Hans Henrich Hock represents the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The paper presented by him in Prof. M. B. Emeneau Centenary International Conference on South Asian Linguistics, is titled "The Problem of Time in South Asian Convergence". His paper focuses on the question of time depth in South Asian Linguistics, highlighting the chronological problems regarding linguistic structure, including structural features that have direct relevance for the issue of substratum influence or convergence.

          Discussing the problems arising out of the chronological attestation, he says that the modern distributions of the languages might be a result of migrations between Indo-Aryan and North Dravidian languages. He supports his observation by citing the example of the place names in the present-day territory of Kurukh and Malto being Munda, and not Dravidian, in origin and the implications of the locations of the Brahui, Kurukh, and Malto resulting from migration.

          He observes that many areas of language studies like serial verb construction have undergone a change and led to the construction of relative-correlative clauses. It is also observed that the Dravidian languages have inherited this construction with finite verbs and interrogatives used as relative pronouns, the latter corresponding to demonstratives used as correlative pronouns in the main clause. Mr. Hock presents many examples to illustrate that these constructions is followed by a clitic particle, generally -o , which shields the relative clause from the constraint that sentences contain only one finite verb. He argues about the quotative markings in Dravidian languages, stating that the position of the cited discourse in the utterance is indicated by an ellipsis in square brackets in contrast with the southern pattern, where cited discourse commonly is indicated by a post-posed quotative marker. He states that the southern full quotatives are the innovations in the Dravidian languages.

           With the example of quotative marker -iti, a more or less optional one in Rig-Vedic texts, Hock argues that the difference in word order between the Rig-Vedic and Vedic Prose, as in the use of -iti, might be attributed to an increasing influence of Dravidian.

          In the discussion that followed the session, Prof. Probal Das Gupta raised a question that, in reference to the current position of Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages', 'borrowing' is more from South-Dravidian rather than from North or Central Dravidian languages. A question was also raised on the quantity of borrowing.

          Prof. Hock, while answering these questions observed that the process of 'borrowing' is not geographical and he emphasized that distinction is made between ecological features.