Re: Substrate language which contributed sarSapa to Indo Ar

Dear Francesco,
Thanks for uploading the file! Southworth makes a claim (besides others):
"The suffix -vali/-vli (as seen e.g. in na-vali, bori-vli), has long been recognized as probably derived from Dravidian (see pallI in 3.22A(4), also CDIAL 7972)."

And then Southworth asserts:
"...... -vali and variants are found through western India (Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan) to Panjab, and into the upper Ganga Valley (Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh). This map does not show cases in Sindh and Pakistani Panjab (B above). These data show a few cases (emphasis mine) in central India, but none in the eastern states except for Orissa, which borders on Andhra Pradesh and has been an area of contact with Dravidian languages for many centuries."

Let us test this assertion of Southworth with data from all states of India. (Data obtained from Govt of India website : http://censusindia.gov.in)

Data shows Arunachal has 16 villages with -vali and its variants while Bihar has 54 villages, Bengal has 23 villages, Assam has 50 villages , MP has 502 villages (not a few cases as Southworth asserts!), Jharkand has 181 villages with these suffixes!

So you see Southworth's assertion does not hold when we look at all the data and not just a subset.

Consequently his claims that somehow -vali and its variants signify any probable Dravidian influence cannot hold. Hence the thesis that Gujarat place names are Dravidian also does not hold. What happens to mustard debate now?

Regards,

Shivraj

---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <frabrig@...> wrote:

Shivraj wroite:

>  I am very surprised to hear that Gujarat has Dravidian place names. Can you please point them out?

Please read (I repeat: _read_) pp. 314-317 of F.C. Southworth's _Linguistic Archaeology of South Asia_. I have uploaded a pdf copy of this work in the group's Files section for list members to download it, but will remove it in a few days due to copyright restrictions.

Thanks and best regards,
Francesco
.

---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <cybalist@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Dear Richard,
    The issue here is that our dear south Indian friends do not understand the "time-depth" of dravidian words and what do their ancient grammars say about word formation.

    Tolkappiyam states that no words can start with palatal "ca" while Nannul many hundred years later has no such rule. All Dravidian words starting with "ca" are loan words.

     I am very surprised to hear that Gujarat has Dravidian place names. Can you please point them out? I am sure you know that Kanya Kumari (place), Andhra (place), Madurai (place), Pandya (dynasty) even the word Tamil etc. are all Sanskrit words.

Best,
Shivraj

---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <cybalist@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Shuivraj wrote:

> The initial claim made by jyothibabu that mustard or sarSapa is a loan from Dravidian to Sanskrit is not possible because of multiple reasons:

> a) As I have demonstrated that Tamil looses /s/ from the words it borrows from Sanskrit. If you look at the Telugu form of mustard: "AvAlu", you will observe similar elision of the sanskrit /s/. On the other hand Sanskrit loan for mustard into Kannada "sasuve" and Tulu "sasive" is closer to the parent form.

If you look at the original post, http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/cybalist/conversations/topics/71461 , you'll see 'Initial c> s > zero happened in some of the Dravidian languages (eg. Tamil/Malayalam) (Krishnamurti, 2003)'.

Note the word 'some'.

> b) Top producers are: Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Assam, Bihar and Panjab.

> All these states are non dravidian states.

But Gujarat hasn't always been non-Dravidian! Some of the coastal place names in Gujarat are reported to be Dravidian!

The biggest difficulty I see with the proposed etymology is 'Rule 14 of Krishnamurti (2003) (Palatalization of velars) k > c occurs under different environments in different Dravidian languages. However such change is rare when ‘k’ is before vowel ‘a’ and is more difficult before long vowel ‘A’.' To me that says the closest we can get to the Sanskrit is *karSapa.

Richard.