Journal | Bhasha
Monographic journal issue | 2 | 2 | 2023
Research Article | The Pre-Toda Verb
The Pre-Toda Verb
A Reconstruction
Abstract
Toda is a Dravidian language that is well known for its aberrant phonology, namely due to ubiquitous vowel dropping, simplification of consonant clusters, and phonemic diversification. Although efforts have succeeded to some extent in mapping these phonemes to those of related languages, the origins and implications of Toda morphology have not yet been explored in detail. This work aims to reconstruct key aspects of the Pre-Toda verb in order to provide a dataset to be faithfully used in comparative Dravidian linguistics. Here, the formation of the secondary stem and the nonpast suffixes are demonstrated to show more affinity towards Old Kannada rather than Old Tamil. At the same time, the tenseless and dubitative conjugations, along with personal terminations, are found to retain archaic Dravidian suffixes.
Submitted: Jan. 12, 2023 | Accepted: Sept. 25, 2023 | Published Nov. 3, 2023 | Language: en
Keywords Toda • Dravidian • Verb morphology • South Asian linguistics • Reconstruction
Copyright © 2023 Surya Sanjay. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/bhasha/2785-5953/2023/02/003
