c-DRAVIDIAN-5.htm

The purpose of this short essay is to establish as a hypothesis that IE and Sumerian are both descended from a common ancestor, which, I term the Proto-Language — from the form into which it developed between 55-60K BPE.

This date is based on the estimates of Cavalli-Sforza for the separation of the peoples of Asia and Europe (The Great Human Diasporas, p. 123) from the "main" branch of the people speaking the Proto-Language.

During this phase of development, the Proto-Language was passing out of a class-type morphology into an ergative-type morphology (G. A. Klimov).

The word order of Sumerian is — like Basque (Trask 1997:109) — consistently SOV , what we would expect from any language that preserves early syntax. Although "modifiers overwhelmingly precede their heads" in Basque (genitives and relative clauses; Trask 1997:122) — a further correlative of SOV typology, in Sumerian, genitives and relative clauses follow their referents; however, in Basque, "lexical adjectives follow the nouns they modify (Trask 1997:122)" just as in Sumerian, in which an adjective "stands directly after the noun which it qualifies (Thomsen 1984:64)".

This discrepancy can be resolved when we realize that a number of Basque adjectives like ilun, "dark", also function as nouns: "darkness", which has led "a number of vasconists to suspect that, at some early stage of the language, there was no distinction between adjectives and nouns (Trask 1997:210)", which Trask admits as a possibility if "at a very remote period". This is certainly the case in Sumerian in which "Adjectives do not differ morphologically from nominal or verbal stems and there are no morphological means to derive adjectives from other stems. An adjectival stem is primarily characterized by its syntactic use . . . (Thomsen 1984:64)".

What is enormously exciting about Sumerian is that (unlike Basque and Japanese) it separated from the main branch of the Proto-Language after the stage of development (Pontic) in which the oldest semantic contrasts of CE / CA / CO were replaced by C^yV, C^(-)V, and C^wV, the superscripts indicating semi-consonantal glides or no glide — in keeping with the pattern observed in other Caucasian languages, Sumerian lost the superfluous V before contact with Semitic. The contact with Semitic caused Sumerian C + ^glide to be replaced with mid-vowels vowels (C^y became Ci; C^w became Cu; while C^- became Ca .

Therefore, in open syllables ( in the absence of a following /j/ or /w/), Sumerian preserves a record of and Basque preserves the original vowel quality of the Proto-Language intact.

In the Table of Correspondence found after the listing of lexical cognates below, the column entitled PROTO-LANGUAGE shows the earliest syllables before vocalic contrasts were replaced by a contrast of glides and no glide (during the Pontic stage: 60-40K BPE).

Similar tables of equivalence can and have been constructed for the Proto-Language, IE and Afrasian, Altaic, Basque, Beng (Southern Mandé), Blackfoot (Algonquian), Dravidian (Present essay) (incomplete), Etruscan, Hurrian-Urartian, Japanese, Mon/Hmong, Nama, Pama-Nyungan (incomplete), (Sino-)Tibetan, Sumerian, and Uralic.

Reassessments of Sumerian and Basque are long overdue. As we have seen in the previously published PL-IE-Basque essay, Basque shows such close relationships with this language, that the basal component of the Basque culture (sheep-herders) must be considered ethnically Sumerian.

However, a reassessment of Sumerian and Basque will not be easy to accomplish. Many Vasconists, of which Professor R. L. Trask is very prominent, vociferously deny that Basque may be related to any language or language family on earth. In a recent serious of postings to the Internet Evolution of Language discussion list, I offered my thoughts in this connection in response to a generally dismissive critique by Professor Trask of the ideas presented in this essay, an exchange some readers might be interested in following.

To consider Basque an isolate when genetically, Basques are practically indistinguishable from other Europeans, and to deny the connection with Sumer is to deprive the Basques of their proud heritage.

An excellent online resource for Dravidian in particular and Nostratic in general is at the TOWER OF BABEL, founded by Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin, and now part of the Evolution of Human Languages project at the Santa Fe Institute.

An important new resource for Nostratic studies is the website Nostratica, instituted by Kirill Babaev, the founder of the Cybalist language discussion group at Yahoo! Groups.

It will be seen below that the reconstructed roots of Indo-European and the attested roots of Sumerian are related through a very regular system of phonemic correspondences with understandable semantic shifting.

Recently, an interesting essay appeared in the Göttinger Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft (Heft 1 - 1998:111-48) by Gordon Whittaker, entitled Traces of an Early Indo-European Language in Southern Mesopotamia. In this article, Whittaker proposes "to place speakers of an Indo-European language in Mesopotamia at . . . an early date" but I believe the many cognates which he correctly identifies are explained better by supposing a common origin for Indo-European and Sumerian at a much earlier date.

The interpretation of the Sumerian evidence has unique problems. Most of the signs have multiple phonological values; and I have prepared a small series of essays which will explain the significance of these variations.

What will surprise many readers, are the startling similarities in responses to Proto-Language phonemes displayed by Basque and Sumerian, which strongly imply a common development period predating the separation of Afrasian languages and their subsequent dispersion (presumably through the introduction of agriculture).

(1)^aK[H]XE-NA ("^bgo-fast-thing=business"), (S: kin(a), 'work, send' {700}); (cf. B: e-kin, 'persist, continue, keep on, attempt' {11}); (IE *ke:n-, listed under *4. ken- (for **k[^](h)-en), 'busy one's self, strive ardently, spout'); (cf. also E Hn, 'occupy one's hands with, go speedily'); (cf. also A ghanna, 'be lively'); RATIONALE: "Work" is characterized by the pace of the activity in this word.

The correspondence of ???+ roots and ?? formants suffices for a preliminary study to establish the presumption of a genetic relationship.

NOTATIONAL CONVENTIONS

Combinatory Modifications

for modifications of the vowels and consonants in combination, see the

Table of Modifications

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Summary of Phonological Changes

from Proto-Language to Dravidian

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PROTO-LANGUAGE MONOSYLLABLES

In order for readers to judge the semantic plausibility of the analysis of Proto-Language (PL) compounds suggested here, I am including access to a table of Proto-Language monosyllables and the meanings I have provisionally assigned.

Most assignments can be exhaustively supported by data from actually attested forms but a few animates are very doubtful; and this list does not represent the "final" solution of these questions, which will only be approached when other scholars assist in refining it.

Patrick C. Ryan

Summer 1998

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DRAVIDIAN BIBLIOGRAPHY

ADDITIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

the latest revision of this document can be found at
HTTP://WWW.GEOCITIES.COM/proto-language/c-DRAVIDIAN-15.htm

Patrick C. Ryan * 9115 West 34th Street - Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 * (501)227-9947
PROTO-LANGUAGE@msn.com

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NOTES

a. I am aware that some readers, who may entertain the possibility of a Pontic-Nostratic connection between Indo-European and Afrasian, will not be able to accept the possibility of a reconstruction of a language as early as the Proto-Language. To those readers, may I suggest that the Proto-Language reconstruction be merely regarded as an expression of an arbitrary system of notation that allows for the regular relationships of correspondence between Indo-European and Sumerian.

b. These semantic proposals are based on the meanings of Proto-Language monosyllables deduced from many languages but primarily Egyptian and Sumerian, which, I believe, have conservatively preserved the meanings of these early monosyllables through their writing systems. Whether the meanings are plausible to the reader or not has no bearing on whether the forms are phonologically related.