Re: Substrate language which contributed sarSapa to Indo Aryan

Shivraj "Khokhla" wrote:

> > The implication here is that any reconstructed proto

> >  Dravidian etymology which makes a word begin with "ச" will
> > have to tell us why Tamil words cannot begin with "ச" but
> > other Dravidian language words can.

Richard Wordingham replied:

> From my reading of the secondary sources, the simple account is that Tamil dropped initial Proto-

> Dravidian *c.  I get the impression is that the reconstructed route is c > s > h > zero.  Why this

> should happen in Tamil and not in all other Dravidian languages is not an easy question to

> answer.  Different groups of speakers do different things to their common language.

The *c- > zero sound change in South Dravidian through the hypothesized intermediate stages *c- > *s- > *h- > zero is nicely explained by Bhadriraju Krishnamurti at

http://tinyurl.com/q4yr4x6 (#4.5.1.3 at pp. 121-124 including Table 4.4)

Importantly for this discussion on the fate of Proto-Dravidfian *c- in Early Tamil, at p. 122 (plus fn, 5) Krishnamurti writes:

"At about...second century BCE Sinhala changed /s/ to /h/ in non-final positions, perhaps prompted by a similar change in the Tamil area... Early Tamil attests the loss of Sanskrit and Prakrit sibilants /s'/, /s./, /s/ in loanwords... more than any other southern language. It is reasonable to assume that, even in loanwords, /s/ first became /h/ as it happened in Sinhala before it became /Ø/."

Hope this helps,

Francesco