ABSTRACT
This chapter explains correlations between retroflex typologies and other features of convergence and to relate these correlations to archaeological findings concerning the migrations of ethnic groups in South Asia. There is archaeological evidence of ancient cultural contacts between the pre-Aryan culture of Swat and the mainly Dravidian-speaking Indus civilization. The retroflex phonemes are in many cases the outcome of ancient loans and combinatory phonological processes, some of which reflect complex patterns of convergence. In 1969, A. K. Ramanujan and C. Masica published a pioneering if somewhat tentative article called 'Toward a phonological typology of the Indian linguistic area'. Dzoj Edel'man preceded them with a monograph in Russian on the linguistic geography of South and Southwest Asia on the basis of the Indo-Iranian languages. Linguistic convergence has also been used whilst delineating the linguistic prehistory and stratigraphy of South Asia.
