LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Dravidian Languages: Words
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Words in Dravidian languages have the property where by reversing the consonants and applying a well defined set of transformations of the vowels, another word with a similar meaning is obtained. Over time, one form may represent the general case and the other end up representing a special case.
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The pervasive substratum influence of Dravidian on Old Indo-Aryan is ... an important clue to the presence of Dravidian in the northwestern region from the earliest times. The presence of a few Dravidian loan-words in the Rigveda is now well recognised. The Rigveda has also phonological and syntactical features borrowed from Dravidian. Among the features listed by Parpola are the retroflex sounds, gerund, quotative and onomatopoeic constructions. The Prakrit dialects too underwent a radical simplification of the Indo-Aryan syllabic structure through assimilation of consonants and intrusive vowels, features which are best explained, as Parpola points out, as adjustment to the phonology of a Dravidian substratum.
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Proto-Dravidian used only suffixes, never prefixes or infixes, in the construction of inflected forms. Hence, the roots of words always occurred at the beginning. Nouns, verbs, and indeclinable words constituted the original word classes.
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Notice above that the Dravidian words manifesting the correspondence between initial k and initial s are listed in different group numbers. Note ... that there are numerous other examples than the above listed seventy-five which also demonstrate this phonetic correspondence in Dravidian. But this correspondence is not universal in Dravidian because initial k remains the same in many Dravidian languages (which is noted by DED also), and this can be easily witnessed by anyone who has DED available to him or her, because the corresponding words are listed in the same groups which have words beginning with k.
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Dravidian nouns are divided into two classes, which Tamil grammarians called high-caste and casteless respectively. The former includes those nouns which denote beings endowed with reason, the latter all others. Gender is only distinguished in the former class, while all casteless nouns are neuter. The gender of animals (which are irrational) must accordingly be distinguished by using different words for the male and the female, or else by adding words meaning male, female, respectively, to the name of the animal - processes which do not, strictly speaking, fall under the head of grammar.
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Nyland found that Arysio Nunes collected as many Guanche words as possible and then compared them with Dravidian. Dravidian equivalents were obtained from “A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary” by T. Burrows and M.B. Emeneau (Oxford 1984). Arysio added that one should pay attention to the phonetic correspondences only, disregarding the actual spelling, because of the Dravidian alphabet being different from the Roman one adopted for the Guanche language. It must be assumed that he did his work well, because Nyland was unable to verify it.
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