From: dorai@cs.rice.edu (Dorai Sitaram)
Subject: Re: Tamil, Sanskrit, North Indian languages, kinship
Keywords: Tamil, Sanskrit, North Indian Languages, kinship
Organization: Rice University, Houston
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 17:46:23 GMT

In article <Bv5JHL.B5J@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca> selvakum@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca (C.R.Selvakumar - Electrical Engineering) writes:
>In article <Bv54I3.EHG@rice.edu> dorai@cs.rice.edu (Dorai Sitaram) writes:
>>I don't want to come across as diluting your or Turner's claims -- in
>>fact I agree a (very) convincing case can be made for ko'l', gola, etc.
>>in Indian languages not having a Sanskritic or IE origin from
>>observing that it is very likely a derivative from more basic Tamil
>>words.
>
>      Nice to know a supportive viewpoint ! [Are you by any chance a
>      linguist ? - just curious ]

No, I'm not a linguist -- I'm just a lay.  

>    Also I have seen that a
>    cluster in English ( like gr , cr , tr) is rendered in Tamil 
>    often predictably with some vowel spacing. [ crane will become
>    in Tamil kirEn or kerEn ]. Similarly the English (and Skt.) try 
>    to create a cluster when rendering non-cluster Tamil words into 
>    English [ example ThiruvallikENi > Triplicane etc.]. I was not 
>    trying to argue that
>    since Skt. does not have "La" ( or as you say l') Tamil could not
>    have got from it; instead since contiguous territories to dravidian
>    region have l' just as Tamil esp both guLi and gOLa it is a point
>    in favour considering as a native word. Also, are there examples 
>    where Tamil has adopted l'
>    when there is no cluster involved. [ In fact in order to teach
>    Tamil "La" (l') to children growing up in north american environment
>    I use the example of "clap" "click"..]. Malayalam speakers might
>    substitute L for english -ll. Are there examples where Marathi 
>    or Tamil have borrowed a Skt. word containing -l- which goes as -L- 
>    in the target language  (esp. when no clusters are involved) ? 

There are quite a few: Skt. man^gala to Tam. man^kal'a, Skt. Ka'li to
Tam. Ka'l'i (the goddess), Skt. dala to Tam. tal'am (as in Lok Dal).
You can think up a lot more -- these are only off the top of my head,
so they are obviously not comprehensive enough.  I think this is a
sufficiently innocuous point that it can be safely left to Tamil
readers to convince themselves over a cup of ka'pi (from Eng. coffee)
that the flipping of consonants is not restricted to clusters.

(To choose a different language that occasionally substitutes l' for
l, we have Telugu kal'a (art) and kal'ya'n'am(u) (marriage).  To
choose a different consonant, we have an n-to-n' flip in Tam.
man'iya'(r)t'ar from Eng. money order.)

The l/l' and n/n' flips might seem a bit exotic, but more dramatically
ordinary flips exist where one would be hard put to explain why the
original phoneme wasn't retained, unless one assumes differing
standards of euphony in the two languages. E.g., Skt. loka to Tam.
ulaku, Skt. phala to Tam. pazham, Skt. ru'pa to Tam. uruvu/uruvam,
etc.  None of these involve consonantal clusters (except maybe the l'y
in Tel.  kal'ya'n'am, but then again Telugus do not harden the l in
other similar cases, such as Ahalya, so this can't be a cluster-based
rule).

Now it could be that these words actually traveled in the opposite
direction, in which case it is easily explained why the l's became ls
when they landed in Skt. -- Skt. doesn't have an l', and hence made do
with the l.  But, uruvu to ru'pa would still be a conundrum.

>>The substitution of related phonemes is more a matter of massaging the
>>sounds of the borrowed word to suit the sound patterns of the
>>destination language.  (Note that this kind of phoneme substitution
>                          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>might occur even if all the source sounds are present in the
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>destination language, and no phoneme substitution need take place.
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>E.g., Tamil does have an l which is close to the l in Eng. glass; it
>>still prefers to insinuate an l'.)
>
>     Very interesting point. A clear indication that more than just phonemes
>     are involved in the "life-current" of a language! I've intuitively
>     felt this "more than phoneme" aspect of a language, Hmm... The sentence
>     forming sense is also one like that. I've noticed many Tamils
>     saying in English "First first when I came to New York.." which is
>     a literal unintentional translation of "mutha(l) muthalE" to denote
>     "At the very first.."..... These more subtle aspects of the inner
>      chemistry of languages can be appealed to only when a language
>      is spoken sufficiently widely.

I'd like to reiterate that I pointed out phoneme substitution as a
"wayward" development only within the confines of phonology.  Of
course, there's more to a language than phonemes.  (I _think_ you mean
borrowing involves more than loan words, and that sometimes one has
loan translations as well -- anyway, we _are_ talking only loan words
here, and why they aren't phoneme-faithful, even when the source and
target languages have sufficiently close phonemes.)

In any case, doubling is pretty common across several unrelated
languages.  (One doesn't really have to reach for Yiddish, as someone
did some time back on s.c.t., to get fancy-shmancy examples.  Indeed,
the well-entrenched, respectable and idiomatic "first and foremost" is
itself a good instance of doubling, and not all that different from
the lowly "first first"  -- clearly, there is no from-to relation
between the two.)

I guess I've dragged this article too far away from its subject line,
so I'll end with a suitably vague musing: the number 2 is as central
to language as the number 3 is to mythology. (!? Duh?!!)

--d
-- 

dorai@titan.rice.edu   !    It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
dorai@owlnet.rice.edu  !      it may be we shall touch the Happy Isles.