Elamo-Dravidian languages

The Elamo-Dravidian languages are a hypothetical family of languages that would include the Dravidian languages of India and Pakistan, as well as Elamite, a dead language spoken in the former Elamite Empire, in what is now southwestern India. Iran. Linguist David McAlpin has been the main proponent of the Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis. In addition to the Elamite and Dravidian languages, some speculate that the language or languages spoken in the ancient Indus civilization, also known as the Harappan civilization, belong to this group.

David McAlpin (1975) has identified several similarities between Elamite and Dravidian. He proposed that approximately 20% of the Dravidian and Elamite vocabulary are cognates, and that probably a further 12% are as well. The Elamite and Dravidian languages have second person personal pronouns and parallel declensions. They have identical derivatives, abstract nouns, and the same structure "verb root + tense marks + person ending". Both have two positive tenses, a "preterite" and a "non-preterit".

The Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis is based on various other evidences. It seems that agriculture developed in the Near East and later spread to the Indus Valley, suggesting that Elamite farmers brought agriculture to the Indus Valley. Later evidence of extensive trade between Elam and the Indus Civilization suggests enduring ties between the two regions. Proponents of the hypothesis have highlighted similarities between the Harappan script, which has not yet been deciphered, and the Elamite script.

The uneven distribution of the living Dravidian languages, concentrated mainly in southern India but with isolated enclaves in Pakistan and northeast India, suggest a much wider original distribution of the Dravidian languages. A later arrival of Indo-European languages from India and Pakistan in the Indus and Ganges valleys would explain the persistence of pockets of Dravidian language speakers in marginal montane areas. A series of lexical loanwords from Sanskrit in Dravidian languages (for example, phalam: 'ripe fruit', mulcham or mukham: 'mouth', and khala: ground for threshing) indicate close contact between the two languages. The retroflex consonants that exist in Sanskrit and Dravidian, but not in Iranian or European languages, could indicate a Dravidian substratum for Sanskrit.

Some scholars of the Harappan script, including Asko Parpola and Walter A. Fairservis Jr., argue that the inhabitants of the Indus culture spoke Dravidian languages, while others, such as S. R. Rao, argue that the Harappan script conceals an Indo-European language similar to Sanskrit.

Lexical comparison

The numerals in different Elamo-Dravidian languages are:

GLOSA	Dravidic					Ancient the
	Dravidicseptentrional	Department	Dravidicsuroccidental	Dravidicomeridional	PROTO- DRAVÍDICO
'1'	*or-	*okut	*ogna	♪	♪ oru-~ ♪	ki-
'2'	♪	♪iru-	*irunati	*irānafiru	♪iru-~ ♪	sea ~ mair ~ Marra
'3'	*mur-	*muv-	*mūna	♪	*muv-~ *mū-	ziti
'4'		*nāl-	*nāl-	*nālaku	*nāl
'5'		♪ CayNd-	*(s)ayu)g	♪	♪ CayN-	tuku
'6'		*cāru	*(s)āru	*āru	*ca lady- ♪ cāng
'7'		*ēdivu	*ēnnau	*ēuu	*ēr-u-
'8'		♪ ini...	♪ ennimidi	*eṭṭu	*eṭṭu~ ♪
'9'		*tom-	*tommidi	♪	♪o--pak-tu
'10'		♪ Padi	♪ Padi	*pattu	*pak-tu

In the table above we have written <d, ḍ> they are only allophones of nasal or intervocalics of /t, ṭ/. The special signs used in the table above use signs traditionally used for the languages of India which have the following IPA equivalents:

• The signs /ṭ, TED,,,).,)./ represent retroflexes that in AFI are removed as /).,).,).,).,).,)./).
• The sign /./ represents the nose watch designated in AFI as /φ/.