Dravidian is first attested in the 2nd century BCE, as inscriptions inTamil-Brahmi script on cave walls in theMadurai andTirunelvelidistricts ofTamil Nadu.[6][a]Dravidian place names along theArabian Sea coast and signs of Dravidian phonological andgrammatical influence (e.g.retroflex consonants) in theIndo-Aryan languages (c.1500 BCE) suggest that some form of proto-Dravidian was spoken more widely across theIndian subcontinent before the spread of the Indo-Aryan languages.[7][8][9] Though some scholars have argued that the Dravidian languages may have been brought to India by migrations from theIranian plateau in the fourth or third millennium BCE,[10][11] or even earlier,[12][13] the reconstructed vocabulary ofproto-Dravidian suggests that the family is indigenous to India.[14][15][b] Suggestions that theIndus script records a Dravidian language remain unproven. Despite many attempts, the family has not been shown to be related to any other.[17]
The 14th-century Sanskrit textLilatilakam, a grammar ofManipravalam, states that the spoken languages of present-day Kerala and Tamil Nadu were similar, terming them as "Dramiḍa". The author does not consider the "Karṇṇāṭa" (Kannada) and the "Āndhra" (Telugu) languages as "Dramiḍa", because they were very different from the language of the "Tamil Veda" (Tiruvaymoli), but states that some people would include them in the "Dramiḍa" category.[18]
In 1816,Francis Whyte Ellis argued thatTamil,Telugu,Kannada,Malayalam,Tulu andKodava descended from a common, non-Indo-European ancestor.[19][20] He supported his argument with a detailed comparison of non-Sanskrit vocabulary in Telugu, Kannada and Tamil, and also demonstrated that they shared grammatical structures.[21][22] In 1844,Christian Lassen discovered thatBrahui was related to these languages.[23] In 1856,Robert Caldwell published hisComparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages,[24] which considerably expanded the Dravidian umbrella and established Dravidian as one of the major language groups of the world.[25]
In 1961,T. Burrow andM. B. Emeneau published theDravidian Etymological Dictionary, with a major revision in 1984.[26]
Robert Caldwell coined the term "Dravidian" for this family of languages, based on the usage of theSanskrit wordDraviḍa in the workTantravārttika byKumārila Bhaṭṭa:[27]
The word I have chosen is 'Dravidian', fromDrāviḍa, the adjectival form ofDraviḍa. This term, it is true, has sometimes been used, and is still sometimes used, in almost as restricted a sense as that of Tamil itself, so that though on the whole it is the best term I can find, I admit it is not perfectly free from ambiguity. It is a term which has already been used more or less distinctively by Sanskrit philologists, as a generic appellation for the South Indian people and their languages, and it is the only single term they ever seem to have used in this manner. I have, therefore, no doubt of the propriety of adopting it.
The origin of theSanskrit worddrāviḍa is the Tamil wordTamiḻ.[29]Kamil Zvelebil cites the forms such asdramila (inDaṇḍin's Sanskrit workAvantisundarīkathā) anddamiḷa (found in the Sri Lankan (Ceylonese) chronicleMahavamsa) and then goes on to say, "The formsdamiḷa/damila almost certainly provide a connection ofdr(a/ā)viḍa" with the indigenous name of the Tamil language, the likely derivation being "*tamiḻ > *damiḷ >damiḷa- /damila- and further, with the intrusive, 'hypercorrect' (or perhaps analogical) -r-, intodr(a/ā)viḍa. The -m-/-v- alternation is a common enough phenomenon in Dravidian phonology".[30]
Joseph (1989: IJDL 18.2:134–42) gives extensive references to the use of the termdraviḍa,dramila first as the name of a people, then of a country. Sinhala BCE inscriptions citedameḍa-,damela- denoting Tamil merchants. Early Buddhist and Jaina sources useddamiḷa- to refer to a people of south India (presumably Tamil);damilaraṭṭha- was a southern non-Aryan country;dramiḷa-,dramiḍa, anddraviḍa- were used as variants to designate a country in the south (Bṛhatsamhita-,Kādambarī,Daśakumāracarita-, fourth to seventh centuries CE) (1989: 134–138). It appears thatdamiḷa- was older thandraviḍa- which could be its Sanskritization.
Based on what Krishnamurti states (referring to a scholarly paper published in theInternational Journal of Dravidian Linguistics), the Sanskrit worddraviḍa itself appeared later thandamiḷa, since the dates for the forms with -r- are centuries later than the dates for the forms without -r- (damiḷa,dameḍa-,damela- etc.).
There are different proposals regarding the relationship between these groups. Earlier classifications grouped Central and South-Central Dravidian in a single branch.[37] On the other hand, Krishnamurti groups South-Central and South Dravidian together.[38] There are other disagreements, including whether there is a Toda-Kota branch or whether Kota diverged first and later Toda (claimed by Krishnamurti).[39]
Some authors deny that North Dravidian forms a valid subgroup, splitting it into Northeast (Kurukh–Malto) and Northwest (Brahui).[40] Their affiliation has been proposed based primarily on a small number of common phonetic developments, including:
In some words, *k is retracted or spirantized, shifting to/x/ in Kurukh and Brahui,/q/ in Malto.
In some words, *c is retracted to/k/.
Word-initial *v develops to/b/. This development is, however, also found in several other Dravidian languages, including Kannada, Kodagu and Tulu.
McAlpin (2003) notes that no exact conditioning can be established for the first two changes, and proposes that distinct Proto-Dravidian *q and *kʲ should be reconstructed behind these correspondences, and that Brahui, Kurukh-Malto, and the rest of Dravidian may be three coordinate branches, possibly with Brahui being the earliest language to split off. A few morphological parallels between Brahui and Kurukh-Malto are also known, but according to McAlpin they are analysable as shared archaisms rather than shared innovations.[41]
A computational phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family was undertaken by Kolipakam, et al. (2018).[42] They support the internal coherence of the four Dravidian branches South (or South Dravidian I), South-Central (or South Dravidian II), Central, and North, but is uncertain about the precise relationships of these four branches to each other. The date of Dravidian is estimated to be 4,500 years old.[42]
A pentalingual highway sign in Kochi written in Malayalam, English, Hindi, Tamil and Kannada.
Dravidian languages are mostly located in the southern and central parts of south Asia with 2 main outliers, Brahui having speakers in Balochistan and as far north as Merv, Turkmenistan, and Kurukh to the east in Jharkhand and as far northeast as Bhutan, Nepal and Assam. Historically Maharashtra, Gujarat and Sindh also had Dravidian speaking populations from the evidence of place names (like-v(a)li, -koṭ from Dravidianpaḷḷi, kōṭṭai), grammatical features in Marathi, Gujarati, and Sindhi and Dravidian like kinship systems in southern Indo–Aryan languages. Proto-Dravidian could have been spoken in a wider area, perhaps into Central India or the western Deccan which may have had other forms of early Dravidian/pre-Proto-Dravidian or other branches of Dravidian which are currently unknown.[43]
Since 1981, theCensus of India has reported only languages with more than 10,000 speakers, including 17 Dravidian languages. In 1981, these accounted for approximately 24% of India's population.[44][45]In the2001 census, they included 214 million people, about 21% of India's total population of 1.02 billion.[46] In addition, the largest Dravidian-speaking group outside India, Tamil speakers in Sri Lanka, number around 4.7 million. The total number of speakers of Dravidian languages is around 227 million people, around 13% of the population of the Indian subcontinent.
The largest group of the Dravidian languages is South Dravidian, with almost 150 million speakers.Tamil,Kannada andMalayalam make up around 98% of the speakers, with 75 million, 44 million and 37 million native speakers, respectively.
The next-largest is the South-Central branch, which has 78 million native speakers, the vast majority of whom speakTelugu. The total number of speakers of Telugu, including those whose first language is not Telugu, is around 85 million people. This branch also includes the tribal languageGondi spoken in central India.
The second-smallest branch is the Northern branch, with around 6.3 million speakers. This is the only sub-group to have a language spoken inPakistan –Brahui.
The smallest branch is the Central branch, which has only around 200,000 speakers. These languages are mostly tribal, and spoken in central India.
Researchers have tried but have been unable to prove a connection between the Dravidian languages with other language families, includingIndo-European,Hurrian,Basque,Sumerian,Korean, andJapanese. Comparisons have been made not just with the other language families of the Indian subcontinent (Indo-European,Austroasiatic,Sino-Tibetan, andNihali), but with all typologically similar language families of the Old World.[17] Nonetheless, although there are no readily detectable genealogical connections, Dravidian shares severalareal features with theIndo-Aryan languages, which have been attributed to the influence of a Dravidiansubstratum on Indo-Aryan.[58]
Dravidian languages display typological similarities with theUralic language group, and there have been several attempts to establish a genetic relationship in the past.[59] This idea has been popular amongst Dravidian linguists, includingRobert Caldwell,[60]Thomas Burrow,[61]Kamil Zvelebil,[62] and Mikhail Andronov.[63] The hypothesis is, however, rejected by most specialists in Uralic languages,[64] and also in recent times by Dravidian linguists such asBhadriraju Krishnamurti.[65]
In the early 1970s, the linguistDavid McAlpin produced a detailed proposal of a genetic relationship between Dravidian and the extinctElamite language of ancientElam (present-day southwesternIran).[66] TheElamo-Dravidian hypothesis was supported in the late 1980s by the archaeologistColin Renfrew and the geneticistLuigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, who suggested thatProto-Dravidian was brought to India by farmers from the Iranian part of theFertile Crescent.[67][68] (In his 2000 book, Cavalli-Sforza suggested western India, northern India and northern Iran as alternative starting points.[69]) However, linguists have found McAlpin's cognates unconvincing and criticized his proposed phonological rules asad hoc.[70][71][72][2] Elamite is generally believed by scholars to be alanguage isolate, and the theory has had no effect on studies of the language.[73] In 2012, Southworth suggested a "Zagrosian family" of West Asian origin includingElamite, Brahui and Dravidian as its three branches.[74]
The origins of the Dravidian languages, as well as their subsequent development and the period of their differentiation are unclear, partially due to the lack ofcomparative linguistic research into the Dravidian languages. Some scholars have suggested that the Dravidian languages were the most widespread indigenous languages in theIndian subcontinent before the advance of the Indo-Aryan languages.[9] Though some scholars have argued that the Dravidian languages may have been brought to India by migrations from the Iranian plateau in the fourth or third millennium BCE[10][11] or even earlier,[12][13] reconstructed proto-Dravidian vocabulary suggests that the family is indigenous to India.[14][75][b]
As aproto-language, theProto-Dravidian language is not itself attested in the historical record. Its modern conception is based solely on reconstruction. It was suggested in the 1980s that the language was spoken in the 4th millennium BCE, and started disintegrating into various branches around the 3rd millennium BCE.[76] According toKrishnamurti, Proto-Dravidian may have been spoken in the Indus civilization, suggesting a "tentative date of Proto-Dravidian around the early part of the third millennium."[77] Krishnamurti further states that South Dravidian I (including pre-Tamil) and South Dravidian II (including Pre-Telugu) split around the 11th century BCE, with the other major branches splitting off at around the same time.[78] Kolipakam et al. (2018) give a similar estimate of 2,500 BCE for Proto-Dravidian.[79]Southworth proposes to identify the proto-Dravidian-speaking population with the SouthernNeolithic complex, which expanded from theAndhra-Karnataka border region in the middle of the 3rd millennium BCE.[80]
Historically, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Sindh may also have had Dravidian-speaking populations, based on the evidence of place names (like-v(a)li, -koṭ from Dravidianpaḷḷi, kōṭṭai), grammatical features in Marathi, Gujarati, and Sindhi and Dravidian like kinship systems in southern Indo–Aryan languages. Proto-Dravidian could have been spoken in a wider area, perhaps into Central India or the western Deccan which may have had other forms of early Dravidian/pre-Proto-Dravidian or other branches of Dravidian which are currently unknown.[43]
Several geneticists have noted a strong correlation between Dravidian and the Ancestral South Indian (ASI) component ofSouth Asian genetic makeup.[81] Narasimhan et al. (2019) argue that the ASI component itself formed in the early 2nd millennium BCE from a mixture of a population associated with theIndus Valley civilization and a population resident in peninsular India.[82] They conclude that one of these two groups may have been the source of proto-Dravidian.[83] An Indus valley origin would be consistent with the location of Brahui and with attempts to interpret theIndus script as Dravidian.[83][84] However, many scholars believe that Brahui arrived in the northwest much later. Also, reconstructed Proto-Dravidian terms for flora and fauna provide support for a peninsular Indian origin.[14][83][85]
TheIndus Valley civilisation (3300–1900 BCE), located in theIndus Valley region, is sometimes suggested to have been Dravidian.[86] Already in 1924, after discovering the Indus Valley Civilisation,John Marshall stated that one or more of the languages may have been Dravidic.[87] Cultural and linguistic similarities have been cited by researchersHenry Heras,Kamil Zvelebil,Asko Parpola andIravatham Mahadevan as being strong evidence for a proto-Dravidian origin of the ancient Indus Valley civilisation.[88][89] The discovery inTamil Nadu of a late Neolithic (early 2nd millennium BCE, i.e. post-dating Harappan decline) stonecelt allegedly marked with Indus signs has been considered by some to be significant for the Dravidian identification.[90][91]
Yuri Knorozov surmised that the symbols represent alogosyllabic script and suggested, based on computer analysis, an underlying agglutinative Dravidian language as the most likely candidate for the underlying language.[92] Knorozov's suggestion was preceded by the work of Henry Heras, who suggested several readings of signs based on a proto-Dravidian assumption.[93]
Linguist Asko Parpola writes that the Indus script and Harappan language are "most likely to have belonged to the Dravidian family".[94] Parpola led a Finnish team in investigating the inscriptions using computer analysis. Based on a proto-Dravidian assumption, they proposed readings of many signs, some agreeing with the suggested readings of Heras and Knorozov (such as equating the "fish" sign with the Dravidian word for fish, "min") but disagreeing on several other readings. A comprehensive description of Parpola's work until 1994 is given in his bookDeciphering the Indus Script.[95]
Although in modern times speakers of the various Dravidian languages have mainly occupied the southern portion of India, in earlier times they probably were spoken in a larger area. After theIndo-Aryan migrations into north-western India, startingc. 1500 BCE, and the establishment of theKuru kingdomc. 1100 BCE, a process ofSanskritisation of the masses started, which resulted in alanguage shift in northern India. Southern India has remained majority Dravidian, but pockets of Dravidian can be found in central India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.
TheKurukh andMalto are pockets of Dravidian languages in North Eastern India. They have myths about external origins.[96] The Kurukh have traditionally claimed to be from theDeccan Peninsula,[97] more specificallyKarnataka. The same tradition has existed of the Brahui,[98][99] who call themselves immigrants.[100] Holding this same view of the Brahui are many scholars[101] such as L.H. Horace Perera and M.Ratnasabapathy.[102]
TheBrahui population of Pakistan'sBalochistan province has been taken by some as the linguistic equivalent of arelict population, perhaps indicating that Dravidian languages were formerly much more widespread and were supplanted by the incomingIndo-Aryan languages.[103][104][105] However, Brahui lacks anyOld Iranian loanwords, with most of its Iranian vocabulary coming fromBalochi, aWestern Iranian language that arrived in the area from the west only around 1000 CE.[106] Sound changes shared with Kurukh and Malto also suggest that Brahui was originally spoken near them in central India.[107]
Dravidian languages show extensive lexical (vocabulary) borrowing, but only a few traits of structural (eitherphonological or grammatical) borrowing from Indo-Aryan, whereas Indo-Aryan shows more structural than lexical borrowings from the Dravidian languages.[108] Many of these features are already present in the oldest knownIndo-Aryan language, the language of theRigveda (c.1500 BCE), which also includes over a dozen words borrowed from Dravidian.[109]
Vedic Sanskrit hasretroflex consonants (ṭ/ḍ,ṇ) with about 88 words in theRigveda having unconditioned retroflexes.[110][111] Some sample words areIṭanta,Kaṇva,śakaṭī,kevaṭa,puṇya andmaṇḍūka.Since otherIndo-European languages, including otherIndo-Iranian languages, lack retroflex consonants, their presence in Indo-Aryan is often cited as evidence of substrate influence from close contact of the Vedic speakers with speakers of a foreign language family rich in retroflex consonants.[110][111] The Dravidian family is a serious candidate since it is rich in retroflex phonemes reconstructible back to theProto-Dravidian stage.[112][113][114]
In addition, a number of grammatical features of Vedic Sanskrit not found in its sisterAvestan language appear to have been borrowed from Dravidian languages. These include thegerund, which has the same function as in Dravidian.[115] Some linguists explain this asymmetrical borrowing by arguing that Middle Indo-Aryan languages were built on a Dravidian substratum.[116] These scholars argue that the most plausible explanation for the presence of Dravidian structural features in Indic islanguage shift, that is, native Dravidian speakers learning and adopting Indic languages due toelite dominance.[117] Although each of the innovative traits in Indic could be accounted for by internal explanations, early Dravidian influence is the only explanation that can account for all of the innovations at once; moreover, it accounts for several of the innovative traits in Indic better than any internal explanation that has been proposed.[118]
Proto-Dravidian, unlikeSanskrit and otherIndo-Iranian languages languages of South Asia, lacked both anaspiration andvoicing contrast. The situation varies considerably amongst its daughter languages and often also betweenregisters of any single language. The vast majority of modern Dravidian languages generally have some voicing distinctions amongst stops; as for aspiration, it appears in at least the formal varieties of the so-called "literary" Dravidian languages (except Tamil) today, but may be rare or entirely absent in less formal registers, as well as in the many "non-literary" Dravidian languages.
At one extreme,Tamil, like Proto-Dravidian, does not phonemically distinguish between voiced and voiceless or unaspirated and aspirated sounds, even in formal speech; in fact, theTamil alphabet lacks symbols for voiced and aspirated stops. At the other end, Brahui is exceptional among the Dravidian languages in possessing and commonly employing the entire inventory of aspirates employed in neighboringSindhi. While aspirates are particularly concentrated in the Indo-Aryan element of the lexicon, some Brahui words with Dravidian roots have developed aspiration as well.[119]
Most languages lie in between. Voicing contrasts are quite common in all registers of speech in most Dravidian languages. Aspiration contrasts are less common, but relatively well-established in the phonologies of the higher or more formal registers, as well as in the standardorthographies, of the "literary" languages (other than Tamil): Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam. However, in colloquial or non-standard speech, aspiration often appears inconsistently or not at all, even if it occurs in the standard spelling of the word.
In the languages in which aspirates are found, they primarily occur in the large numbers ofloanwords fromSanskrit and otherIndo-Iranian languages, though some are found in etymologically native words as well, often as the result of plosive + laryngeal clusters being reanalysed as aspirates (e.g. Teluguనలభైnalabhai, Kannadaಎಂಬತ್ತು/ಎಂಭತ್ತುemb(h)attu, Adilabad Gondiphōṛd).[120]
Dravidian languages are also historically characterized by a three-way distinction betweendental,alveolar, andretroflex places of articulation as well as large numbers ofliquids. Currently the three-way coronal distinction is only found in Malayalam, Sri Lankan Tamil, and the various languages of theNilgiri Mountains, all of which belong to the Tamil–Kannada branch of the family.
All other Dravidian languages maintain only a two-way distinction between dentals and retroflexes, largely the result of merging the alveolars with the dentals or retroflexes, or viarhotacization. The latter is found primarily among the South and South Central languages, where many languages merged the singular proto-Dravidian alveolar plosive*ṯ with the alveolar trill/r/; subsequently, in some of these languages, the trill evolved into the alveolar tap/ɾ/ or underwent other sound changes (Tulu has/d͡ʒ,d̪,ɾ/ as reflexes, Manda-Kui has/d͡ʒ/, and Hill-Maria Gondi has/ʁ/).
Proto-Dravidian had five short and long vowels:*a,*ā,*i,*ī,*u,*ū,*e,*ē,*o,*ō. There were no diphthongs;ai andau are treated as *ay and *av (or *aw).[121][122][123]The five-vowel system with phonemic length is largely preserved in the descendant subgroups,[124] but there are some notable exceptions. The Nilgiri languages (except Kota but including Kodagu) developing a series of central vowels which formed from vowels near retroflex and alveolar consonants. The shortu phoneme (mostly word finally) becameŭ/ụ /ɯ~ɨ~ə/ and also became phonemic in Tulu and Malayalam, mostly caused by loaning words with rounded /u/. Brahui has slightly poorer vowel system, where shorte ando merged with other vowels due to the influence of neighbouring Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages, leaving only long counterparts.[125]
The following consonantal phonemes are reconstructed:[112][126][127]
The *ṯ developed into a trill (with *r being a tap) in South and South Central Dravidian.
All non Tamil-Malayalam languages (including modern spoken Tamil) developed a voicing distinction for plosives, if loans are included, all of them have a voicing distinction.
Most Dravidian languages have aclusivity distinction.
The major word classes are nouns (substantives, numerals, pronouns), adjectives, verbs, and indeclinables (particles,enclitics, adverbs, interjections, onomatopoetic words, echo words).
Proto-Dravidian used only suffixes, never prefixes or infixes, in the construction of inflected forms. Hence, the roots of words always occurred at the beginning. Nouns, verbs, and indeclinable words constituted the original word classes.
There are two numbers and four different gender systems, the ancestral system probably having "male:non-male" in the singular and "person:non-person" in the plural.
In a sentence, however complex, only one finite verb occurs, normally at the end, preceded if necessary by a number of gerunds.
Word order follows certain basic rules but is relatively free.
The main (and probably original) dichotomy in tense is past:non-past. Present tense developed later and independently in each language or subgroup.
Verbs are intransitive, transitive, and causative; there are also active and passive forms.
All of the positive verb forms have their corresponding negative counterparts,negative verbs.
The Dravidian languages have two numbers, singular and plural. The singular is unmarked, the plural is expressed by a suffix. The plural suffixes are-(n)k(k)a (cf. Kuikōḍi-ŋga 'cows', Brahuibā-k 'mouths'), *-ḷ (cf. Telugumrānu-lu 'trees', Ollariki-l 'hands') and the combination of these two *-(n)k(k)aḷ common in SD (cf. Tamilmaraṅ-kaḷ 'trees', Kannadamara-gaḷu 'trees').[128]
The individual Dravidian languages have different gender systems. What they have in common is that the grammatical gender (genus) always corresponds to the natural gender of the word. In addition to individual special developments, there are three main types in which the categories "male" or "non-male" as well as "human" and "non-human" play a central role:[129]
The South Dravidian languages distinguish between masculine (human, masculine), feminine (human, non-masculine) and neuter (non-human) in the singular, and only between human and non-human in the plural.
The Central Dravidian and many South Central Dravidian languages distinguish only between masculine and non-masculine in both singular and plural.
Telugu and the North Dravidian languages distinguish between masculine and non-masculine in the singular, and between human and non-human in the plural.
The three types are illustrated by the forms of the third-person demonstrative pronouns of the three languages:
Gender system types illustrated with third-person demonstrative pronouns[130]
There is no consensus as to which of these three types is the original.[131]
The gender is not explicitly marked for all nouns. Thus in Teluguanna 'elder brother' is masculine andamma 'mother' non-masculine, without this being apparent from the pure form of the word. However, many nouns are formed with certain suffixes that express gender and number. For Proto-Dravidian, the suffixes *-an and *-anṯ could be used for the masculine singular (cf. Tamilmak-aṉ 'son', Telugutammu-ṇḍu 'younger brother'), *-aḷ and *-i for the singular feminine (cf. Kannadamag-aḷ 'daughter', Maltomaq-i 'girl') and *-ar for human plurals (cf. Malayalamiru-var 'two persons', Kurukhāl-ar 'men').[132]
Case is expressed by suffixes and more loosely connected postpositions.[133][134] The number of cases varies between four (Telugu) and eleven (Brahui).
The nominative is always the unmarked base form of the word. The other cases, collectively called oblique, are formed by adding suffixes to a stem that can either be identical to the nominative or formed by certain suffixes (e.g. Tamilmaram 'tree', obliquemara-tt-).[135] Several oblique suffixes can be reconstructed for Proto-Dravidian, which are composed of the minimal components *-i- , *-a- , *-n- and *-tt-.[136] In many languages, the oblique is identical to the genitive.[135]
Proto-Dravidian case suffixes can be reconstructed for the three cases accusative, dative and genitive. Other case suffixes only occur in individual branches of Dravidian.[137]
Personal pronouns occur in the 1st and 2nd person. In the 1st person plural there is an inclusive and exclusive form, that is, a distinction is made as to whether the person addressed is included. There is also a reflexive pronoun that refers to the subject of the sentence and is constructed in the same way as personal pronouns. The personal and reflexive pronouns reconstructed for Proto-Dravidian are listed in the table below. In addition, there are special developments in some languages: The south and south-central Dravidian languages have transferred the *ñ initial sound of the 1st person plural inclusive to the 1st person singular (cf. Malayalamñān, but obliqueen < *yan). The differences between the forms for the inclusive and exclusive we are partly blurred; Kannada has completely abandoned this distinction. The languages of the Tamil-Kodagu group have formed a new exclusive 'we' by adding the plural suffix (cf. Tamilnām 'we (incl.)',nāṅ-kaḷ 'we (excl.)').[141]
Nom.
Obl.
Meaning
1. Sg.
*yĀn
*yAn
I
1. Pl. excl.
*yĀm
*yAm
we (excl.)
1. Pl. incl.
*ñām
*ñam
we (incl.)
2. Sg.
*nīn
*nin
you
2. Pl
*nīm
*nim
you all
Refl. Sg.
*tān
*tan
(he/she/it) himself
Refl. Pl.
*tām
*tam
themselves
The demonstrative pronouns also serve as personal pronouns of the 3rd person. They consist of an initial vowel expressing the distance and a suffix expressing number and gender. There are three levels of distance: the far distance is formed with the initial vowel *a-, the middle distance with *u- and the near distance with *i-. The same deictic elements also occur in local ('here', 'there') and temporal adverbs ('now', 'then'). The original threefold distinction of the distance (e.g. Kotaavn 'he, that one',ūn 'he, this one',ivn 'he, this one') has only survived in a few languages spoken today, the yonder distance u- has mostly become obsolete instead a- and i- are used. Interrogative pronouns are formed analogously to the demonstrative pronouns and are characterized by the initial syllable *ya- (e.g. Kotaevn 'which').[142]
Tamil-Telugu made another word*ñān for the 1SG pronoun back formed from 1P inclusive*ñām, in parallel to *yān; some languages like Tamil retain both forms,yāṉ, nāṉ.[143]
The Dravidian verb is formed by adding tense, mood and personal suffixes to the root of the word. Thus the Tamil wordvarukiṟēṉ 'I come' is composed of the verb stemvaru-, the present suffix-kiṟ and the suffix of the 1st person singular-ēṉ.
In Proto-Dravidian there are only two tenses, past and not past, while many daughter languages have developed a more complex tense system.
The negation is expressed synthetically by a special negative verb form (cf. Kondakitan 'he made',kiʔetan 'he did not').
The verb stem can be modified by stem-forming suffixes in many Dravidian languages. Thus Malto derives from the stemnud- 'to hide' the reflexive verb stemnudɣr- 'to hide'.
Infinite verb forms depend on either a following verb or a following noun. They serve to form more complex syntactic constructions.
Verbal compounds can be formed in Dravidian, for example the Tamilkonṭuvara 'to bring' is composed of an infinite form of the verbkoḷḷa 'to hold' and the verbvara 'to come'.
Characteristic of the Dravidian languages is a fixedsubject–object–verb word order (SOV). Accordingly, the subject comes first in the sentence (it can at most be preceded by circumstantial determinations of time and place) and the predicate always at the end of the sentence. As is characteristic of SOV languages, in the Dravidian languages, attributes always come before their noun, subordinate clauses before main clauses, main verbs before auxiliary verbs, and postpositions are used instead of prepositions. Only in the North Dravidian languages has the rigid SOV word order been relaxed.
A simple sentence consists of a subject and a predicate, which can be either a verb or a noun. There is no copula in Dravidian. The subject is usually in the nominative case, but in many Dravidian languages, in a sentence expressing a feeling, perception or possession, the subject is also in the dative case. In all Dravidian languages except Malayalam, a verbal predicate agrees with a nominative subject. Kui and Kuwi developed a system of congruence between object and verb. In some Dravidian languages (Old Tamil, Gondi) even a nominal predicate takes personal endings. Examples of simple sentences from Tamil:
avar eṉṉaik kēṭṭār. (he me asked) 'He asked me.' (subject in nominative, verbal predicate)
avar eṉ appā. (he my father) 'He is my father.' (subject in nominative, nominal predicate)
avarukku kōpam vantatu. (to-him anger it-came) 'He became angry.' (subject in dative, verbal predicate)
avarukku oru makaṉ. (to-him a son) 'He has a son.' (subject in dative, nominal predicate)
Complex sentences consist of a main clause and one or more subordinate clauses. In general, a sentence can contain only one finite verb. The Dravidian languages have no conjunctions; subordinate clauses are formed just likeparataxes by infinite verb forms. These include the infinitive, the verbal participle, which expresses a sequence of actions, and the conditional, which expresses a conditionality. Relative clauses correspond to constructions with the so-called adnominal participles. Examples from Tamil:
avarai varac col. (him to-come tell) 'Tell him to come.' (infinitive)
kaṭaikku pōyi muṭṭaikaḷ koṇṭuvā. (to-the-shop go-then eggs get-come) 'Go to the shop and bring eggs.' (verb participle)
avaṉ poy coṉṉāl ammā aṭippāḷ. (he lie if-saying mother will-beat) 'If he lies, mother will beat him.' (Conditional)
avaṉ coṉṉatu uṇmai. (he said truth) 'What he says is true.' (adnominal participle)
These constructions are not possible for subordinate clauses with a nominal predicate, since no infinite forms can be formed for a noun. Here one gets by with the so-calledquotative verb (usually an infinite form of 'to say'), through which the nominal subordinate clause is embedded in the sentence structure. Example from Tamil:
nāṉ avaṉ nallavaṉ eṉṟu niṉaikkiṟēṉ. (I he [good-man]-like-that thinking) 'I think he's a good man.'
Word roots seem to have been monosyllabic in Proto-Dravidian as a rule. Proto-Dravidian words could be simple, derived, or compound. Iterative compounds could be formed by doubling a word, cf. Tamilavar "he" andavaravar "everyone" orvantu "coming" andvantu vantu "always coming". A special form of reduplicated compounds are the so-called echo words, in which the first syllable of the second word is replaced byki, cf. Tamilpustakam "book" andpustakam-kistakam "books and the like".
Today's Dravidian languages have, in addition to the inherited Dravidian vocabulary, a large number of words from Sanskrit or later Indo-Aryan languages. In Tamil, they make up a relatively small proportion, not least because of targeted linguistic puristic tendencies in the early 20th century, while in Telugu and Malayalam the number of Indo-Aryan loanwords is large. In Brahui, which was strongly influenced by its neighboring languages due to its distance from the other Dravidian languages, only a tenth of the vocabulary is of Dravidian origin. [16] More recently, like all the languages of India, the Dravidian languages also have words borrowed from English on a large scale; less numerous are the loanwords from Portuguese.
Dravidian words that have found their way into English are "orange" (via Sanskritnāraṅga, cf. Tamilnāraṅkа̄y <nāram-kа̄y), "catamaran" (Tamilkaṭṭumaram "[boat made of] bound logs"), "mango" (Tamilmāṅkāy, Malayalammāṅṅa, via Portuguesemanga), "mongoose" (Telugumuṅgisa, Kannadamuṅgisi) and "curry" (Tamilkaṟi).
Some Dravidian word equations
Word
Fish
I
Under
Come
One
Proto-Dravidian
*mīn
*yān
*kīẓ ~ kiẓ
*waru ~ wā
*onṯu, *oru, *on
Tamil
mīṉ
yāṉ, (nāṉ)
kīẓ
varu, vā-
oṉṟu, oru, ōr
Malayalam
mīn
ēṉ, (ñāṉ)
kīẓ, kiẓu
varu, vā-
onnŭ, oru, ōr
Irula
(nā(nu))
kiye
varu
ondu, or-
Kota
mīn
ān
kī, kīṛm
vār-, va-
oḏ,ōr, o
Toda
mīn
ōn
kī
pōr-, pa-
wïd, wïr, oš
Badaga
mīnu
(nā(nu))
kīe
bā-, bar
ondu
Kannada
mīn
(nānu)
kīẓ, keḷa
ba-, bāru-
ondu, or, ōr
Kodagu
mīnï
(nānï)
kï;, kïlï
bār-, ba-
ondï, orï, ōr, onï
Tulu
mīnɯ
yānu, yēnu
kīḷɯ
barpini
oñji, or, oru
Telugu
mīnu
ēnu, (nēnu)
kri, k(r)inda
vaccu, rā-
oṇḍu
Gondi
mīn
anā, (nanna)
vaya
undi, or-
Konda
mīn
(nān(u))
vā-, ra-
unṟi, or-
Kui
mīnu
ānu, (nānu)
vāva
ro-
Kuwi
mīnu
(nānu)
vā-
ro-
Manda
ān
vā-
ru-
Pengo
mīn
ān, āneŋ
vā-
ro-
Kolami
ān
var-, vā
Parji
mīni
ān
kiṛi
ver-
Gadaba
mīn
ān
var-
Malto
mīnu
ēn
bare
ort-, -ond
Kurukh
ēn
kiyyā
barnā-
oṇḍ, ort-, on
Brahui
ī
ki-, kē-
bar-, ba-
asi(ṭ), on-
Tamil-Telugu made another word*ñān for the 1SG pronoun back formed from 1P inclusive*ñām, in parallel to *yān; some languages like Tamil retain both forms,yāṉ, nāṉ.[143]
This is the same as the word for another form of the number one inTamil andMalayalam, used as theindefinite article ("a") and when the number is anattribute preceding a noun (as in "one person"), as opposed to when it is a noun (as in "How many are there?" "One").
The stem *īr is still found in compound words, and has taken on a meaning of "double" inTamil,Telugu,Kannada andMalayalam. For example,irupatu (20, literally meaning "double-ten"),iravai (20 in Telugu), "iraṭṭi" ("double") oriruvar ("two people", in Tamil) and "ippattu" (ipp-hattu, double ten", in Kannada).
The Kolami numbers 5 to 10 are borrowed from Telugu.
The wordtoṇṭu was also used to refer to the number nine in ancientSangam texts but was later completely replaced by the wordoṉpatu.
These forms are derived from "one (less than) ten". Proto-Dravidian *toḷ/*toṇ (which could mean 9 or 9/10) is still used in Tamil and Malayalam as the basis of numbers such as 90 and 900,toṇṇūṟu (9⁄10*100 = 90) as well as the Kannadatombattu (9*10 = 90).
Because of shared sound changes that have happened over the years in the majority of the Tamil dialects, the numbers 1–5 have different colloquial pronunciations, seen here to the right of their written, formal pronunciations.
In languages with words for one starts with ok(k)- it was taken from *okk- which originally meant "to be united" and not a numeral.
The earliest known Dravidian inscriptions are 76Old Tamil inscriptions on cave walls inMadurai andTirunelveli districts inTamil Nadu, dating from the 2nd century BCE.[6] These inscriptions are written in a variant of theBrahmi script calledTamil Brahmi.[148] In 2019, theTamil Nadu Archaeology Department released a report on excavations atKeeladi, nearMadurai,Tamil Nadu, including a description of potsherds dated to the 6th century BCE inscribed with personal names in theTamil-Brahmi script.[149] However, the report lacks the detail of a full archaeological study, and other archaeologists have disputed whether the oldest dates obtained for the site can be assigned to these potsherds.[150] The earliest long text in Old Tamil is theTolkāppiyam, a work on Tamil grammar and poetics preserved in a 5th-century CE redaction, whose oldest layers could date from the late 2nd century or 1st century BCE.[151]
Kannada's earliest known inscription is the lion balustrade (Simhakatanjana) inscription excavated at the Pranaveshwara temple complex atTalagunda nearShiralakoppa ofShivamogga district, dated to 370 CE which replaced theHalmidi inscription inHassan district (450 CE).[152] A 9th-century treatise on poetics, theKavirajamarga, is the first known literary work.[153] The earliest Telugu inscription, from Erragudipadu inKadapa district, is dated 575. The first literary work is an 11th-century translation of part of theMahābhārata.[153] The earliest Malayalam text is theVazhappally copper plate (9th century). The first literary work isRāmacaritam (12th century).[6]
^Edwin Bryant, Laurie L. Patton (2005), The Indo-Aryan controversy: evidence and inference in Indian history, p. 254
^abSteven Roger Fischer (3 October 2004).History of Language. Reaktion books.ISBN978-1-86189-594-3.Archived from the original on 9 April 2023. Retrieved10 November 2020.It is generally accepted that Dravidian – with no identifiable cognates among the world's languages – was India's most widely distributed, indigenous language family when Indo-European speakers first intruded from the north-west 3,000 years ago
^abTamil Literature Society (1963),Tamil Culture, vol. 10, Academy of Tamil Culture,archived from the original on 9 April 2023, retrieved25 November 2008,... together with the evidence of archaeology would seem to suggest that the original Dravidian-speakers entered India from Iran in the fourth millennium BC ...
^abNamita Mukherjee; Almut Nebel; Ariella Oppenheim; Partha P. Majumder (December 2001), "High-resolution analysis of Y-chromosomal polymorphisms reveals signatures of population movements from central Asia and West Asia into India",Journal of Genetics,80 (3), Springer India:125–35,doi:10.1007/BF02717908,PMID11988631,S2CID13267463,... More recently, about 15,000–10,000 years before present (ybp), when agriculture developed in the Fertile Crescent region that extends from Israel through northern Syria to western Iran, there was another eastward wave of human migration (Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994; Renfrew 1987), a part of which also appears to have entered India. This wave has been postulated to have brought the Dravidian languages into India (Renfrew 1987). Subsequently, the Indo-European (Aryan) language family was introduced into India about 4,000 ybp ...
^abDhavendra Kumar (2004),Genetic Disorders of the Indian Subcontinent, Springer,ISBN1-4020-1215-2,archived from the original on 9 April 2023, retrieved25 November 2008,... The analysis of two Y chromosome variants, Hgr9 and Hgr3 provides interesting data (Quintan-Murci et al., 2001). Microsatellite variation of Hgr9 among Iranians, Pakistanis and Indians indicate an expansion of populations to around 9000 YBP in Iran and then to 6,000 YBP in India. This migration originated in what was historically termed Elam in south-west Iran to the Indus valley, and may have been associated with the spread of Dravidian languages from south-west Iran (Quintan-Murci et al., 2001). ...
^Heggarty, Paul; Renfrew, Collin (2014), "South and Island Southeast Asia; Languages", in Renfrew, Colin; Bahn, Paul (eds.),The Cambridge World Prehistory, Cambridge University Press,ISBN978-1-107-64775-6,archived from the original on 9 April 2023, retrieved1 July 2017
^McAlpin, David W. (2003). "Velars, Uvulars and the Northern Dravidian hypothesis".Journal of the American Oriental Society.123 (3):521–546.doi:10.2307/3217749.JSTOR3217749.
^Tyler, Stephen (1968). "Dravidian and Uralian: the lexical evidence".Language.44 (4):798–812.doi:10.2307/411899.JSTOR411899.
^Webb, Edward (1860). "Evidences of the Scythian Affinities of the Dravidian Languages, Condensed and Arranged from Rev. R. Caldwell's Comparative Dravidian Grammar".Journal of the American Oriental Society.7:271–298.doi:10.2307/592159.JSTOR592159.
^Burrow, T (1944). "Dravidian Studies IV: The Body in Dravidian and Uralian".Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies.11 (2):328–356.doi:10.1017/s0041977x00072517.S2CID246637174.
^abZvelebil, Kamil (2006). Dravidian Languages. InEncyclopædia Britannica (DVD edition).
^Andronov, Mikhail S. (1971), "Comparative Studies on the Nature of Dravidian-Uralian Parallels: A Peep into the Prehistory of Language Families".Proceedings of the Second International Conference of Tamil Studies Madras. 267–277.
^Zvelebil, Kamil (1970),Comparative Dravidian Phonology Mouton, The Hauge. at p. 22 contains a bibliography of articles supporting and opposing the theory
^Stolper, Matthew W. (2008). "Elamite". In Woodard, Roger D. (ed.).The Ancient Languages of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Aksum. Cambridge University Press. pp. 47–82.ISBN978-0-521-68497-2. p. 48.
^Cole, Jennifer (2006)."The Sindhi language"(PDF). In Brown, K. (ed.).Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd Edition. Vol. 11. Elsevier. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 6 January 2007.Harappan language...prevailing theory indicates Dravidian origins
^Trask (2000), p. 97"It is widely suspected that the extinct and undeciphered Indus Valley language was a Dravidian language, but no confirmation is available. The existence of the isolated northern outlierBrahui is consistent with the hypothesis that Dravidian formerly occupied much of North India but was displaced by the invading Indo-Aryan languages, and the presence in the Indo-Aryan languages of certain linguistic features, such as retroflex consonants, is often attributed to Dravidian substrate influence."
^Sivanantham, R.; Seran, M., eds. (2019). Keeladi: an Urban Settlement of Sangam Age on the Banks of the River Vaigai (Report). Chennai: Department of Archaeology, Government of Tamil Nadu. pp. 8–9, 14.
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Knorozov, Yuri V. (1965). "Характеристика протоиндийского языка" [Characteristics of Proto-Indian language].Predvaritel'noe soobshchenie ob issledovanii protoindiyskikh textovПредварительное сообщение об исследовании протоиндийских текстов [A Preliminary Report on the Study of Proto Texts] (in Russian). Moscow: Institute of Ethnography of the USSR.
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Narasimhan, Vagheesh M.; Patterson, Nick; Moorjani, Priya; Rohland, Nadin; et al. (2019), "The Formation of Human Populations in South and Central Asia",Science,365 (6457) eaat7487,doi:10.1126/science.aat7487,PMC6822619,PMID31488661.
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