Toda language

Toda
தோடா
Native to	India
Region	Western Tamil Nadu state, Nilgiri Hills, near Ootacamund
Ethnicity	Toda people
Native speakers	1,600 (2001 census) [1]
Language family	Dravidian Southern Southern I Tamil–Kannada Tamil–Kota Tamil–Toda Toda
Writing system	unwritten [2] provisionally written in Tamil alphabet (Brahmic) and Latin [3] [ better source needed ]
Language codes
ISO 639-3	tcx
Glottolog	toda1252
ELP	Toda
Toda is classified as Critically Endangered according to the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger [4] [2]

Toda is a indigenous Dravidian language noted for its many fricatives and trills. It is spoken by the Toda people, a population of about one thousand who live in the Nilgiri Hills of southern India. The Toda language is considered to have originated from the Toda-Kota subgroup of South Dravidian. Krishnamurti (2003) does not consider the existence of a single Toda-Kota branch and says Kota split first and later Toda did as Kota doesn't have the centralized vowels of other Tamil-Toda languages. ^[5]

Phonology

Vowels

For a Dravidian language, Toda's sixteen vowels is an unusually large number. 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 /e/, which occurs as [e] when short and as [æː] when long. ^[6]

	Front		Central		Back
	Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
Close	i 〈i, i·〉	y 〈ü, ü·〉	ɨ 〈ï, ï·〉			u 〈u, u·〉
Mid	e 〈e〉			ɵ 〈ö, ö·〉		o 〈o, o·〉
Open	æ 〈e·〉				ɑ 〈a, a·〉

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. ^[6]

Voiceless fricatives are allophonically voiced intervocalically in Toda. There are also the invariably voiced fricatives /ʒ,ʐ,ɣ/, though the latter is marginal. The nasals and /r̠,ɽr,j/ are allophonically devoiced or partially devoiced in final position or next to voiceless consonants. ^[6]

		Labial	Denti- alveolar		Apical alveolar		Apical post-alveolar		Laminal post- alveolar	Retroflex		Palatal	Velar
			plain	sib.	plain	pal.	plain	pal.		plain	pal.
Nasal		m ⟨m⟩					n̠ ⟨n⟩			ɳ ⟨ṇ⟩
Plosive/ Affricate	voiceless	p ⟨p⟩	t̪ ⟨t⟩	t̪s̪ ⟨c⟩			t̠ ⟨ṯ⟩		tʃ ⟨č⟩	ʈ ⟨ṭ⟩			k ⟨k⟩
	voiced	b ⟨b⟩	d̪ ⟨d⟩	d̪z̪ ⟨ɀ⟩			d̠ ⟨ḏ⟩		dʒ ⟨j⟩	ɖ ⟨ḍ⟩			ɡ ⟨g⟩
Fricative	voiceless	f ⟨f⟩	θ̪͆ ⟨θ⟩	s̪ ⟨s⟩			s̠ ⟨s̠⟩		ʃ ⟨š⟩	ʂ ⟨ṣ⟩			x ⟨x⟩
	voiced								ʒ ⟨ž⟩	ʐ ⟨ẓ⟩			( ɣ ) ⟨x⟩
	Lateral		ɬ̪ ⟨ɬ⟩							ꞎ ⟨ꞎ⟩
Approximant			l̪ ⟨l⟩							ɭ ⟨ḷ⟩		j ⟨y⟩	w ⟨w⟩
Trill					r̘ ⟨r⟩	r̘ʲ ⟨ṛy⟩	r̠ ⟨ṟ⟩	r̠ʲ ⟨ṟy⟩		ɽr ⟨ṛ⟩	ɽrʲ ⟨ṛy⟩

All of these consonants may occur in word-medial and word-final positions. However, only a restricted set occur word-initially. These are /p,t̪,k,f,s̪,m,n̠,r̘,l̪,j,w/, in boldface above.

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

The palatalized rhotics are only mentioned by Spajić and Ladefoged (1996), previous descriptions like of Emeneau (1984) and Krishnamurti (2003) only have the 3 plain ones as the rhotics.

Apical consonants are either alveolar or postalveolar. The actual feature that distinguishes /r̘/ and /r̠/ 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 /r̘/.

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

The retroflex consonants are subapical. Retroflex /ɽr/ 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.

The palatalization of the slided consonant ɽ͢rʲ does not affect the initial retroflex articulation, ɽ is not simultaneously coarticulated with ʲ.

Grammar

Verbal morphology

As described by Murray B. Emeneau, in his "Toda Grammar and Texts," ^[7] 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 ^[8]
• Murray B. Emeneau

References

1. Toda at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. "Did you know Toda is endangered?". Endangered Languages. Retrieved 12 January 2025.
3. Toda language and script, Omniglot.
4. Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (Report) (3rd ed.). UNESCO. 2010. p. 31.
5. Krishnamurti (2003).
6. Spajić, Ladefoged & Bhaskararao (1994).
7. Emeneau (1984)
8. Walsh, R R (15 April 1953). "Ernest Speight - A Portrait". The Sunday Statesman. During his retirement he lived alone, devoting himself to the care of his fascinating library and extensive collection of Japanese art treasures and antiques. and the study of the language and customs and mythology of the Nilgiri hill tribes, the Badagas. He was compiling a Toda grammar when he died

Bibliography

• Emeneau, Murray B. (1984). Toda Grammar and Texts. American Philosophical Society, Memoirs Series, 155. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. ISBN   9780871691552.
• Spajić, Siniša; Ladefoged, Peter; Bhaskararao, P. (1994). The rhotics of Toda. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics 87: Fieldwork Studies of Targeted Languages II.
• Spajić, Siniša; Ladefoged, Peter; Bhaskararao, P. (1996). The trills of Toda. Journal of the International Phonetic Association. Vol. 26. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–21. JSTOR   44526193.
• Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2003). The Dravidian Languages. Cambridge Language Surveys (1 ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-0-521-77111-5.

External links

• The Toda Language, as part of the Endangered Languages project
• Toda at the UCLA Phonetics Archive
• Toda resources
• Toda swadesh list
• Toda morphology