The Dravidian Languages (Routledge Language Family Descriptions)

The Dravidian Language family ranks about 4th in the world with 23 languages spoken by 220 million people. The majority of the languages are concentrated in Southern and Central India.
The origins of the Dravidian languages, as well as their subsequent development and the period of their differentiation, are unclear, and the situation is not helped by the lack of comparative linguistic research into the Dravidian languages. Legends common to many Dravidian-speaking groups speak of their origin in a vast, now-sunken continent far to the south. Many linguists, however, tend to favour the theory that speakers of Dravidian languages spread southwards and eastwards through the Indian subcontinent, based on the fact that the southern Dravidian languages show some signs of contact with linguistic groups which the northern Dravidian languages do not.
The Dravidian languages contains 12 descriptions of the individual languages written by international recognised experts, and discuss the internal structure of the languages in relation to morphology, phonology, parts of speech, syntax and lexicon.