The Dravidian Languages

The Dravidian language family is the world's fourth largest with nearly 250 million speakers across South Asia from Pakistan to Nepal, from Bangladesh to Sri Lanka. This authoritative reference source provides a unique description of the languages, covering their grammatical structure and historical development, plus sociolinguistic features. Each chapter combines a modern linguistic perspective with traditional historical linguistics, and a uniform structure allows for easy typological comparison between the individual languages.

New to this edition are chapters on Beṭṭa Kuṟumba, Kuṛux, Kūvi and Malayāḷam, and enlarged sections in various existing chapters, as well as updated bibliographies and demographic data throughout.

The Dravidian Languages will be invaluable to students and researchers within linguistics, and will also be of interest to readers in the fields of comparative literature, areal linguistics and South Asian studies.

Sanford B. Steever holds three degrees in linguistics and a diploma in Tamil. The author of five books and 60 articles on historical linguistics, syntax, Dravidian linguistics and Tamil, he spent three years of study and fieldwork in India. He has been a member of the Linguistics Society of America for nearly 50 years, is a life member of the Dravidian Linguistics Association and serves on the advisory board of the International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics.