Linguistic Archaeology of South Asia

This book brings together linguistic and archaeological evidence of South Asian prehistory. The author depicts and analyses the region, in particular the Indus Valley civilization, its links with neighbouring regions and its implications for social history. Each type of linguistic data is put into its socio-historical context. Consequently, the book is both a description of the unique methodology 'linguistic archaeology' and a treatment of South Asian linguistic data.

Franklin C. Southworth completed his PhD in Linguistics at Yale University. Subsequently, he taught Linguistics and South Asian languages (Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Nepali) in the South Asia Regional Studies Department of the University of Pennsylvania from which he retired in 1998. He spent over ten years in India doing fieldwork on Indo-Aryan (Marathi, Konkani, Hindi-Urdu) and Dravidian (Tamil, Malayalam) languages. His current research interest is SARVA (South Asian Residual Vocabulary Assemblage), an online dictionary of words of unknown origin in South Asian languages.

Preface and Acknowledgments Illustrations Abbreviations Formulae and Symbols 1. The Scope of Linguistic Archaeology 2. The South Asian Linguistic Scene 3. Prehistoric Languages of South Asia 4. The Social Context of Linguistic Convergence 5. The Grierson Hypothesis Revisited: Subgroups of Indo-Aryan 6. Historical Implications of the Inner-Outer Hypothesis 7. Palaeobotanical and Etymological Evidence for the Prehistory of South Asian Crop Plants 8. Some Aspects of Dravidian Prehistory Based on Vocabulary Reconstruction 9. Maharashtrian Place Names and the Question of a Dravidian Substratum 10. Historical Linguistics and Archaeology in South Asia