Anthony:

>Some people in IndianCivilization list think that Sumerian and
>Dravidian are related. Is there any likelihood in that?

Yes, Nostraticists are very open to this relationship. However,
the exact relationship of Sumerian and Dravidian are yet a mystery
and definitely not entirely agreed upon. My personal thoughts
so far are that Dravidian is more closely related to Elamite
(cf. McAlpin), forming an ElamoDravidian family. From there,
Sumerian and ElamoDravidian would then be sister language groups.

I suspect (based only on deduction so far) that Sumerian was
heavily influenced by a language ancestral to HurroUrartian that
had come down from the north, bringing with it agriculture during
the neolithic. There has been talk of agriculture-related words
that appear "foreign" in Sumerian, however I'm always skeptical of
such claims unless a source can be reasonably provided and so far
I've heard little mention of clear connections with HU words
or words in any other family, to be honest.

At any rate, I suspect that any such influence, if true, would
make comparison between Sumerian and ED difficult. I also think
that ED and Steppe form their own subbranch distinct from Sumerian
because of certain commonalities. The presence of an accusative
marked with *-m is one of those indications since Sumerian is an
_ergative_ language. I therefore deduce that Sumerian predates the
shift from an ergative type language to an accusative one.

So... Maybe a comparison between ED and Steppe would be more
profitable than a comparison between Sumerian and ED.


- love gLeN



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