The Body in Nilgiri Tribal Languages a Contribution to Areal Linguistic Studies

Abstract

0.1. IN 1956, M. B. EMENEAU defined 'linguistic areas' as such areas include languages belonging to more than one family but showing traits common which are found not to belong to the other members of (at least) one of the families. Some discussion has been, however, going on as to the application of the theory and methodology to situations which languages of the same family or dialects of the same language would be involved.2 G. F. Diffloth and myself have identified some features of diffusion and convergence among the various tribal languages of the Nilgiris South India, all belonging to the Dravidian family, and, most probably, to its South Dravidian branch, and 1980 I have specifically expressed 'a plea' for Nilgiri areal using the term 'microarea'.' Recently, Emeneau, with the lucidity and insight characteristic of all his writings, reviewed the problem, and accepted the fact that the recognition of the extensive polyglottism and bilingualism/ multilingualism typical of the Nilgiris leads one to attempt consideration of the Nilgiris as a 'linguistic area'.4 Elsewhere the same paper he explicitly states that, whereas the languages of the Nilgiris indeed belong to one family or even to one subbranch of a family, in this sense the Nilgiris can be treated as a linguistic microarea.5 0.2. Once the Nilgiri linguistic microarea has been established by the identification of structural traitsand Emeneau thinks it has now been established, at least a preliminary way-it may be bolstered by examination of lexical items. The most profitable strategy seems to me to be to start investigating a large enough semantic group, preferably of items connected intimately with the 'real' life of the people speaking the tribal languages. I believe that the human body represents such semantic field par excellence. I have a rich list of items pertaining to the various parts of human body culled from different sources representing the following languages spoken the larger Nilgiri area: Toda, Kota, Mele Nadu Irula, VWtte Kadu Irula, Urali-Irula, Kasaba-Irula, Alu Kurumba, Palu Kurumba, JEnu Kurumba, Shalega, with some additional data from Mud.uga, Badaga, Bettu Kurumba and Paniyan.6 My list can naturally not pretend to be at all complete. Even after my own repeated fieldtrips, and with all the data published the DED and DEDS, D. B. Kapp's large monograph on Alu Kurumba, and various other sources on Toda, Kota and Irula published by Emeneau, Diffloth, Sakthivel, Perialwar and others, there are immense lacunae which have to be filled. Nevertheless, the data seem to be rich enough to yield some results when investigated as one pertinent group of connected items, and to draw some valid conclusions concerning their etymology, derivational morphology, and semantics. This is precisely what I intend to do the following paper, limiting myself to the various parts of the body while ignoring, for the present at least, bodily functions and activities, and bodily states as well as physical abnormalities. 1. Bodil 'as such' 1. 1. Initially, there was some confusion between words derived from *me} (DED 4162), and those connected with Ko. ven 'back' (DED 4518 Ka. hennu). Darticularlv | Emeneau, M. B., India as a linguistic area, Language 32 (1956) 3-16. 2 Emeneau, M. B., Indlia and Historical Grammar, Annamalainagar, 1965. ' Zvelebil. K. V., A plea for Nilgiri areal studies, International Journal of Dra'idlian Linguistics 9 (1980) 1-22. 4Emeneau, M. B., The Languages of the Nilgiris, prepublication copy, to be included a volume on the Nilgiris, ed. by Paul Hockings. Courtesy of the author. P. 10. 5 Ibid., p. 11. 6 As from this point, the enumerated languages will be designated by the following abbreviations: To., Ko., MNIr., VKIr., Ur., Kas., AKu., PKu., JKu., Sh., Mud., Bad., BKu., P. Other language abbreviations are Ta. Tamil, Ka. = Kannada, Ma. = Malayalam, Skt. = Sanskrit, Pa. = Pali, Pkt. Prakrit, IA = Indo-Aryan, Dr. = Dravidian, SDr. = South Dravidian. Other language names are not abbreviated.