Dravidians from Africa/not Europe

[Larry Trask]

Right, well, somebody has to say it, so it might as well be me.  I am
neither a Dravidianist nor any kind of Africanist, but I am a
historical linguist, and I have some idea what linguistics looks like,
and I don't see any here.
 
C. A. Winters writes as follows in defense of some kind of
Dravidian-African link:
 
************************************************************
 
>    The first linguist to recognize the genetic relationship between
> Dravidian and African languages was the french linguist
> L. Homburger.  Homburger explained the close relationship between
> Dravidian languages and the Bantu and west atlantic group of African
> languages back in the 1940's and early 1950's.
 
"[C]lose"?  Bantu isn't even very closely related to West Atlantic,
though at least they *are* related.
 
> Her research was confirmed by Upadhyaya, and the Senegalese linguist
> C.T.  N'Diaye who proved conclusively the genetic relationship
> between Dravidian languages and the West atlantic group of African
> languages.
 
*Only* West Atlantic?  Nothing else?
 
> C.A. Winters, has discussed the proto-Indo-African terms
> for African and Dravidian languages. he has also illustrated the
> close relationship of the Dravidian group to Manding, Somali and
> Nubian.
 
This is absurd.  Whatever "Manding" is, it's presumably Niger-Congo.
Somali is Afro-Asiatic.  Nubian is a group of languages commonly
assigned to Nilo-Saharan.  These three families are not known to be
related at all.  Now Winters is relating Dravidian to *all* of them at
once?
 
>                    Common Indo African Terms
 
> English       Dravidian        Senegalese        Manding
> Mother           amma              ama             ma
> pregnancy        basaru              bir           bara
> skin               uri               guri            guru
> King              mannan          mansa             mansa
> Grand             biru               bur            ba
> Saliva           tuppal             tuudde           tu
> boat              kulam             gaal            kulu
> cultivate           bey              mbey            be
> stream             kolli            kal              koli
 
Dravidian is not a language, but a large family, so where do these
words come from?  If they're reconstructed Proto-Dravidian (I doubt
it), they should have asterisks; if they're from a particular
language, this should be identified; if they're from several
languages, shame.  And what on earth is "Senegalese"?  I can find no
record of such a language.  Are we talking about Wolof, or what?  And
again I have little idea what "Manding" is supposed to be: is it even
a single language?
 
Nursery words like /ama/ `mother' have no business being cited in
comparisons: they are worthless as evidence.  The same is true of
imitative words like /tu-/ for `spit, saliva', which are found all
over the planet: Basque, Burushaski, Caucasian, Yeniseian -- you name
it.
 
And the rest?  A little list of miscellaneous chance resemblances, of
the sort that can always be found between arbitrary languages.
 
> Pronominal Agreement
> Language        1P SG        2nd P        3rd P
> Dravidian     an, naa,ne      i             a
> Somali         ani          adigu        isagu
> Nubian         anni            ir          tar
> Bantu           ni             u            a
> Manding         na, n          i            a
> Hausa           na             kin          ya
> Wolof           ma             ya           na
 
A wild mixture of African languages and sub-families from unrelated
families all over the continent.  Half the languages cited aren't even
identified.
 
Sorry, Mr. Winters.  This isn't evidence for anything.
 
Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK
 
larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk