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Dravidian nouns: a comparative study
388
Reviews
References Chafe, W.L., 1970. Meaning and the structure of language. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press. Jakobson, R.. 1971. Selected writings, lI: Word and language. The Hague, Paris: Mouton.
S.V. Shanmugam, Dravidian nouns: a comparative study. Annamalai University, Department of Linguistics, publication no. 25. Annamalai University, Annamalainagar, 1971. xv, 413 pp. Rs. 8.00. Reviewed by M.B. Emeneau, Dept. of Linguistics, Univ. of California, Berkeley, U.S.A. Dravidian comparative and historical studies have by now entered upon tile stage of a concerted attack on the morphology. Phonological studies have by no means exhausted the possibilities of the material. The main outlines, however, are firmly drawn, and one can expect slow but steady progress in filling in details and in solving more difficult problems. The morphology was, until 1971, at about the point where Caldwell and Bloch had left it (in respectively 1856/1875 and 1946), as P.S Subrahmanyam so accurately said (1971: i-ii). To this bald statement one must at once add the qualification that studies, some of the greatest substance and im?ortance, were made in various sections of the field, both before and after 1946: a report up to about 1966 is in the article on 'Comparative Dravidian studies' by Krishnamurti in Current trends in linguistics 5 ( ! 9 6 9 : 3 i 8 - 2 1 ). We now have the much-needed aid to morphological studies in two volumes from scholars of Annamalai University, this one on the noun by Shanmugam and th~.t on the verb by Subrahmanyam (1971), to whose general introduction i have referred above. Both follow essentially the same procedure, which Subrahmanyam has outlined (ii-iii). In each chapter the first part presents descriptive statements for each of the languages for which there is available material, and the second part "a :omparative treatment of the various suffixes and of the morphological and the syntactic constructions'. Shanmugam's volume contains treatment of the noun stems in chapter 2 ( ' G e n d e r - n u m b e r ' ) , numerals in chapter 3, and personal pronouns ( l s t , 2nd, and reflexives) in chapter 4. Chapter 5 on 'inflectional increments' and chapter 6 on 'cases' deal with the case inflection of nouns, numerals, and pronouns. Chapter 1 ('Classification') deals in a preliminary way with the gender classification of the various languages, with concord, and with such other types of classification as animate vs inanimate, count nouns vs mass nouns, nouns of time, nouns of place, and abstract nouns. Demonstrative and interrogative pronouns are treated only incidentally in chapter 1 (for their gender and number forms) and in chapter 4; in this latter place ~,175-6) they are mentioned only to state that, since their bases t~ ke adjectival and adverbial suffixes, complete analysis 'does not come under the perview [sic] of this work' and is not attempted. Dravidian structure being what it is, treatment of the noun (as thus defined) and of the verb practically exhausts it. It is disappointing, therefore, that this volume does not include treatment of the
Reviews
389
adjective, except for the incidental remarks on pp. 31ff., and for the numeral adjectives (ch. 3), which should hardly be separated from the adjective forms of the 3rd personal pronouns and from the relatively few adjectives of qualify. Pr¢.sumably we are to expect complete treatment of the adjective elsewhere. The treatment of the formation of masculine and feminine stems of nouns is very full. The form~tion of noun stems otherwise has not been undertaken at all, e.g. the relation of noun stems to verb stems, and such suffixes as -u(, -rnai, etc. etc. Again presumably this subject still awaits treatment, and the present volume is to be taken as having to do generally with noun inflection, rather than with noun formation: the volume's title is misleadingly over-general. The formation of echowords, so far as it concerns nouns, is missing too, and presumably is to l:e treated with other noun formations. The suffix * - u r n in its totalJzing use with numerals and its adhesion ~ i t h *ella. 'all (*~'lla.... m) might have been expected to appear in chapter 3, but that use, as well as its indefinitivizing use with interrogatives, will presumably have to appear in a complete treatment of the particles, it may be noted that Subrahmanyarn (1971: 236, last paragraph) makes a somewhat uninfornting statement about *-urn in concessive use, without identifying all of its occurrences by language or analysing completely either the descriptive or the comparative picture or identifying ~:his with its other usages (my forthcoming treatment of * - u r n may be referred to). The material is well presented. Analysis goes far, with due attention paid to prior work. Even if the chief basis for forms given is the etymological dictionary work of Burrow and Emeneau (1961, 1968), much has been added from other sources, e.g. early Tamil literature and Tamil dialects, fieldwork on Kanna.da dialects, and fieldwork done by Annamalai workers on various of the non-literary languages. It is, on the whole, seldom that one can point to an obvious omission like that of Malayalam COld Malayalam on G u n d e r t ' s evidence) nuppatu 't!.irty' (DED 4-.'47 and Emeneau 1967: 141) in the treatment of the numeral ' t l r e e ' and its derivatives ( 1 4 8 - 5 1 ) . Kodagu nuppad[ is ,;iven and discussed in connection with nuppatu of "central dialect of Tamil (Tiruchy and Thaajavur districts)'; it is suggested that these are independent developments. When Malayalam nuppatu is added, as well as Tirunelveli Tamil nupa6u (Kamatchinathan 1969: 9 2 - 3 , but, strangely, mupaSu on p. 97; Zvelebil 1970: 128, §1.27.8, has nuppadu. 'south of Tirunelveli'). it seems much less obvious that these are independent developments. More Tamil and Malayalam dialect material might well fill out an area which could be contained within one isoglossal outline from Coorg to Tamilnadu (south and central), looking towards one point of origin and spread from there. This discussion is marred by quotation of the Kod.agu forln once ~ i 48) as nuppad'i and once ( 151) as nuppatu. Such lack of exactitude as that j,~,~ mentioned is an unfortunate feature of the book as a whole. The one page of errata does not begin to mend the matter, and the user is compelled to go back to the printed sources if he wishes to parsue matters further: one cannot be entir,,~ly sure of the new material. One more example is perhaps in order: for the numeral 'five' the entry (154) 'Ko. aydu" must surely be corrected to read 'Kol. ayd' (no Kolami material has been utilized apart from that in Emeneau (1955: 58, 181), and both sources reported there have aye!). Such good scholarship surely demands better presentation.
390
Reviews
A somewhat inorganic addition to the book is chapter 7 'Lexicon'. It consists of two parts. The first ( 3 8 7 - 8 ) is a 'hst of nouns belonging to various subclasses discussed in the first chapter'; this might be a useful index, but only a very few examples are given in each category. The second part ( 3 8 8 - 9 8 ) contains material supplementary to DED and DEDS. This hardly forms part of the main subject of the book, but is of course a useful appendix. Many of the items come from recent Kodagu fieldwork; it is curious that, without explanation, many nouns are given as ending in consonants when one would expect Ci, the explanation must be that these are underlying forms rather than utterances. Not all the forms in this appendix are unrepresented in DED or DEDS. E.g. Kod. tehg 'coconut palm', given as an additional item for 2806, is the same as terjgi" mara already given there. Three Kolami plurals are added from Emeneau 1955: (392) 1645a kevul 'ears', (396) 3564 puvul 'flowers', and (389) 710 elkal 'rats' (which is however misprinted as elkul). No comment is needed on most of the new items, which it is hoped, can appear in later supplements to DED and DEDS. It may be noted that a few items a.'e placed in the wrong entries; e.g. Kodaga tu.va 'tail of a bird' belongs, not in DED 2777, but in DED 2790. However, some of the new entries listed by the author ( 3 8 8 - 9 ) are misjudged and should be commented on. Entry 2, Tamil kilavan_, Kannada ke!eyan, consists of items of which the first is in DED 1647 and the second should be in DED 1678. Entry 3, Tamil c6r 'a measure of capacity', etc., consists of borrowings from modern lndo-Aryan (e.g. Hindi ser; see Turner 1966: entry 13106). Similarly, entries 5 and 6, e.g. Tamil nfftakam 'drama', n~tfiyam 'dance', are borrowings from Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit and Prakrit in part) Entry 7, Tamil paccOtlti, Kodagu pacco.ndi 'chameleon'; these words are compounds of pacc-'green" (DED 3161) and onto/o.ndi 'chameleon' (DED 887). I have voiced criticism of various features of this work. This has been done in the hope that there may be thorough revision in detail when a second edition of such a useful work is being prepared.
References Burrow, T. and M.B. Emeneau, 1961. A Dravidian etymological dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (Referred to as DED.) Burrow, T. and M.B. Emeneau, 1968. A Dravidian etymological dictionary: supplement. Oxford: Clarendon Press (Referred to as DEDS.) Bioch, J., 1946. Structure grammaticale des langues dravidiennes. Paris: Librairie d'Amerique et d 'Orient. Caldwell, R., 1856/1875. A comparative glammar of the Dravidian or S o u t h l n d i a n family of languages. 1st ed. 1856; 2nd revised ed. 1875. London: Trilbner and Co. Emeneau, M.B., 1955. Kolami, a Dravidian language. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. Emeneau, M.B., 1967. Dravidian linguistics, ethnology, and folktales: collected papers. Annamalainagar: Annamalai Univ. Kamatchinathan, A., 1969. The Tirunelv~li Tamil dialect. Annamalainagar: Annamalai Univ. Krishnamurti, B., 1969. Comparative Dravidian studies. Current Trends in Linguistics 5, 309-33.
Revwws
391
S u b r a h m a n y a m , P.S,, 19"tl. Dravidian verb morphology: a comparative study. Annamalainagar: Annamalai Univ. l'urner, R.L., IC)66. \ comparative dictionary ~)f the lndo-Aryan languages. London: Oxford Univ. Press. Zveiebil, K,, 1970. ('~ reparative Dravidian phonology. The Hague: Mouton.
Brian and tlelen ( ; e y t e n b e e k , Gidabal g r a m m a r and dictionary. Australian Aboriginal Studies No. ,: 3 ~Linguistic Series No. 17). Canberra, Australian Institute of Aboriginal St~lLii,.~,, 1971. vi, 85 pp., 1 map. $6.00. Reviewed by J.T. Platt, De,~t. of Linguistics, Monash Umv., Australia. Works like this nowadays produce various t'eelings: admiration for what the authors have be~:'r~ able to extract of a dialect which at the time of writing up the v o r k had only two dozen speakers left and frustration at what a ,.great many points one is unable to extract from such a work. [towever, any frustration 1 may feel is in no way a reflection on the authors but relates to, a feeling of "what a pity it is that more linguistic work on the languages of Australia was not encouraged earlier when there were more informants available". This work is based on tagmemic theory and, as the authors m e n t i o n in their introduction, "was written during three Linguistic Workshops held by the Summer Institute of Linguistics at the University of Queensland". They mention, too, that it is based upon a total of 42 m o n t h s ' field work under the attspices of the S u m m e r Institute of Linguistics, at the Woodenbong Aboriginal Station, New S o u t h Wales, during the period 1962 .......1966. One must admire the perseverance of linguists working for so long on a dialect nearing extinction. One also feels that they are fortunate. It is in the nature of things that many researchers have been limited in their fieldwork and in the total time spent in their research b3, the pressing desire to complete the work - often with a higher Aegree in mind and often with the knowledge that funds will dry up. After the introduction, the chapters are "Phonemics', "Morphophonemics', "Nouns', 'Pronouns', 'Demonstratives', 'Adjectives', 'Verbs', 'Question words'. 'Minor word classes', ' N o u n phrases', 'Verb phrases', 'Clause types' and finally "Sentences'. The work concludes with a dictionar,; in two sections: G i d a b a l - E n g l i s h and English-Gidabal. As interest focuses more and more on l lie relationship between surface forms and underlying semantic structure, I shall concentrate on this aspect, comparing and contrasting features that are given as occurring in Gidabal with those in English and with the Western Desert dialects such as Pitjantjatjara. t Where 1 give Pitjantjatjare {or Bidjandjadjara) examples 1 have changed the usua v n o t a t i o n by using the 'voiced' symbols. ) An interesting point (p.6) is "weakening of m e a n i n g " which " m a y be achieved in all major classes of words except p r o n o u n s and question words, and also in time words and numerals, by means of reduplication of the whole or part of the word, and/or addition of length to the final vowel if this is not already long". Reduplication for wea~:ening of meaning seems unusual; one associates reduplication usually with plurality, repetition, c o n t i n u a t i o n - in general with strengthening but there are examples like:
Reviews
References Chafe, W.L., 1970. Meaning and the structure of language. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press. Jakobson, R.. 1971. Selected writings, lI: Word and language. The Hague, Paris: Mouton.
S.V. Shanmugam, Dravidian nouns: a comparative study. Annamalai University, Department of Linguistics, publication no. 25. Annamalai University, Annamalainagar, 1971. xv, 413 pp. Rs. 8.00. Reviewed by M.B. Emeneau, Dept. of Linguistics, Univ. of California, Berkeley, U.S.A. Dravidian comparative and historical studies have by now entered upon tile stage of a concerted attack on the morphology. Phonological studies have by no means exhausted the possibilities of the material. The main outlines, however, are firmly drawn, and one can expect slow but steady progress in filling in details and in solving more difficult problems. The morphology was, until 1971, at about the point where Caldwell and Bloch had left it (in respectively 1856/1875 and 1946), as P.S Subrahmanyam so accurately said (1971: i-ii). To this bald statement one must at once add the qualification that studies, some of the greatest substance and im?ortance, were made in various sections of the field, both before and after 1946: a report up to about 1966 is in the article on 'Comparative Dravidian studies' by Krishnamurti in Current trends in linguistics 5 ( ! 9 6 9 : 3 i 8 - 2 1 ). We now have the much-needed aid to morphological studies in two volumes from scholars of Annamalai University, this one on the noun by Shanmugam and th~.t on the verb by Subrahmanyam (1971), to whose general introduction i have referred above. Both follow essentially the same procedure, which Subrahmanyam has outlined (ii-iii). In each chapter the first part presents descriptive statements for each of the languages for which there is available material, and the second part "a :omparative treatment of the various suffixes and of the morphological and the syntactic constructions'. Shanmugam's volume contains treatment of the noun stems in chapter 2 ( ' G e n d e r - n u m b e r ' ) , numerals in chapter 3, and personal pronouns ( l s t , 2nd, and reflexives) in chapter 4. Chapter 5 on 'inflectional increments' and chapter 6 on 'cases' deal with the case inflection of nouns, numerals, and pronouns. Chapter 1 ('Classification') deals in a preliminary way with the gender classification of the various languages, with concord, and with such other types of classification as animate vs inanimate, count nouns vs mass nouns, nouns of time, nouns of place, and abstract nouns. Demonstrative and interrogative pronouns are treated only incidentally in chapter 1 (for their gender and number forms) and in chapter 4; in this latter place ~,175-6) they are mentioned only to state that, since their bases t~ ke adjectival and adverbial suffixes, complete analysis 'does not come under the perview [sic] of this work' and is not attempted. Dravidian structure being what it is, treatment of the noun (as thus defined) and of the verb practically exhausts it. It is disappointing, therefore, that this volume does not include treatment of the
Reviews
389
adjective, except for the incidental remarks on pp. 31ff., and for the numeral adjectives (ch. 3), which should hardly be separated from the adjective forms of the 3rd personal pronouns and from the relatively few adjectives of qualify. Pr¢.sumably we are to expect complete treatment of the adjective elsewhere. The treatment of the formation of masculine and feminine stems of nouns is very full. The form~tion of noun stems otherwise has not been undertaken at all, e.g. the relation of noun stems to verb stems, and such suffixes as -u(, -rnai, etc. etc. Again presumably this subject still awaits treatment, and the present volume is to be taken as having to do generally with noun inflection, rather than with noun formation: the volume's title is misleadingly over-general. The formation of echowords, so far as it concerns nouns, is missing too, and presumably is to l:e treated with other noun formations. The suffix * - u r n in its totalJzing use with numerals and its adhesion ~ i t h *ella. 'all (*~'lla.... m) might have been expected to appear in chapter 3, but that use, as well as its indefinitivizing use with interrogatives, will presumably have to appear in a complete treatment of the particles, it may be noted that Subrahmanyarn (1971: 236, last paragraph) makes a somewhat uninfornting statement about *-urn in concessive use, without identifying all of its occurrences by language or analysing completely either the descriptive or the comparative picture or identifying ~:his with its other usages (my forthcoming treatment of * - u r n may be referred to). The material is well presented. Analysis goes far, with due attention paid to prior work. Even if the chief basis for forms given is the etymological dictionary work of Burrow and Emeneau (1961, 1968), much has been added from other sources, e.g. early Tamil literature and Tamil dialects, fieldwork on Kanna.da dialects, and fieldwork done by Annamalai workers on various of the non-literary languages. It is, on the whole, seldom that one can point to an obvious omission like that of Malayalam COld Malayalam on G u n d e r t ' s evidence) nuppatu 't!.irty' (DED 4-.'47 and Emeneau 1967: 141) in the treatment of the numeral ' t l r e e ' and its derivatives ( 1 4 8 - 5 1 ) . Kodagu nuppad[ is ,;iven and discussed in connection with nuppatu of "central dialect of Tamil (Tiruchy and Thaajavur districts)'; it is suggested that these are independent developments. When Malayalam nuppatu is added, as well as Tirunelveli Tamil nupa6u (Kamatchinathan 1969: 9 2 - 3 , but, strangely, mupaSu on p. 97; Zvelebil 1970: 128, §1.27.8, has nuppadu. 'south of Tirunelveli'). it seems much less obvious that these are independent developments. More Tamil and Malayalam dialect material might well fill out an area which could be contained within one isoglossal outline from Coorg to Tamilnadu (south and central), looking towards one point of origin and spread from there. This discussion is marred by quotation of the Kod.agu forln once ~ i 48) as nuppad'i and once ( 151) as nuppatu. Such lack of exactitude as that j,~,~ mentioned is an unfortunate feature of the book as a whole. The one page of errata does not begin to mend the matter, and the user is compelled to go back to the printed sources if he wishes to parsue matters further: one cannot be entir,,~ly sure of the new material. One more example is perhaps in order: for the numeral 'five' the entry (154) 'Ko. aydu" must surely be corrected to read 'Kol. ayd' (no Kolami material has been utilized apart from that in Emeneau (1955: 58, 181), and both sources reported there have aye!). Such good scholarship surely demands better presentation.
390
Reviews
A somewhat inorganic addition to the book is chapter 7 'Lexicon'. It consists of two parts. The first ( 3 8 7 - 8 ) is a 'hst of nouns belonging to various subclasses discussed in the first chapter'; this might be a useful index, but only a very few examples are given in each category. The second part ( 3 8 8 - 9 8 ) contains material supplementary to DED and DEDS. This hardly forms part of the main subject of the book, but is of course a useful appendix. Many of the items come from recent Kodagu fieldwork; it is curious that, without explanation, many nouns are given as ending in consonants when one would expect Ci, the explanation must be that these are underlying forms rather than utterances. Not all the forms in this appendix are unrepresented in DED or DEDS. E.g. Kod. tehg 'coconut palm', given as an additional item for 2806, is the same as terjgi" mara already given there. Three Kolami plurals are added from Emeneau 1955: (392) 1645a kevul 'ears', (396) 3564 puvul 'flowers', and (389) 710 elkal 'rats' (which is however misprinted as elkul). No comment is needed on most of the new items, which it is hoped, can appear in later supplements to DED and DEDS. It may be noted that a few items a.'e placed in the wrong entries; e.g. Kodaga tu.va 'tail of a bird' belongs, not in DED 2777, but in DED 2790. However, some of the new entries listed by the author ( 3 8 8 - 9 ) are misjudged and should be commented on. Entry 2, Tamil kilavan_, Kannada ke!eyan, consists of items of which the first is in DED 1647 and the second should be in DED 1678. Entry 3, Tamil c6r 'a measure of capacity', etc., consists of borrowings from modern lndo-Aryan (e.g. Hindi ser; see Turner 1966: entry 13106). Similarly, entries 5 and 6, e.g. Tamil nfftakam 'drama', n~tfiyam 'dance', are borrowings from Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit and Prakrit in part) Entry 7, Tamil paccOtlti, Kodagu pacco.ndi 'chameleon'; these words are compounds of pacc-'green" (DED 3161) and onto/o.ndi 'chameleon' (DED 887). I have voiced criticism of various features of this work. This has been done in the hope that there may be thorough revision in detail when a second edition of such a useful work is being prepared.
References Burrow, T. and M.B. Emeneau, 1961. A Dravidian etymological dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (Referred to as DED.) Burrow, T. and M.B. Emeneau, 1968. A Dravidian etymological dictionary: supplement. Oxford: Clarendon Press (Referred to as DEDS.) Bioch, J., 1946. Structure grammaticale des langues dravidiennes. Paris: Librairie d'Amerique et d 'Orient. Caldwell, R., 1856/1875. A comparative glammar of the Dravidian or S o u t h l n d i a n family of languages. 1st ed. 1856; 2nd revised ed. 1875. London: Trilbner and Co. Emeneau, M.B., 1955. Kolami, a Dravidian language. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. Emeneau, M.B., 1967. Dravidian linguistics, ethnology, and folktales: collected papers. Annamalainagar: Annamalai Univ. Kamatchinathan, A., 1969. The Tirunelv~li Tamil dialect. Annamalainagar: Annamalai Univ. Krishnamurti, B., 1969. Comparative Dravidian studies. Current Trends in Linguistics 5, 309-33.
Revwws
391
S u b r a h m a n y a m , P.S,, 19"tl. Dravidian verb morphology: a comparative study. Annamalainagar: Annamalai Univ. l'urner, R.L., IC)66. \ comparative dictionary ~)f the lndo-Aryan languages. London: Oxford Univ. Press. Zveiebil, K,, 1970. ('~ reparative Dravidian phonology. The Hague: Mouton.
Brian and tlelen ( ; e y t e n b e e k , Gidabal g r a m m a r and dictionary. Australian Aboriginal Studies No. ,: 3 ~Linguistic Series No. 17). Canberra, Australian Institute of Aboriginal St~lLii,.~,, 1971. vi, 85 pp., 1 map. $6.00. Reviewed by J.T. Platt, De,~t. of Linguistics, Monash Umv., Australia. Works like this nowadays produce various t'eelings: admiration for what the authors have be~:'r~ able to extract of a dialect which at the time of writing up the v o r k had only two dozen speakers left and frustration at what a ,.great many points one is unable to extract from such a work. [towever, any frustration 1 may feel is in no way a reflection on the authors but relates to, a feeling of "what a pity it is that more linguistic work on the languages of Australia was not encouraged earlier when there were more informants available". This work is based on tagmemic theory and, as the authors m e n t i o n in their introduction, "was written during three Linguistic Workshops held by the Summer Institute of Linguistics at the University of Queensland". They mention, too, that it is based upon a total of 42 m o n t h s ' field work under the attspices of the S u m m e r Institute of Linguistics, at the Woodenbong Aboriginal Station, New S o u t h Wales, during the period 1962 .......1966. One must admire the perseverance of linguists working for so long on a dialect nearing extinction. One also feels that they are fortunate. It is in the nature of things that many researchers have been limited in their fieldwork and in the total time spent in their research b3, the pressing desire to complete the work - often with a higher Aegree in mind and often with the knowledge that funds will dry up. After the introduction, the chapters are "Phonemics', "Morphophonemics', "Nouns', 'Pronouns', 'Demonstratives', 'Adjectives', 'Verbs', 'Question words'. 'Minor word classes', ' N o u n phrases', 'Verb phrases', 'Clause types' and finally "Sentences'. The work concludes with a dictionar,; in two sections: G i d a b a l - E n g l i s h and English-Gidabal. As interest focuses more and more on l lie relationship between surface forms and underlying semantic structure, I shall concentrate on this aspect, comparing and contrasting features that are given as occurring in Gidabal with those in English and with the Western Desert dialects such as Pitjantjatjara. t Where 1 give Pitjantjatjare {or Bidjandjadjara) examples 1 have changed the usua v n o t a t i o n by using the 'voiced' symbols. ) An interesting point (p.6) is "weakening of m e a n i n g " which " m a y be achieved in all major classes of words except p r o n o u n s and question words, and also in time words and numerals, by means of reduplication of the whole or part of the word, and/or addition of length to the final vowel if this is not already long". Reduplication for wea~:ening of meaning seems unusual; one associates reduplication usually with plurality, repetition, c o n t i n u a t i o n - in general with strengthening but there are examples like: