ABSTRACT
The dialectal differences in Kurux occur mostly in lexicon. Since a large part of the morphology is shared by all dialects, they are mutually intelligible. The main difficulty in the exact placement of Kurux-Malto in the Dravidian family tree is that few innovations shared with other subgroups are identified. Kurux shares 515 etyma with Malto according to the Dravidian Etymological Dictionary, of which 175 are isolated forms, and shares basic morphology such as the past stem formation, agreement and case suffixes. While there is no doubt that Kurux and Malto constitute a close subgroup, the position of Kurux-Malto in the Dravidian family has been much debated. Kurux nouns have a single nominal base after which a gender-number suffixes and/or a case suffix is attached. The pronominal genitive suffix is -hai, as in eng-hai, nam-hai. The instrumental and locative suffixes, as well as postpositions, are attached to the genitive forms.
