South Dravidian (also called "South Dravidian I") is one of the four major branches of the

Dravidian languages The Dravidian languages are a language family, family of languages spoken by 250 million people, primarily in South India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan, with pockets elsewhere in South Asia. The most commonly spoken Dravidian l ...

family. It includes the literary languages

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

Kannada Kannada () is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly in the state of Karnataka in southwestern India, and spoken by a minority of the population in all neighbouring states. It has 44 million native speakers, and is additionally a ...

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of ...

and Tulu, as well as several non-literary languages such as Badaga, Irula, Kota, Kurumba, Toda and Kodava. Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam are recognized among the

official languages of India , 22 languages have been classified as scheduled languages under the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India. There is no national language of India. While the constitution was adopted in 1950, article 343 declared that Hindi would be th ...

and are spoken mainly in

South India South India, also known as Southern India or Peninsular India, is the southern part of the Deccan Peninsula in India encompassing the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana as well as the union territories of ...

. All three are officially recognized as classical languages by the Government of India, along with

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

, Telugu, and Odia.

Phonological features

Standard

and

have both retroflex lateral and retroflex approximant sounds, whereas most of the remaining like

have merged the central approximant with the lateral. Evidence shows that both retroflex approximant and the retroflex laterals were once (before the 10th century) also present in Kannada. However, all the retroflex

approximant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do prod ...

s changed into retroflex laterals in Kannada later. In Kannada, the bilabial voiceless plosive () at the beginning of many words has disappeared to produce a glottal fricative () or has disappeared completely. This change was later taken to other Kannadoid languages and Tuluoid languages like Bellari and Koraga, e.g. Tamil ''peyar'', Kannada ''hesaru'', Bellari/Koraga ''hudari''; Tamil ''puṟṟu'', Jenu Kuruba ''uṯṯu'', Ka. ''puttu, huttu, uttu.'' Tamil-Malayalam and Telugu show the conversion of

Voiceless velar plosive The voiceless velar plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in almost all spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is k. The sound is a ver ...

() into Voiceless palatal plosive () at the beginning of the words (refer to

comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards ...

for details). Kannada and other languages, however, are totally inert to this change and hence the velar plosives are retained as such or with minimum changes in the corresponding words, e.g. Tamil/Malayalam ''cey'', Irula ''cē(y)-'', Toda ''kïy-'', Kannada ''key/gey'', Badaga ''gī-'', Telugu ''cēyu '', Gondi ''kīānā ''. Tulu is characterized by its r/l and s/c/t alternation, for e.g. ''sarɛ, tarɛ'' across Tulu dialects compare with Kannada ''tale''. The alveolar ṯ, ṯṯ, nṯ became post alveolar or dental, the singular ones usually becomes a trill in other Dravidian languages, e.g. Tamil ''oṉṟu, āṟu, nāṟu, nāṟṟam, muṟi, kīṟu;'' Tulu ''oñji, āji, nāduni, nāta, , .'' The retroflex approximant mostly became a and also , e.g. Tamil ''ēẓu, puẓu,'' Tulu '', puru.'' The vowels have mostly remained the same with the 5 /a, e, i, o, u/ + length; Malayalam and Tulu have an extra /ə̆/ and /ɯ/. The Nilagiri languages developed a set of centralized vowel around retroflexes and alveolars with Irula having /ɨ, ʉ, ə, ɵ/ + length. Kurumba languages have nasalized vowels, e.g. Jenu Kuruba ''ã·we'', Kannada ''āme, āve, ēve, ēme,'' Tamil ''yāmai, āmai.''

Grammar

Most Malayalamoid languages including Malayalam lost the pronounial endings of verbs. Kannada lost clusivity. Old Tamil retained the PD like tense system of past vs non past but none currently do, all have past, present, future. Common plural marker is -kaḷ(u) in Tamil-Kannada while Tulu uses -ḷŭ, -kuḷŭ, certain Malayalamoid languages use other methods like -ya in Ravula and having kuṟe before the word in Eranadan. Most languages outside Kannadoid have plural pronouns as singular form suffixed with the plural marker, e.g., Kannada ''nīvu'' (PD *''nīm''), Malayalam ''niṅṅaḷ, (nīn-kaḷ),'' Tulu ''nikuḷu''.http://www.languageinindia.com/july2013/ravisankarkeralatriballanguages.pdf

Classification and terminology

The Dravidian languages form a close-knit family. Four subgroups are generally accepted: South Dravidian, South-Central Dravidian, Central Dravidian and North Dravidian. Most scholars agree that the South Dravidian and South-Central Dravidian branches (called "Tamil-Tulu" and "Telugu-Kui" in ) are more closely related to each other than to the other branches of the Dravidian languages. For this reason, Krishnamurti suggested the alternative terms ''South Dravidian I'' for the former branch and ''South Dravidian II'' for the latter. South Dravidian is classified internally into two subbranches: Tamil–Kannada and Tulu. The languages that constitute the Tamil–Kannada branch are

, Irula, Toda, Kota, Kodava, and Badaga and the languages that constitute the Tulu branch are Tulu, Koraga, Kudiya, Bellari. According to R. C. Hiremath, Director of International School of Dravidian Linguistics in Trivandrum, the separation of Tamil and Kannada into independent languages from the Tamil–Kannada inner branch started with the separation of Tulu in about 1500 BCE and completed in about 300 BCE. * South Dravidian (= "South DravidianI", "Tamil–Tulu") ** Tamil-Kannada *** **** ***** ****** ******* ******** Tamil languages, including

******** Malayalam languages, including

******* Irula 11,870 (2011 census) ****** Kodava 113,857 (2011 census) ***** Toda 1,600 (2001 census) **** Kota 930 (2001 census) *** Kannada languages, including

and Badaga ** *** Koraga 45-50 (2018) *** Tulu 1,850,000 (2011 census) *** Kudiya 2,800 (2007)

References

Citations

Sources

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tamil-Kannada Language Agglutinative languages Dravidian languages Languages of India