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MAY, 1904.]
MUNDAS AND DRAVIDAS.
123
The semi-consonants can accordingly be described as checked consonants without the off-glide.
Those sounds are almost exclusively used at the end of words. It will be seen that their existence is in thorough disagreement with the phonetical laws prevailing in Dravidian. In those latter forms of speech the common tendency is to protract the off-glide of final consonants so that it becomes a short indistinct vowel.
The phonetical systems of the Mundâ and Dravidian forms of speech differ also in other respects. Thus the semi-vowels y and w are in the Mandâ languages only used in order to avoid the hiatus between concurrent vowels, and there is nothing to correspond to the many cerebral and I sounds of the Dravidian languages. There is only one cerebral r in addition to the ordinary r, and one l-sound.
The difference in phonetical system is of some importance, because we often find that even languages which have nothing to do with each other agree phonetically when they are spoken in the same neighbourhood.
Formation of words. The Mandâ languages, like the Dravidian ones, make use of suffixes in order to form new words from already existing bases. The Mundâ suffixes are, however, almost exclusively pronominal, and the Munda languages do not, so far as I can see, possess anything which corresponds to the various formative additions of the Dravidian forms of speech. On the other hand, the infixes which play so great a rôle in the formation of Mundâ words, are not a feature of Dravidian grammar. The Mon-khmer languages, on the other hand, and the dialects spoken by the aboriginal tribes of the Malay Peninsula, in this respect agree with Mundâ.
Nouns. Dravidian nouns can be divided into two classes, those that denote rational beings, and those that denote irrational beings respectively. These classes differ in the formation of the plural, and partly also in the declension of the singular. Moreover, such nouns as denote rational beings often have different forms to denote male and female individuals, respectively. Compare Tamil magan, son; magal, daughter. There is, however, some uncertainty as to whether this latter feature is originally Dravidian. The facts are as follows.
Tamil, Malayalam, and Canarese, have different forms for the masculine and feminine singular of such nouns as denote rational beings, the so-called high-caste nouns. In the plural, on the other hand, both genders have the same form, but differ from such nouns as denote irrational beings and things. The latter class of nouns I shall hereafter call neuter. The suffixes of the masculine and feminine singular are an and al, respectively.
Brâhîi does not distinguish the genders, even in the case of rational beings. Most other languages of the family, Kurukh, Malto, Kui, Gôndi, Kôlâmî, and Telugu, have no feminine singular, but use the neater form instead. Kui and Gordi also use the neuter gender in the feminine plural of high-caste nouns.
There are, however, several indications which make it probable that a separate feminine singular is an old feature of the Dravidian languages.
Kumarila Bhatta (probably 7th century A. D.) mentions d as a stri-pratyaya, i. e., feminine suffix. Bishop Caldwell further compares the Tamil suffix al with the termination in Telugu kôdalu, daughter-in-law; Kui kudi, a Kai woman, and also with Telugu ádu, female. Compare, however, Kurukh dli, woman. Traces of a feminine suffix dl or ár are also occasionally met with in Gôndi verbal forms such as mandál, she, or it, is; kidr, she, or it, does. Telugu forms such as abide and áme, she; okate, one woman, also point to the conclusion that the distinction of the masculine and feminine genders is not an innovation of Tamil and Canarese.
