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From: selvakum@valluvar.uwaterloo.ca (C.R. Selvakumar)
Subject: Re: Acquisition of phonemes thfough foreign influences
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Date: Fri, 22 Sep 1995 22:46:52 GMT
References: <43q7i7$93b@ixnews2.ix.netcom.com> <43rjad$79f@spool.cs.wisc.edu> <43udn4$nsv@dove.nist.gov>
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In article <43udn4$nsv@dove.nist.gov>,
Bill Fisher <billf@jaguar.ncsl.nist.gov> wrote:
>In article <43rjad$79f@spool.cs.wisc.edu>, krisna@cham.cs.wisc.edu (Krishna Kunchithapadam) writes:
>> philldon@ix.netcom.com (donald phillips ) writes:
>> :
>> : Are languages known to acquire phonemes as a result of foreign
>> : influence?  I am thinking specifically of English after the Norman
>> : invasion and through the Renaissance.  It occurs to me that English has
>> : the 'zh' phoneme, primarily (as far as I know) in French
>> : borrowings 'treasure', 'casual'.  German, English's close relative,
>> : does not.  Did 'zh' exist in English pre-1066?
>> :     On the other hand, the Hebrew 'cherub' and 'chutzpah' are not
>> : pronounced with the Hebrew 'kh' but with the English 'ch' (as in
>> : cheese) or 'k'.  
>> I would think that English is a glorious exception to the rule
>> that languages borrow words, not sounds.  Even English does not ...
>
>  If languages don't borrow sounds, it's hard to understand the
>currency of retroflexion in the Indian sub-continent.

  I'm interested in understanding why you or scholars probably
  think that indian languages ( I think you mean the langauges in the
  northern indian sub-continent ) 'borrowed' the *retroflex*. 
  I'm interested in knowing the arguments for deciding why it can not be
  that they ( north indians) borrowed other stuff and NOT the 'retroflex'
  ( or in other words the possibility that retroflex *is* their 
  'native' 'sound/phoneme') ? For all I can guess the vast majority of north
  indians are probably dravidians speaking a dravidian language ( with
  retroflex and other syntactical features idiom etc.) but with a heavy
  borrowing of the words from the 'indo-aryan dialects' ! The fact that Old
  Indo Aryan(OIA) appears to have undergone a Middle Indo Aryan(MIA) 
  'stage' and and then into 'New Indo Aryan' (NIA) stage might
  imply that the authors of those OIA or MIA underwent these changes.
  Why can't it be that even in the OIA PERIOD the local people were speaking
  an ancient version of of the NIA ( not traceable to OIA ) but having
  similar syntactical features and structure as NIA but probably with less
  'indo-aryan' words ? The OIA --> MIA might be the linguistic history 
  of some other subset of northern indian population ( say indo-aryan tribes
  instead of possibly native tribes) 
  *who may have progressively absorbed the more ancient versions of NIA*??
  If not why not ?

  What are the compelling reasons to believe that NIA languages are 
  'indo-aryan or indo-iranian' and NOT dravidian or Munda
  ( core words, interogative pronouns what else ??).  
>
> - billf

  Thanks, Selva

