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36-470: As a proto-language , Proto-Dravidian is not itself attested in historical records. Its modern conception is based solely on reconstruction . It is suggested that the language was spoken in the 4th millennium BCE, and started evolving into various branches around 3rd-millennium BCE. The origin and territory of the Proto-Dravidian speakers is uncertain, but some suggestions have been made based on

72-487: A weed . Wide expanses of the tropics, especially the Neotropics , have been converted to pastures of Urochloa species to support livestock . In Brazil, 80 million hectares of native habitat have been planted with African grasses, mostly Urochloa . Introduced species such as Urochloa grasses can degrade habitat and compete with native species. In Northern Australia , the exotic Urochloa eminii competes with

108-406: A different language do not reflect the phylogeny to be tested, and, if used, will detract from the compatibility. Getting the right dataset for the comparative method is a major task in historical linguistics. Some universally accepted proto-languages are Proto-Afroasiatic , Proto-Indo-European , Proto-Uralic , and Proto-Dravidian . In a few fortuitous instances, which have been used to verify

144-411: A language to change, and "[as] a result, our reconstructions tend to have a strong bias toward the average language type known to the investigator." Such an investigator finds themselves blinkered by their own linguistic frame of reference . The advent of the wave model raised new issues in the domain of linguistic reconstruction, causing the reevaluation of old reconstruction systems and depriving

180-459: A laryngeal. The Northern Dravidian languages Kurukh , Malto and Brahui cannot easily be derived from the traditional Proto-Dravidian phonological system. McAlpin (2003) proposes that they branched off from an earlier stage of Proto-Dravidian than the conventional reconstruction, which would apply only to the other languages. He suggests reconstructing a richer system of dorsal stop consonants: Below are some crop plants that have been found in

216-489: A mother language. Occasionally, the German term Ursprache ( pronounced [ˈuːɐ̯ʃpʁaːxə] ; from ur- 'primordial', 'original' + Sprache 'language') is used instead. It is also sometimes called the common or primitive form of a language (e.g. Common Germanic , Primitive Norse ). In the strict sense, a proto-language is the most recent common ancestor of a language family, immediately before

252-477: A prominent vein in the center of the leaf. Brachiaria are C 4 species and can tolerate drier conditions and more light exposure than some other plants. Urochloa species can grow in many environments, from swamps to shady forest to semidesert, but generally do best in savannas and other open tropical ecosystems such as in East Africa. In Angola, Urochloa brizantha grows on termite mounds and in

288-535: Is a genus of plants in the grass family , native to tropical and subtropical regions of Eurasia , Africa, Australia, the Americas , and various islands. Several species of the genus Urochloa are cultivated as forage and some species of were probably first introduced unintentionally to the Americas in the colonial period, from slave ships. Urochloa eminii was introduced to Brazil in 1952. Urochloa

324-667: Is attested only fragmentarily. There are no objective criteria for the evaluation of different reconstruction systems yielding different proto-languages. Many researchers concerned with linguistic reconstruction agree that the traditional comparative method is an "intuitive undertaking." The bias of the researchers regarding the accumulated implicit knowledge can also lead to erroneous assumptions and excessive generalization. Kortlandt (1993) offers several examples in where such general assumptions concerning "the nature of language" hindered research in historical linguistics. Linguists make personal judgements on how they consider "natural" for

360-415: Is by definition a linguistic reconstruction formulated by applying the comparative method to a group of languages featuring similar characteristics. The tree is a statement of similarity and a hypothesis that the similarity results from descent from a common language. The comparative method, a process of deduction , begins from a set of characteristics, or characters, found in the attested languages. If

396-465: Is given to the hypotheses of highest compatibility. The differences in compatibility must be explained by various applications of the wave model . The level of completeness of the reconstruction achieved varies, depending on how complete the evidence is from the descendant languages and on the formulation of the characters by the linguists working on it. Not all characters are suitable for the comparative method. For example, lexical items that are loans from

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432-571: Is not considered a separate phoneme in Proto-Dravidian. However, it attained phonemic status in languages like Malayalam, Gondi , Konda and Pengo because the original sequence *ṅk was simplified to *ṅ or *ṅṅ . The glottal fricative *H has been proposed by Krishnamurti (2003) to account for the Old Tamil Aytam ( Āytam ) and other Dravidian comparative phonological phenomena. P. S. Subrahmanyam reconstructs 6 nasals for PD compared to 4 by Krishnamurti, who also does not reconstruct

468-419: Is one of the features distinguishing it from South Central branch and North made it /r, s/. For example, Tamil āṟu , Tulu āji , Naiki sādi , Kui hāja ; Tamil puṟṟu , Tulu puñca , Kannada huttu , Naiki puṭṭa , Konda puRi , Malto pute ; Tamil onṟu , Tulu oñji , Pengo ronje , Brahui asi . Velar nasal *ṅ occurred only before *k in Proto-Dravidian (as in many of its daughter languages). Therefore, it

504-659: Is termed "Pre-X", as in Pre–Old Japanese. It is also possible to apply internal reconstruction to a proto-language, obtaining a pre-proto-language, such as Pre-Proto-Indo-European. Both prefixes are sometimes used for an unattested stage of a language without reference to comparative or internal reconstruction. "Pre-X" is sometimes also used for a postulated substratum , as in the Pre-Indo-European languages believed to have been spoken in Europe and South Asia before

540-514: Is the most widely used tropical grass in Central and South America, with about 40 million hectares planted in Brazil alone. This genus was described in 1812. It is similar to the genus Panicum , and some authors believe Panicum is ancestral to it. A phylogenetic analysis concluded that species of the former genus Brachiaria formed a monophyletic group with those of Urochloa , along with

576-697: The ecotone between grassland and woodland habitat. In the Kora National Reserve in Kenya, Urochloa species dominate the ground layer along with those of the genus Aristida . In India, the native Urochloa ramosa is an important food source for the Eurasian collared dove and Urochloa species are forage for other local herbivores. In North America, the native Urochloa platyphylla ( broadleaf signalgrass), grows after heavy rains and then reproduces prodigiously and quickly, sometimes becoming

612-536: The paleolithic era in which those dialects formed the linguistic structure of the IE language group. In his view, Indo-European is solely a system of isoglosses which bound together dialects which were operationalized by various tribes , from which the historically attested Indo-European languages emerged. Proto-languages evidently remain unattested. As Nicholas Kazanas  [ de ] puts it: Brachiaria Urochloa , commonly known as signalgrass ,

648-429: The realist or the abstractionist position. Even the widely studied proto-languages, such as Proto-Indo-European , have drawn criticism for being outliers typologically with respect to the reconstructed phonemic inventory . The alternatives such as glottalic theory , despite representing a typologically less rare system, have not gained wider acceptance, and some researchers even suggest the use of indexes to represent

684-585: The rock cavy , a native rodent of the caatinga . Urochloa is the single most important genus of forage grass for pastures in the tropics. Urochloa cultivars can grow in infertile and acidic soils. Brazil is the leading user and producer of Urochloa seeds in the Americas. Mexico has put effort into improving its trade in Urochloa cultivars, and the grass is thought to have made a positive impact on its milk and beef industries. Central American countries have also increased seed sales and area planted in

720-410: The tree model of historical linguistics , a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family . Proto-languages are usually unattested, or partially attested at best. They are reconstructed by way of the comparative method . In the family tree metaphor, a proto-language can be called

756-550: The Proto-Dravidians. These characteristics can be accommodated within multiple contemporary cultures, including: Proto-Dravidian contrasted between five short and long vowels: *a , *ā , *i , *ī , *u , *ū , *e , *ē , *o , *ō . The sequences *ai and *au are treated as *ay and *av (or * aw ). Proto-Dravidian has been reconstructed as having the following consonant phonemes: The singular alveolar plosive *ṯ developed into an alveolar trill /r/ in many of

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792-792: The South and South Central languages, it later merged with the tap in many of them; Tulu has /d͡ʒ, d̪, ɾ/ as reflexes, Manda-Kui made it /d͡ʒ/ and Hill-Maria Gondi made it /ʁ/. *ṯṯ and *nṯ became /r̥, nr/ in Konda and [tr, ndr] in many Tamil dialects. Apart from them, other languages did not rhotacize it, instead either preserving them or merging it with other sets of stops like dentals in Kannada, retroflexes in Telugu or palatals in Manda-Kui and some languages of Kerala. Central made all alveolars dental which

828-759: The Southern Neolithic complex of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh , along with their Proto-Dravidian or Proto-South Dravidian reconstructions by Southworth (2005) . In some cases, the proto-form glosses differ from the species identified from archaeological sites. For example, the two Southern Neolithic staple grasses Brachiaria ramosa and Setaria verticillata respectively correspond to the reconstructed Proto-Dravidian forms for Sorghum vulgare and Setaria italica as early Dravidian speakers shifted to millet species that were later introduced to South India. Basic vocabulary of Proto-Dravidian selected from Krishnamurti (2003) : Proto-language In

864-617: The ancestor of the modern Scandinavian languages , is attested, albeit in fragmentary form, in the Elder Futhark . Although there are no very early Indo-Aryan inscriptions, the Indo-Aryan languages of modern India all go back to Vedic Sanskrit (or dialects very closely related to it), which has been preserved in texts accurately handed down by parallel oral and written traditions for many centuries. The first person to offer systematic reconstructions of an unattested proto-language

900-424: The arrival there of Indo-European languages. When multiple historical stages of a single language exist, the oldest attested stage is normally termed "Old X" (e.g. Old English and Old Japanese ). In other cases, such as Old Irish and Old Norse , the term refers to the language of the oldest known significant texts. Each of these languages has an older stage ( Primitive Irish and Proto-Norse respectively) that

936-475: The disputed series of plosives. On the other end of the spectrum, Pulgram (1959 :424) suggests that Proto-Indo-European reconstructions are just "a set of reconstructed formulae" and "not representative of any reality". In the same vein, Julius Pokorny in his study on Indo-European , claims that the linguistic term IE parent language is merely an abstraction, which does not exist in reality and should be understood as consisting of dialects possibly dating back to

972-501: The entire set can be accounted for by descent from the proto-language, which must contain the proto-forms of them all, the tree, or phylogeny, is regarded as a complete explanation and by Occam's razor , is given credibility. More recently, such a tree has been termed "perfect" and the characters labelled "compatible". No trees but the smallest branches are ever found to be perfect, in part because languages also evolve through horizontal transfer with their neighbours. Typically, credibility

1008-418: The family started to diverge into the attested daughter languages . It is therefore equivalent with the ancestral language or parental language of a language family. Moreover, a group of lects that are not considered separate languages, such as the members of a dialect cluster , may also be described as descending from a unitary proto-language. Typically, the proto-language is not known directly. It

1044-399: The genera Eriochloa and Melinis , and that further molecular and morphological work is needed to establish clear relationships. Urochloa species are annual or perennial grasses, most lacking rhizomes . The inflorescence is a branching panicle , and the plant reaches about a meter in height. The plants are bisexual and the flowers are fleshy, with 3 anthers . Some species have

1080-530: The general area in which the Dravidians were living before the separation of branches. According to Franklin Southworth (2005), the Proto-Dravidian vocabulary is characteristic of a rural economy based on agriculture, animal husbandry and hunting. However, there are some indications of a society more complex than a rural one: This evidence is not sufficient to determine with certainty the territory of

1116-790: The grass. The annual growth rate of seed sales in 2009 was 32% in Mexico, 62% in Honduras, 45% in Nicaragua, 39% in Costa Rica, and 54% in Panama. The area planted with Urochloa during this period was about 6.5% of the total surface of permanent grasses in Mexico, 12.5% in Honduras, 1% in Nicaragua, 18.7% in Costa Rica, and 0.1% in Panama. Agricultural pests of Urochloa include spittlebugs , leafcutter ants , and mound-building termites . Other insect pests include: As of 2024, more than

Proto-Dravidian language - Misplaced Pages Continue

1152-533: The method and the model (and probably ultimately inspired it ), a literary history exists from as early as a few millennia ago, allowing the descent to be traced in detail. The early daughter languages, and even the proto-language itself, may be attested in surviving texts. For example, Latin is the proto-language of the Romance language family, which includes such modern languages as French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan and Spanish. Likewise, Proto-Norse ,

1188-469: The native tree Alphitonia petriei by inhibiting the growth of seedlings, slowing the conversion of abandoned pastureland to natural forest. In the Paragominas area of Brazil, however, native forest outcompetes cultivated stands of Urochloa and other exotic forage grasses, and ranchers struggle to maintain pasture cover. Native species may also utilize exotic Urochloa as a food resource, such as

1224-506: The proto-language of its "uniform character." This is evident in Karl Brugmann 's skepticism that the reconstruction systems could ever reflect a linguistic reality. Ferdinand de Saussure would even express a more certain opinion, completely rejecting a positive specification of the sound values of reconstruction systems. In general, the issue of the nature of proto-language remains unresolved, with linguists generally taking either

1260-625: The reconstructed Proto-Dravidian vocabulary. The reconstruction has been done on the basis of cognate words present in the different branches ( Northern , Central and Southern ) of the Dravidian language family. According to Fuller (2007) , the botanical vocabulary of Proto-Dravidian is characteristic of the dry deciduous forests of central and peninsular India. For the Southern Dravidians, this region extends from Saurashtra and Central India to South India . It thus represents

1296-405: Was August Schleicher ; he did so for Proto-Indo-European in 1861. Normally, the term "Proto-X" refers to the last common ancestor of a group of languages, occasionally attested but most commonly reconstructed through the comparative method , as with Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic . An earlier stage of a single language X, reconstructed through the method of internal reconstruction ,

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