LINGUIST List 2.712

Fri 25 Oct 1991

Disc: Chinese and Dravidian

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Steve Harlow, RE: 2.702 Queries
2. Steve Harlow, RE: 2.697 Queries: Chinese, Dravidian
3. , Dravidian Retroflexes
4. "Bruce E. Nevin", Nostratic/Dravidian retroflexion

Message 1: RE: 2.702 Queries

>Could anyone provide me some information about lexical borrowings? I've
>noticed that when Chinese bilinguals converse in Chinese, they sometimes have
>English words. Any literature in this aspect? Thanks in advance.
> 00Z0ZHAObsuvax1.bitnet
Dear 00Z0ZHAO,
Try Aspects of Chinese Sociolinguistics - essays by Yuen Ren Chao, edited by
Anwar S Dil, Stanford UP, 1976, particularly the very short paper on 'skipants'.
Steve Harlow
University of York

Message 2: RE: 2.697 Queries: Chinese, Dravidian

>I am looking for references to works on Chinese NPs (in the hope of finding
>data for a DP-analysis approach to Chinese.) Does anyone know likely
> sources?
>Laurel Smith Stvan
>Northwestern University
There is an article by Jane Tang in Linguistics 28-2 (1990) on 'The DP analysis
of the Chinese noun phrase'.
Steve Harlow

Madhav Deshpande (it's good to hear from an old friend) asks about
the origin of the Dravidian reftroflexes according to the Nostratic
theory of Illich-Svitych, suggesting that there is a possible
difficulty involved, since other Nostratic languages do not appear
to have retroflexes.
First, I think this is a false problem, for the fact that Indo-Aryan
languages have retroflexes whereas most of the rest of IE does not
is not considered a problem for the "Indo-European theory". Nor is
the fact that Swedish and Norwegian have retroflexes and the rest
of Germanic lacks them considered a problem for the "Germanic
hypothesis".
Second, I personally believe that Dravidian is the weakest link
by far in the Nostratic chain. Thus it seems to me virtually
certain that IE is related to Uralic, almost as certain that
both of these are related to Altaic (and entirely certain that
the Altaic languages are indeed related to each other), and much
much less certain that this group is related to Kartvelian and
Afroasiatic (although quite likely in each case), but the Dravidian
connection seems to me less than a 50% shot.
Third, Illich-Svitych appears to have believed that
Dravidian retroflex t. comes from Nostratic voiced d whereas
Dravidian non-retroflex t comes from Nostratic voiceless t and
glottalized t'. In the case of the laterals and nasals, he
appears to have believed that the Dravidian contrasts correspond
to Nostratic ones (which are also reflected in Uralic) between
different different laterals and nasals (whose phonetic features
are identified with less precision). And in the case of the
rhotics, the contrast is again is supposed to be Proto-Nostratic,
involving two rhotics which are also supposed to be distinguished
in Altaic.

Madhav Deshpande (madhav.deshpandeum.cc.umich.edu) challenges
Nostratic advocates to account for retroflexion in proto-Dravidian.
I had long understood that Indo-Aryan acquired retroflexion from
Dravidian, as an areal feature. Hock dismisses this customary view in
his _Principles of Historical Linguistics_, arguing that it
can be accounted for entirely internally to Indo-Aryan (p. 500, with
reference to pp. 77-9).
Similar arguments apply to Dravidian wrt other languages considered
related in Nostratic. While I am agnostic re Nostratic, I must say
this looks like a red herring to me.
>. . . As far as we know, retroflex consonants are reconstructed
>as far back as Proto-Dravidian. If Dravidian is a branch of Nostratic
>family, what happens to retroflexion? Do we reconstruct retroflexion
>to Proto-Nostratic? Or, do we claim that Dravidian independently
>developed retroflexion? Any suggestions?
	Bruce Nevin
	bnbbn.com