  (abridged) We present measurements of the pairwise velocity dispersion (PVD)
for different classes of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For a sample
of about 200,000 galaxies, we study the dependence of the PVD on galaxy
properties such as luminosity, stellar mass (M_*), colour (g-r), 4000A break
strength (D4000), concentration index (C), and stellar surface mass density
(\mu_*). The luminosity dependence of the PVD is in good agreement with the
results of Jing & B\"orner (2004) for the 2dFGRS catalog. The value of
\sigma_{12} measured at k=1 h/Mpc decreases as a function of increasing galaxy
luminosity for galaxies fainter than L*, before increasing again for the most
luminous galaxies in our sample. Each of the galaxy subsamples selected
according to luminosity or stellar mass is divided into two further subsamples
according to colour, D4000, C and \mu_*. We find that galaxies with redder
colours and higher D4000, C, and \mu_* values have larger PVDs on all scales
and at all luminosities/stellar masses. The dependence of the PVD on parameters
related to recent star formation(colour, D4000) is stronger than on parameters
related to galaxy structure (C, \mu_*), especially on small scales and for
faint galaxies. The reddest galaxies and galaxies with high surface mass
densities and intermediate concentrations have the highest pairwise peculiar
velocities, i.e. these move in the strongest gravitational fields. We conclude
that the faint red population located in rich clusters is responsible for the
high PVD values that are measured for low-luminosity galaxies on small scales.
