languages.
>
> What is your theory on why Romanis dropped retroflexes from their
> alphabet?

Phonemic inventory, not alphabet.

Features get lost for no specific external or internal reason, so I
don't know if it needs explaining. But Romany has a long history as a
minority language with multi-lingual speakers, and there's a lot of room
for socio-linguistic speculatiom, so here's one possible story:
Somewhere along the way, let's say in Persia, speakers of Romany were
disparaged by the majority and could be spotted by the substrate
features in their version of the majority language, just like Indic, or
Jamaican, or West-African features can be spotted in the British English
spoken by minorities today. Speakers growing up in an environment bent
on ridding themselves of such features might have carried that over to
their other language.

[On that note: It would be interesting to know if speakers aspiring to
"upper crust" Indian English with its hyper-britishisms carry
non-retroflexion ond non-rhoticity back into their versions of the local
languages.]

>>>> d) Lastly do retroflex stops in Swedish and Norwegian count?
>>>
>>> For what? They're retroflex stops. They have nothing to do
>>> with Rick's question, however.
>>
>> But they do show that retroflexion can develop without substratal
>> influence.
>
> So what is your thesis on the development of retroflex in Sanskrit?

I'm agnostic. They may have developed internally from clusters involving
/r/, /l/ or alveo-palato-sounds like in Scandinavian, or they may have
been a result of how those clusters and phonemes were mapped to the
phonemic inventory by Dravidian (or other Indian) new speakers.

--
Trond Engen