Elamo-Dravidian languages

The Elamo-Dravidian languages are a hypothetical language family that included the modern Dravidian languages ​​of India and Pakistan , and the extinct Elamic language of ancient Elam , whose range was in southwestern Iran .

This hypothesis was first expressed as early as 1856 by R. Caldwell, later the issue of Elamo-Dravidian relationship was touched upon by H. Husing, F. Bork, H. Pedersen, I. M. Dyakonov and others. This hypothesis was thoroughly studied in 70 -80s XX century D.W. Macalpin. In 1992, V. Blazhek expressed an alternative hypothesis about the kinship of Elamian with Afrasian languages ​​and even about the entry of Elamian into the Afrasian macro-family. Some scholars suggest that in addition to the Elamite and Dravidian languages, the Harappan language of Indian civilization was also part of the Elamo-Dravidian language family.

The Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis was examined in detail by G. S. Starostin (2002), who showed that, firstly, most Elamo-Dravidian matches are common with other families of the Nostratic macro-family, and secondly, that the number of possible lexical parallels between Elamic and Afrasian , on the one hand, and Elamic and Nostratic, on the other, about the same. According to Starostin, this may indicate that the Elamite language is, in a sense, a bridge between these two macro-families, which ultimately can form an even higher-level macro-family, which supposedly unites most of the Eurasian language families .