Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Dardic languages" in English language version.
The seventeen Dardic languages constitute a geographic group of the northwestern-most Indo-Aryan languages. They fall into several small phylogenetic groups of Indo-Aryan, but together they show no common phonological innovations that demonstrate that they share any phylogenetic unity as a "Dardic branch" of the Indo-Aryan languages.
Dardic languages contain absolutely no features which cannot be derived from old [Indo-Aryan language]. They have simply retained a number of striking archasisms, which had already disappeared in most Prakrit dialects... There is not a single common feature distinguishing Dardic, as a whole, from the rest of the [Indo-Aryan] languages... Dardic is simply a convenient term to denote a bundle of aberrant [Indo-Aryan] hill-languages which, in their relative isolation, accented in many cases by the invasion of Pathan tribes, have been in varying degrees sheltered against the expand influence of [Indo-Aryan] Midland (Madhyadesha) innovations, being left free to develop on their own.
The term Dardic is stated to be only a geographical convention and not a linguistic expression.
The designation "Dardic" implies neither ethnic unity among the speakers of these languages nor that they can all be traced to a single stammbaum-model node.
Nowadays, the term "Dardic" is used as an areal term that refers to a number of Indo-Aryan languages, without claiming anything specific about their mutual relatedness.
Palula belongs to a group of Indo-Aryan (IA) languages spoken in the Hindukush region that are often referred to as "Dardic" languages... It has been and is still disputed to what extent this primarily geographically defined grouping has any real classificatory validity... On the one hand, Strand suggests that the term should be discarded altogether, holding that there is no justification whatsoever for any such grouping (in addition to the term itself having a problematic history of use), and prefers to make a finer classification of these languages into smaller genealogical groups directly under the IA heading, a classification we shall return to shortly... Zoller identifies the Dardic languages as the modern successors of the Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA) language Gandhari (also Gandhari Prakrit), but along with Bashir, Zoller concludes that the family tree model alone will not explain all the historical developments.
Khowar and Kalasha are among the most archaic Indo-Aryan languages. Both are related to Gandhari and share some very characteristic archaisms (for instance old Indo-Aryan -t-, disappeared from other Indo-Ayran languages, -l/r- in Kalasha and Khowar).
... greater Dardic influence in the western dialects of Garhwali ...
{{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help)... Konkani is spoken. It shows a good deal of Dardic (Paisachi) influence ...
... must have covered nearly the whole of the Punjabi ... still show traces of the earlier Dardic languages that they superseded. Still further south, we find traces of Dardic in Sindhi ...
At one period, the Dardic languages spread over a very much wider extent, but before the oncoming 'outer Aryans' as well as owing to the subsequent expansion of the 'Inner Aryans', the Dards fell back to the inaccessible ...
It may be possible that the Dardic speaking Aryans were still in the process of settling in other parts of the western Himalaya in the Mauryan times ...
... the Dradic branch remained in northwest India – the Daradas, Kasmiras, and some of the Khasas (some having been left behind in the Himalayas of Nepal and Kumaon) ...
Based on historical sub-grouping approximations and geographical distribution, Bashir (2003) provides six sub-groups of the Dardic languages ...
{{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)In others, traces remain as tonal differences (Khowar buúm, 'earth', Pashai dum, 'smoke') ...
... 'Dardic metathesis,' wherein pre- or postconsonantal 'r' is shifted forward to a preceding syllable ... earliest examples come from the Aśokan inscriptions ... priyadarśi ... as priyadraśi ... dharma as dhrama ... common in modern Dardic languages ...
... drakhat 'tree' ...
The literature on the verb-second construction has concentrated largely on Germanic ... we can compare with the Germanic phenomena, however: Kashmiri ... in two 'Himachali' languages, Kotgarhi and Koci, he finds word-order patterns quite similar ... they are sometimes said to be part of a 'Dardic' subfamily ...
... the verbs, positioned in the middle of the sentences (rather than at the end) intensify the dramatic quality ...
On the one hand, it is obvious that these languages form a continuum together with the main Indo-Aryan languages of the northwestern Subcontinent, with a gradually increased clustering of more prototypical Hindukush-Karakoram features toward the central – but in relation to the rest of Indo-Aryan more peripheral – parts of this region. On the other hand, these languages also show a high degree of diversity, with individual languages taking part in various subareal configurations or transit zones that are represented in the region, further complicating any attempts at defining them collectively in more exact, or exclusive, areal terms. We must therefore bear in mind that any collective reference to these languages, be it Hindukush Indo-Aryan or any other term, will have to be interpreted as a highly gradient notion, acknowledging the apparent lack of any complete list of innovations, let alone retentions, that would cover more than a subset of them.
On the one hand, it is obvious that these languages form a continuum together with the main Indo-Aryan languages of the northwestern Subcontinent, with a gradually increased clustering of more prototypical Hindukush-Karakoram features toward the central – but in relation to the rest of Indo-Aryan more peripheral – parts of this region. On the other hand, these languages also show a high degree of diversity, with individual languages taking part in various subareal configurations or transit zones that are represented in the region, further complicating any attempts at defining them collectively in more exact, or exclusive, areal terms. We must therefore bear in mind that any collective reference to these languages, be it Hindukush Indo-Aryan or any other term, will have to be interpreted as a highly gradient notion, acknowledging the apparent lack of any complete list of innovations, let alone retentions, that would cover more than a subset of them.
On the one hand, it is obvious that these languages form a continuum together with the main Indo-Aryan languages of the northwestern Subcontinent, with a gradually increased clustering of more prototypical Hindukush-Karakoram features toward the central – but in relation to the rest of Indo-Aryan more peripheral – parts of this region. On the other hand, these languages also show a high degree of diversity, with individual languages taking part in various subareal configurations or transit zones that are represented in the region, further complicating any attempts at defining them collectively in more exact, or exclusive, areal terms. We must therefore bear in mind that any collective reference to these languages, be it Hindukush Indo-Aryan or any other term, will have to be interpreted as a highly gradient notion, acknowledging the apparent lack of any complete list of innovations, let alone retentions, that would cover more than a subset of them.