ALIGARH, Oct. 23 -- Champaign, USA.
Prof. Hock examined the historical debate surrounding the emergence and spread of retroflex consonants in South Asian languages, particularly the influence of Dravidian languages on Indo-Aryan. Drawing on earlier scholarship and his own research, he questioned the conventional view of unidirectional Dravidian influence and advocated a model of bidirectional linguistic convergence to explain the region's complex patterns of language contact.
The talk revisited the question of retroflexion in South Asia, examining both the typology of retroflex phoneme inventories and their genetic and geographical distribution across the region. Building on earlier studies, Prof. Hock presented a reassessment of previous...