Dravidian and Uralian: The Lexical Evidence

Abstract

A linguistic relationship between Dravidian and Uralian has been suspected for many years.l Yet, after the early work of Caldwell, Schrader, von Hevesy, and others, the problem failed to interest linguists until the publication of Burrow 1943. Even then, little interest was generated. Sebeok questioned some of Burrow's correspondences and argued that comparison between Dravidian and Uralian was premature. In this he was repeating the words of Caldwell (1913:62), who observed that the relation between Dravidian and Uralian could 'never be definitely solved without previously ascertaining, by a careful intercomparison of dialects, what were the most ancient grammatical forms and the most essential characteristics of the Dravidian languages and of the various families of languages included in the Scythian group respectively.'2 But with the publication of the Dravidian Etymological Dictionary (Burrow & Emeneau 1961, hereafter DED) and the comparative work of Collinder (1955, 1957, 1960), at least a minimum of the conditions noted by both Caldwell and Sebeok have been fulfilled. It is the purpose of this paper to provide further evidence of a genetic relationship between Dravidian and Uralian. This evidence consists of a list of 153 proto-forms related by systematic phonemic correspondences. Borrowing seems unlikely as an explanation for these correspondences. Many of the correspondences are so complex that they can only be explained as the result of a series of historical changes in each language family, and a fair number involve words for items of everyday use ('basic vocabulary') that are generally felt to be resistant to replacement. It is also significant that, of the 72 items in Collinder's list of Uralic-Altaic correspondences in the Fenno-Ugric Vocabulary