Prof. Bh. Krishnamurti represents the University of Hyderabad in Prof. M. B. Emeneau Centenary International Conference on South Asian Linguistics. The paper presented by him is titled "Language Typology and Regular Sound Change". The paper begins with a hypothesis that most of the historically identifiable shared innovations have exceptions and the typologically motivated ones or those, which have typological goal, are extremely regular. It stresses that, shared innovations are likely to spread through lexical diffusion generally and the presence of other language families, besides Dravidian, lends to support to the above hypothesis.

          Prof. Bh. Krishnamurti while presenting the Dravidian evidence to support his hypothesis, mentions the sub-groups of Dravidian families, namely South Dravidian I, South Dravidian II, Central Dravidian and North Dravidian with examples. Further, he gives evidences of proto-Dravidian phonemes from vowels and consonants with the example of splits and mergers of proto-Dravidian *t and a general profile of major sound changes in Dravidian with reference with sound changes without a typological goal and sound changes, which presumably have a typological goal.

          Regarding the areal typology, Prof. Bh. Krishnamurti exerted that the elimination of the alveolar in all its occurrences has led to the emergence of a five-point stop system in most of the Dravidian languages which has then produced a common Indo-Aryan Dravidian type in phonology with borrowed aspirated stops in Dravidian in all the five articulatory positions.

          Prof. Bh. Krishnamurti also presented evidences from other language families in support of his hypothesis. He stated that Proto-Oceanic had word-final consonants as well as vowels where final consonants are lost and the addition of an 'echo vowel' with the preceding vowel; Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated stops were a highly marked series which merged with the voice unaspirated in all branches except Indic; the shift of Old English unrounded in Middle English without exception and even chain shifts which affect the whole system can be brought under changes triggered by typological motivation.

          In conclusion, Prof. Bh. Krishnamurti's paper states that the so-called 'Neo-grammarian regularity is the end product of several routes that a sound change may take through social factors, lexical diffusion and typological motivation etc., and not the mechanisms of social change.

          In the discussion that followed the session, chaired by Prof. Anoop Mahajan, Prof. Hans Henrich Hock commented that there may be some cases where typologically driven regularity does not work. For eg. In the context of dentalisation. This may be, according to him, not a shared trait but the result of language contact. There is areal typology to explain this. Answering Hock, Prof. Krishnamurti stated that contact in the border areas cannot be ruled out, as nowadays people are frequently in touch with each other than they used to be earlier when there was no modern means of transportation. He illustrated his statement with the example of Andra-Tamilnadu border. Dr. Kikkeri Narayan observed that the concept of cause and effect could be assigned to the difference or change in sound pattern. Prof. Rajendra Singh raised the question of naturalness of phonetic motivation. In answer Prof. Krishnamurti said that some of these changes had taken place over a long period of time emphasizing that lexical diffusion is the spread of sound change not a mechanism of sound change. He added that, it took three centuries for rounded to become unrounded and that lexical diffusion is not treated as regularity. Any sound change can be blocked anywhere.