Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics
Language group of South-East Asia with about twenty-five languages and 175 million speakers, primarily in southern and eastern India and Sri Lanka, as well as in Pakistan (Brahui). These languages, probably originally extending over the whole Indian subcontinent, were displaced by the languages of the Indo-Aryan immigrants. The most important languages are Telugu (approx. 53 million speakers), Tamil (approx. 45 million speakers), Malayalam (approx. 28 million speakers), and Kannada (approx. 28 million speakers), and have writing systems with a literary tradition of more than 2,000 years.
Ellis (1816) demonstrated the relatedness of the major Dravidian languages; the later work of R.A.Caldwell also was foundational. The Dravidian languages are possibly related to Elamite, a dead language of Iran. They evince numerous lexical borrowings from Indo-Aryan, while Dravidian languages have in turn influenced the Indo-Aryan languages phonologically, morphologically, and syntactically.
Characteristics: strongly agglutinating, suffixal languages with many compound constructions. The gender system points to an original [±masculine] in the singular and [±human] in the plural. Word order SOV; rich case system. The subject of stative verbs and verbs of sensation is frequently in the dative. No clause conjunction; instead, frequent participial constructions (converbs) for subordinating clauses. Complex system of auxiliaries with which the attitude of the speaker can be expressed (e.g. pejorative). The more widely spoken Dravidian languages are largely diglossic (
diglossia), i.e. they distinguish between formal and informal registers.
References
Andorov, M.S. 1970. Dravidian languages. Moscow.
Bloch, J. 1946. Structure grammaticale des langues dravidiennes. Paris.
Emeneau, M.B. 1969. The non-literary Dravidian languages. In T.A.Sebeok (ed.), Current trends in linguistics. The Hague. Vol. 5, 334–42.
Krishnamurti, B. 1969. Comparative Dravidian studies. In T.A.Sebeok (ed.), Current trends in linguistics. The Hague. Vol. 5, 309–33.
McAlpin, D. 1981. Proto-Elamo-Dravidian: the evidence and its implications. Philadelphia, PA.
Zvelebil, K. 1977. A sketch of comparative Dravidian morphology. The Hague.
——1990. Dravidian linguistics: an introduction. Pondicherry.
Grammars
Agesthialingom, S. and N.R.Nair (eds) 1981. Dravidian syntax. Annamalainagar.
Bray, D.D.S. 1909–34. The Brahui language, 2 vols.
Calcutta (Repr. 1986.)
Caldwell, R. 1856. A comparative grammar of the Dravidian South-Indian family of languages. (3rd rev. edn 1913 by J.L.Wyatt and T.R.Pillai. London. Repr. New Delhi 1974.)
Ellis, F.W. 1816. Note to the introduction. In A grammar of the Teloogoo language, by A.D. Campbell.
Frohnmeyer, L.J. 1913. A progressive grammar of the Malayalam language, 2nd rev. edn. (Repr. 1979.) Mangalore.
Krishnamurti, B. and J.P.L.Gwynn. 1985. A grammar of modern Telugu. Delhi.
Schiffman, H.F. 1979. A reference grammar of spoken Kannada. Seattle and London. (Repr. 1983.)
Sridhar, S.N. (ed.) 1990. Kannada. London.
Syamala, K. 1981. An intensive course in Malayalam. Mysore.
Dictionaries
Kittel, F. 1894. A Kannada-English dictionary. Mangalore and Leipzig.
Sankaranarayana, P. 1986. Telugu-English dictionary. 10th rev. and enlarged edn. New Delhi.
Malayalam lexicon. 1965–. Published by the University of Kerala. Trivandrum. Vol. 6 1988.
Etymological dictionary
Burrow, T. and M.B.Emeneau. 1960. A Dravidian etymological dictionary. (2nd edn 1984.) London.
Journal
International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics.
This is the complete article, containing 482 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
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