Dravidian Numerals
 
Václav Blažek (Masaryk University, Brno, blazek@phil.muni.cz)
 
Journal of Language Relationship, № 1, 2009 - p.69-80
 
Abstract: Although the most probable affiliation of the Dravidian language family on the macro-comparative level lies with the Nostratic superfamily, potential ties between Proto-Dravidian numerals and known Nostratic words for numerals remain scarce. The article summarizes most of the existing hypotheses on the origins of Dravidian numerals, both internal and external, and adds a few others based on the author’s theory of a possible Australian substratum in Proto-Dravidian. It is concluded that the latter theory may shed some much needed light on this complicated issue.
 
Keywords: Dravidian languages, numerals
 
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