Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics.pdf

Dictionary of language and linguistics 338ReferencestonologydownstepIn tonal languages, toneme ( tone) which, after a certain number of syllables, causesthe absolute pitch of the following tones to sink, their values relative to one anotherremaining unchanged. This phenomenon occurs in some West African languages.tonologyReferencesDPdeterminer phrasedrag chainpush chain vs drag chainDravidianLanguage group of South-East Asia with about twenty-five languages and 175 millionspeakers, primarily in southern and eastern India and Sri Lanka, as well as in Pakistan(Brahui). These languages, probably originally extending over the whole Indiansubcontinent, were displaced by the languages of the Indo-Aryan immigrants. The mostimportant languages are Telugu (approx. 53 million speakers), Tamil (approx. 45 millionspeakers), Malayalam (approx. 28 million speakers), and Kannada (approx. 28 millionspeakers), and have writing systems with a literary tradition of more than 2,000 years.Ellis (1816) demonstrated the relatedness of the major Dravidian languages; the laterwork of R.A.Caldwell also was foundational. The Dravidian languages are possiblyrelated to Elamite, a dead language of Iran. They evince numerous lexical borrowingsfrom Indo-Aryan, while Dravidian languages have in turn influenced the Indo-Aryanlanguages phonologically, morphologically, and syntactically.