Toda language

Toda () is a indigenous Dravidian language, spoken by the Toda people, who live in the Nilgiri Hills of South India. It is noted for its fricatives and trills. The language is considered to have originated from the Toda-Kota subgroup of South Dravidian. Linguist Bhadriraju Krishnamurti does not consider the existence of a single Toda-Kota branch and says Kota split first and Toda later as Kota doesn't have the centralized vowels of other Tamil-Toda languages.

Phonology Vowels Toda language has sixteen vowels, an unusually large number for a Dravidian language. There are eight vowel qualities, each of which may occur long or short. There is little difference in quality between the long and short vowels, except for , which occurs as when short and as or when long.

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Consonants

Toda has an unusually large number of fricatives and trills. Its seven places of articulation are the most for any Dravidian language. The voiceless laterals are true fricatives, not voiceless approximants; the retroflex lateral is highly unusual among the world's languages.

Voiceless fricatives are allophonically voiced intervocalically in Toda. There are also the invariably voiced fricatives , though the latter is marginal. The nasals and are allophonically devoiced or partially devoiced in final position or next to voiceless consonants.

Labial Dental/Alveolar Postalveolar Retroflex/Palatal Velar plain sib./pal. plain pal. plain pal. Nasal Plosive/Affricate Fricative () Approximant Trill

All of these consonants may occur in word-medial and word-final positions. However, only a restricted set occur word-initially. These are .

Unlike the other dental consonants, is interdental. Similarly, is labiodental whereas the other labials are bilabial.

The palatalized rhotics are only mentioned in ; other descriptions, such as those from and , only include the three plain trills.

Apical consonants are either alveolar or postalveolar. The actual feature that distinguishes and is uncertain. They have the same primary place of articulation. Spajić and colleagues have found that the rhotic that may occur word initially (erroneously called "dental" in previous literature, perhaps because Dravidian coronals tend to be dental by default) has a secondary articulation, which they have tentatively identified as advanced tongue root until further measurements can be made. This analysis is assumed in the transcription .

Another difference between them is that is the least strongly trilled, most often occurring with a single contact. However, unlike a flap, multiple contacts are normal, if less common, and is easily distinguishable from the other trills when they are all produced with the same number of contacts.

The retroflex consonants are subapical. Retroflex is more strongly trilled than the other rhotics. However, it is not purely retroflex. Although the tongue starts out in a sub-apical retroflex position, trilling involves the tip of the tongue, and this causes it to move forward toward the alveolar ridge. This means that the retroflex trill gives a preceding vowel retroflex coloration the way other retroflex consonants do, but that the vibration itself is not much different from the other trills.

Grammar

Verbal morphology As described by Murray B. Emeneau, in the book Toda Grammar and Texts, the entire Toda verbal system is based on the addition of many suffixes to the two base verb stems, stem 1 (henceforth, S1) and stem 2 (henceforth, S2). There are fifteen classes of verbs in Toda, each of which uses one of four suffixes to form its S2 from its S1. A short summary is given below:

+ Toda Verb Classes Class Example Suffix S2 Ia ko·ṭ- "to show" -y- ko·ṭy- Ib koc- "to bite" -y- (c- > č-) koč- Ic oɀ- "to fear" -y- (ɀ- > j-) oj- IIa nen- "to think of" -θ- nenθ- IIb kïy- "to do" -θ- (-y > -s) kïs- IIc ïr- "to sit" -θ- (-r > -θ) ïθ- IIIa kwïṛ- "to give (to 3rd)" -t- kwïṛt- IIIb ko·y- "to bear fruit" -t- (-y > -c) ko·c- IIIc soy- "to die" -t- (-y > -t) sot- IIId kaɬ- "to learn" -t- (-ɬ > -ṯ)1 kaṯ- IIIe wïṟ- "to undertake" -t- (-ṟ/-l > -t-) wït- IVa kwïḷ- "to hatch" -d- kwïḷd- IVb mi·y- "to bathe" -d- (-y > -d) mi·d- IVc sal- "to belong to" -d- (-l > -d) sad- V (irregular) pï·x- "to go," o·x- "to become" - pi·-, o·y-

1Emeneau lists the rule "S1 -ṟ/-ɬ/-ṛ/-ꞎ/-ḍ/-x + -t- = S2 -ṯ/-ṯ/-ṭ/-ṭ/-ṭ/-k; S1 -r/-l/-n/-s̠/-ḷ/-ṇ + -t- = S1 -d/-ḏ/-ḏ/-ḏ/-ḍ/-ḍ" for this class.

To each of these stems, further suffixes may be added to create verb forms indicating different tenses and moods. The following table summarizes them:

+ Toda Verbal Inflection Function 1sg. 1pl. excl. 1pl. incl. 2sg. 2pl. 3 Present-future I S2-pen S2-pem S2-pum S2-py S2-tš S2-t Present-future II S2-n S2-m S2-m S2-ty S2-tš S2-u Past I S2-špen S2-špem S2-špum S2-špy S2-š S2-č Past II S2-šn S2-šm S2-šm S2-č S2-š S2-šk Tenseless S2-en (Class I: S1-nen) S2-em (Class I: S1-nem) S2-um (Class I: S1-num) S2-y (Class I: S1-ny) S2-š (Class I: S1-nš) ? Dubitative S1-špen S1-špem S1-špum S1-špy S1-š S1-č Voluntative S1-kin S1-kim S1-ku S1-ky S1-kš S1-kθ Imperative - - - S1 S1-š S1-mo· Negative S1-en S1-em S1-um S1-y S1-š S1-oθ Negative voluntative S1-šn S1-šm S1-šm S1-č S1-š S1-šk Negative imperative - - - S2-oṭ S2-oṭṣ -

See also E. E. Speight, who was compiling Toda grammar in the period before his death

References

Bibliography

Toda language

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