Kota is a language of the Dravidian family with about 900 native speakers in the Nilgiri hills of Tamil Nadu state, India. It is spoken mainly by the tribal Kota people (India). In the late 1800s, the native speaking population was about 1,100.[2] In 1990, the population was only 930, out of an ethnic population of perhaps 1,400, despite the great increase in the population of the area.[1] The language is 'critically endangered' due to the greater social status of neighbouring languages.[3] The Kota language may have originated from Tamil-Kannada and is closely related to Toda language. The Kota population is about 2500. The origin of the name Kota is derived from the Dravidian root word 'Ko' meaning Mountain.[4][5] Traditionally Kota and Toda are seen as from a single branch Toda-Kota which separated from Tamil-Kota but recently Krishnamurti considers it to have diverged first from Tamil-Kota and later Toda as it doesn't have the centralized vowels characterized for Tamil-Toda.
| Kota | |
|---|---|
| Kō mānt | |
| கோத்தர் | |
| Native to | India |
| Region | Nilgiri Hills |
| Ethnicity | Kotas |
Native speakers | 930 (2001 census)[1] |
Dravidian
| |
| Tamil script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | kfe |
| Glottolog | kota1263 |
| ELP | Kota (India) |
Phonology
editVowels
edit| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| short | long | short | long | short | long | |
| High | i | iː | u | uː | ||
| Mid | e | eː | o | oː | ||
| Low | a | aː | ||||
Kota notably doesn't have central vowels like the other Nilgiri languages, Toda, the closest language also has it.
Consonants
edit| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Post-alv./ Palatal |
Velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n̪ | ɳ | ŋ | |||
| Stop | voiceless | p | t̪ | t | ʈ | t͡ʃ | k |
| voiced | b | d̪ | d | ɖ | d͡ʒ | ɡ | |
| Fricative | s | ||||||
| Tap | ɾ | ɽ | |||||
| Approx. | central | ʋ | j | ||||
| lateral | l | ɭ | |||||
[s] and [z] occur in free variation with /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/. [ʂ] occurs as an allophone of /s/ before retroflexes.
References
edit- ^ a b Kota at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Caldwell, Robert. 1875. A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Or South-Indian Family of Languages. London: Trübner & Company
- ^ Prema, S. n.d. "Status of Dravidian Tribal Languages in Kerala" University of Kerala
- ^ Raju, Jamuna (30 June 2012). "The Kota Tribes of Nilgiris". Breeks Chatter. Archived from the original on 2 April 2019. Retrieved 28 March 2016.
- ^ Narasimhacharya, R. (1990). History of Kannada Language. New Delhi, Madras: Asian Educational Services. p. 37. ISBN 9788120605596.
- ^ Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2003). The Dravidian languages (null ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 53. ISBN 978-0-511-06037-3.
Further reading
edit- Emeneau, M.B. 1944. Kota Texts[permanent dead link] California: University of California Press.
- Emeneau, M. B. (April 2000). "Some Origins of Kota -j(-)". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 120 (2): 231–233. doi:10.2307/605026. JSTOR 605026.
- Emeneau, M. B. (June 1969). "Onomatopoetics in the Indian Linguistic Area". Language. 45 (2): 274–299. doi:10.2307/411660. JSTOR 411660.
- Emeneau, M. B. (24 December 2009). "Proto-Dravidian *c-: Toda t-". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 15 (1): 98–112. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00087280. JSTOR 608887. S2CID 123788248.