Kodava
Karen Ebert
Universität Zürich
Kodava is a South Dravidian language spoken by approximately 70,000 people in Coorg, Karnataka. Although some Kodava claim that they speak a dialect of Kannada, their language is closer to Tamil. The Kannada script is used for writing Kodava. Kodava shares all the well-known traits of South Dravidian languages, such as exclusively suffixing morphology, strict SOV word order with modifiers preceding their head, dative subjects, the use of converbs and participles in subordination. Apart from the retroflex consonants Kodava has central vowel phonemes.
Earlier publications on Kodava are a grammar from 1867 and articles on the vowels and on morphophonemic processes in verb stems. This description is based on work with a native speaker.
ISBN 9783895860386. Languages of the World/Materials 104. 57 pp. 1996.
