The Tocharian (sometimes ''Tokharian'') languages ( ; ), also known as the ''Arśi-Kuči'', Agnean-Kuchean or Kuchean-Agnean languages, are an extinct branch of the

Indo-European language family The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

spoken by inhabitants of the

Tarim Basin The Tarim Basin is an endorheic basin in Xinjiang, Northwestern China occupying an area of about and one of the largest basins in Northwest China.Chen, Yaning, et al. "Regional climate change and its effects on river runoff in the Tarim Basin, Ch ...

, the

Tocharians The Tocharians or Tokharians ( ; ) were speakers of the Tocharian languages, a group of Indo-European languages known from around 7,600 documents from the 6th and 7th centuries, found on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin (modern-day Xinj ...

. The languages are known from manuscripts dating from the 5th to the 8th century AD, which were found in

oasis In ecology, an oasis (; : oases ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment Xinjiang Xinjiang,; , SASM/GNC romanization, SASM/GNC: Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Sinkiang, officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the China, People' ...

in Northwest China) and the

Lop Desert The Lop Desert, or the Lop Depression, is a desert extending from Korla eastwards along the foot of the Kuruk-tagh (meaning Dry Mountain) to the former terminal Tarim Basin in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. It is an almost pe ...

. The discovery of these languages in the early 20th century contradicted the formerly prevalent idea of an east–west division of the Indo-European language family as centum and satem languages, and prompted reinvigorated study of the Indo-European family. Scholars studying these manuscripts in the early 20th century identified their authors with the ''Tokharoi'', a name used in ancient sources for people of

Bactria Bactria (; Bactrian language, Bactrian: , ), or Bactriana, was an ancient Iranian peoples, Iranian civilization in Central Asia based in the area south of the Oxus River (modern Amu Darya) and north of the mountains of the Hindu Kush, an area ...

(

Tokharistan Tokharistan (formed from "Tokhara" and the suffix ''-stan'' meaning "place of" in Persian) is a historical name used by Islamic sources in the early Middle Ages to refer to the area which was known as Bactria in Ancient Greek sources. By the 6 ...

). Although this identification is now believed to be mistaken, "Tocharian" remains the usual term for these languages. The discovered manuscripts record two closely related languages, called

Tocharian A Tocharian A, also known as Tokharian A, Eastern Tocharian, Agnean (), Karashahrian or Turfanian is a dead language that was in use in the 1st millennium AD in the Karashahr and Turpan, Turfan region of the Tarim Basin, present-day Xinjiang, West ...

(also ''East Tocharian'' or ''Turfanian'') and

Tocharian B Tocharian B (also known as Kuchean or West Tocharian) was a Western member of the Tocharian branch of Indo-European languages, extinct from the ninth century. Once spoken in the Tarim Basin The Tarim Basin is an endorheic basin in Xinjiang, N ...

(''West Tocharian'' or ''Kuchean''). The subject matter of the texts suggests that Tocharian A was more archaic and used as a

Buddhist Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

liturgical language, while Tocharian B was more actively spoken in the entire area from

Turfan Turpan () or Turfan ( zh, s=吐鲁番) is a prefecture-level city located in the east of the autonomous region of Xinjiang, China. It has an area of and a population of 693,988 (2020). The historical center of the prefectural area has shifted ...

in the east to

Tumshuq TumxukThe official spelling according to , (Beijing, ''SinoMaps Press'' 1997); is a county-level city in the western part of Xinjiang, China. The eastern part of Tumxuk is surrounded by Maralbexi County, Kashgar Prefecture. The smaller western ...

in the west. A body of loanwords and names found in

Prakrit Prakrit ( ) is a group of vernacular classical Middle Indo-Aryan languages that were used in the Indian subcontinent from around the 5th century BCE to the 12th century CE. The term Prakrit is usually applied to the middle period of Middle Ind ...

documents from the

Lop Nur Lop Nur or Lop Nor (, , from an Oirat Mongolic name meaning "Lop Lake", where "Lop" is a toponym of unknown origin) is a now largely dried-up salt lake formerly located within the ''Lop Depression'' in the eastern fringe of the Tarim Basin in ...

basin have been dubbed Tocharian C (''Kroränian''). A claimed find of ten Tocharian C texts written in

Kharosthi Kharosthi script (), also known as the Gandhari script (), was an ancient script originally developed in the Gandhara Region of modern-day Pakistan, between the 5th and 3rd century BCE. used primarily by the people of Gandhara alongside vari ...

has been discredited. The oldest extant manuscripts in Tocharian B are now dated to the fifth or even late fourth century AD, making it a language of

late antiquity Late antiquity marks the period that comes after the end of classical antiquity and stretches into the onset of the Early Middle Ages. Late antiquity as a period was popularized by Peter Brown (historian), Peter Brown in 1971, and this periodiza ...

contemporary with Gothic,

Classical Armenian Classical Armenian (, , ; meaning "literary anguage; also Old Armenian or Liturgical Armenian) is the oldest attested form of the Armenian language. It was first written down at the beginning of the 5th century, and most Armenian literature fro ...

, and

Primitive Irish Primitive Irish or Archaic Irish (), also called Proto-Goidelic, is the oldest known form of the Goidelic languages, and the ancestor of all languages within this family. This phase of the language is known only from fragments, mostly persona ...

Discovery and significance

The existence of the Tocharian languages and alphabet was not even suspected until archaeological exploration of the Tarim Basin by

Aurel Stein Sir Marc Aurel Stein, (; 26 November 1862 – 26 October 1943) was a Hungarian-born British archaeologist, primarily known for his explorations and archaeological discoveries in Central Asia. He was also a professor at Indian universities. ...

in the early 20th century brought to light fragments of manuscripts in an unknown language, dating from the 6th to 8th centuries AD. It soon became clear that these fragments were actually written in two distinct but related languages belonging to a hitherto unknown branch of Indo-European, now known as Tocharian: *Tocharian A (Turfanian, Agnean, or East Tocharian; natively ) of Qarašähär (ancient ''Agni'', Chinese ''Yanqi'' and Sanskrit ''Agni'') and

Turpan Turpan () or Turfan ( zh, s=吐鲁番) is a prefecture-level city located in the east of the Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of Xinjiang, China. It has an area of and a population of 693,988 (2020). The historical center of the ...

(ancient ''Turfan'' and ''Xočo''), and *Tocharian B (Kuchean or West Tocharian) of

Kucha Kucha or Kuche (also: ''Kuçar'', ''Kuchar''; , Кучар; zh, t= 龜茲, p=Qiūcí, zh, t= 庫車, p=Kùchē; ) was an ancient Buddhist kingdom located on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the northern edge of what is now the Taklam ...

and Tocharian A sites.

documents from 3rd-century

Krorän Loulan ( zh, t=, p=Lóulán <

Eastern Han Chinese

''lo-lɑn'' <

Niya on the southeast edge of the Tarim Basin contain loanwords and names that appeared to scholars to come from a closely related language, referred to as Tocharian C. However, this was found to be entirely flawed for the

Krorän Loulan ( zh, t=, p=Lóulán <

Eastern Han Chinese

''lo-lɑn'' <

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange as a Protestantism, Protestant institution, it holds the d ...

) has demonstrated that all the so-called Tocharian loanwords in Niya Prakrit were, in fact, Bactrian and pre-Bactrian loanwords, or resulted from fundamental misunderstandings of specific words and orthographies. His work definitively put an end to the "Tocharian C" hypothesis. The discovery of Tocharian upset some theories about the relations of Indo-European languages and revitalized their study. In the 19th century, it was thought that the division between centum and satem languages was a simple west–east division, with centum languages in the west. The theory was undermined in the early 20th century by the discovery of Hittite, a centum language in a relatively eastern location, and Tocharian, which was a centum language despite being the easternmost branch. The result was a new hypothesis, following the

wave model In historical linguistics, the wave model or wave theory () is a model of language change in which a new language feature (innovation) or a new combination of language features spreads from its region of origin, being adopted by a gradually expa ...

of Johannes Schmidt, suggesting that the satem isogloss represents a linguistic innovation in the central part of the Proto-Indo-European home range, and the centum languages along the eastern and the western peripheries did not undergo that change. Most scholars identify the ancestors of the Tocharians with the

Afanasievo culture The Afanasievo culture, or Afanasevo culture (Afanasevan culture) ( ''Afanas'yevskaya kul'tura''), is an early archaeological culture of south Siberia, occupying the Minusinsk Basin and the Altai Mountains during the eneolithic era, 3300 to 2 ...

South Siberia South Central Siberia is a geographical region in North Asia, just north of the meeting point between Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The Four Corners At approximately , the borders of Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan inters ...

( 3300–2500 BC), an early eastern offshoot of the steppe cultures of the Don-Volga area that later became the Yamnayans. Under this scenario, Tocharian speakers would have immigrated to the

from the north at some later point. Most scholars reject

Walter Bruno Henning Walter Bruno Henning (August 26, 1908 – January 8, 1967) was a German scholar of Middle Iranian languages and literature, especially of the corpus discovered by the Turpan expeditions of the early 20th century. __TOC__ Biography Walter Hennin ...

's proposed link to Gutian, a language spoken on the

Iranian plateau The Iranian plateau or Persian plateau is a geological feature spanning parts of the Caucasus, Central Asia, South Asia, and West Asia. It makes up part of the Eurasian plate, and is wedged between the Arabian plate and the Indian plate. ...

in the 22nd century BC and known only from personal names. Tocharian probably died out after 840 when the

Uyghurs The Uyghurs,. alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic peoples, Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central Asia and East Asia. The Uyghurs are recognized as the ti ...

, expelled from Mongolia by the Kyrgyz, moved into the Tarim Basin. The theory is supported by the discovery of translations of Tocharian texts into Uyghur. Some modern

Chinese Chinese may refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people identified with China, through nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **Han Chinese, East Asian ethnic group native to China. **'' Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic ...

words may ultimately derive from a Tocharian or related source, e.g.

Old Chinese Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese language, Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones ...

() "honey", from Proto-Tocharian *''ḿət(ə)'' (where *''ḿ'' is palatalized; cf. Tocharian B ), cognate with

Old Church Slavonic Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic ( ) is the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language and the oldest extant written Slavonic language attested in literary sources. It belongs to the South Slavic languages, South Slavic subgroup of the ...

(transliterated: ) (meaning "honey"), and English '.

Names

A colophon to a Central Asian Buddhist manuscript from the late 8th century states that it was translated into

Old Turkic Old Siberian Turkic, generally known as East Old Turkic and often shortened to Old Turkic, was a Siberian Turkic language spoken around East Turkistan and Mongolia. It was first discovered in inscriptions originating from the Second Turkic Kh ...

from Sanskrit, via a ''twγry'' language. In 1907, Emil Sieg and Friedrich W. K. Müller proposed that ''twγry'' was a name for the newly-discovered language of the Turpan area. Sieg and Müller, reading this name as ''toxrï'', connected it with the ethnonym '' Tócharoi'' (,

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...

VI, 11, 6, 2nd century AD), itself taken from Indo-Iranian (cf.

Old Persian Old Persian is one of two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of the Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native speakers as (I ...

''tuxāri-'', Khotanese ''ttahvāra'', and

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

''tukhāra''), and proposed the name "Tocharian" (German ''Tocharisch''). Ptolemy's ''Tócharoi'' are often associated by modern scholars with the

Yuezhi The Yuezhi were an ancient people first described in China, Chinese histories as nomadic pastoralists living in an arid grassland area in the western part of the modern Chinese province of Gansu, during the 1st millennium BC. After a major defea ...

of Chinese historical accounts, who founded the

Kushan Empire The Kushan Empire (– CE) was a Syncretism, syncretic empire formed by the Yuezhi in the Bactrian territories in the early 1st century. It spread to encompass much of what is now Afghanistan, Eastern Iran, India, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbe ...

. It is now clear that these people actually spoke Bactrian, an

Eastern Iranian language Eastern or Easterns may refer to: Transportation Airlines *China Eastern Airlines, a current Chinese airline based in Shanghai * Eastern Air, former name of Zambia Skyways *Eastern Air Lines, a defunct American airline that operated from 192 ...

, rather than the language of the Tarim manuscripts, so the term "Tocharian" is considered a misnomer. Nevertheless, it remains the standard term for the language of the Tarim Basin manuscripts. In 1938,

found the term "four ''twγry''" used in early 9th-century manuscripts in Sogdian, Middle Iranian, and Uighur. He argued that it referred to the region on the northeast edge of the Tarim, including Agni and

Karakhoja Gaochang (; Old Uyghur: ''Qocho''), also called Khocho, Karakhoja, Qara-hoja, Kara-Khoja or Karahoja (قاراغوجا in Uyghur), was an ancient oasis city on the northern rim of the inhospitable Taklamakan Desert in present-day Sanbu Towns ...

, but not Kucha. He thus inferred that the colophon referred to the Agnean language. Although the term ''twγry'' or ''toxrï'' appears to be the Old Turkic name for the Tocharians, it is not found in Tocharian texts. The apparent self-designation ''ārśi'' appears in Tocharian A texts. Tocharian B texts use the adjective ''kuśiññe'', derived from ''kuśi'' or ''kuči'', a name also known from Chinese and Turkic documents. The historian

Bernard Sergent Bernard Sergent (; born 23 February 1946) is a French ancient historian and comparative mythologist. He is researcher of the CNRS and president of the Société de mythologie française. Publications He has written a seminal work on Greek myth ...

compounded these names to coin an alternative term ''Arśi-Kuči'' for the family, recently revised to ''Agni-Kuči'', but this name has not achieved widespread usage.

Writing system

Tocharian is documented in manuscript fragments, mostly from the 8th century (with a few earlier ones) that were written on palm leaves, wooden tablets, and Chinese

paper Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, Textile, rags, poaceae, grasses, Feces#Other uses, herbivore dung, or other vegetable sources in water. Once the water is dra ...

, preserved by the extremely dry climate of the Tarim Basin. Samples of the language have been discovered at sites in

and

Karasahr Karasahr or Karashar (), which was originally known in the Tocharian languages as ''Ārśi'' (or Arshi), Qarašähär, or Agni or the Chinese derivative Yanqi ( zh, s=焉耆, p=Yānqí, w=Yen-ch'i), is an ancient town on the Silk Road and the capi ...

, including many mural inscriptions. Most of attested Tocharian was written in the Tocharian alphabet, a derivative of the

Brahmi Brahmi ( ; ; ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system from ancient India. "Until the late nineteenth century, the script of the Aśokan (non-Kharosthi) inscriptions and its immediate derivatives was referred to by various names such as 'lath' or ...

alphabetic syllabary (

abugida An abugida (; from Geʽez: , )sometimes also called alphasyllabary, neosyllabary, or pseudo-alphabetis a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as units; each unit ...

) also referred to as North Turkestan Brahmi or slanting Brahmi. However a smaller amount was written in the

Manichaean script The Manichaean script is an abjad-based writing system rooted in the Semitic family of alphabets and associated with the spread of Manichaeism from southwest to central Asia and beyond, beginning in the third century CE. It bears a sibling relati ...

in which

Manichaean Manichaeism (; in ; ) is an endangered former major world religion currently only practiced in China around Cao'an,R. van den Broek, Wouter J. Hanegraaff ''Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times''. SUNY Press, 1998 p. 37 found ...

texts were recorded. It soon became apparent that a large proportion of the manuscripts were translations of known

works in

and some of them were even bilingual, facilitating decipherment of the new language. Besides the Buddhist and

religious texts, there were also monastery correspondence and accounts, commercial documents, caravan permits, medical and magical texts, and one love poem. In 1998, the Chinese linguist

Ji Xianlin Ji Xianlin (; August 6, 1911 – July 11, 2009) was a Chinese Indologist, linguist, paleographer, historian and writer who has been honored by the governments of both India and China. Ji was proficient in many languages including Chinese, San ...

published a translation and analysis of fragments of a Tocharian '' Maitreyasamiti-Nataka'' discovered in 1974 in Yanqi.

Tocharian A and B

Tocharian A and B are significantly different, to the point of being

mutually unintelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...

. A common Proto-Tocharian language must precede the attested languages by several centuries, probably dating to the late 1st millennium BC. Tocharian A is found only in the eastern part of the Tocharian-speaking area, and all extant texts are of a religious nature. Tocharian B, however, is found throughout the range and in both religious and secular texts. As a result, it has been suggested that Tocharian A was a

liturgical language A sacred language, liturgical language or holy language is a language that is cultivated and used primarily for religious reasons (like church service) by people who speak another, primary language in their daily lives. Some religions, or part ...

, no longer spoken natively, while Tocharian B was the spoken language of the entire area. The hypothesized relationship of Tocharian A and B as liturgical and spoken forms, respectively, is sometimes compared with the relationship between Latin and the modern

Romance languages The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...

, or

Classical Chinese Classical Chinese is the language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from . For millennia thereafter, the written Chinese used in these works was imitated and iterated upon by scholars in a form now called Literary ...

and

Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...

. However, in both of these latter cases, the liturgical language is the linguistic ancestor of the spoken language, whereas no such relationship holds between Tocharian A and B. In fact, from a phonological perspective Tocharian B is significantly more conservative than Tocharian A, and serves as the primary source for reconstructing Proto-Tocharian. Only Tocharian B preserves the following Proto-Tocharian features: stress distinctions, final vowels, diphthongs, and ''o'' vs. ''e'' distinction. In turn, the loss of final vowels in Tocharian A has led to the loss of certain Proto-Tocharian categories still found in Tocharian B, e.g. the vocative case and some of the noun, verb, and adjective declensional classes. In their declensional and conjugational endings, the two languages innovated in divergent ways, with neither clearly simpler than the other. For example, both languages show significant innovations in the present active indicative endings but in radically different ways, so that only the second-person singular ending is directly cognate between the two languages, and in most cases neither variant is directly cognate with the corresponding

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...

(PIE) form. The agglutinative secondary case endings in the two languages likewise stem from different sources, showing parallel development of the secondary case system after the Proto-Tocharian period. Likewise, some of the verb classes show independent origins, e.g. the class II preterite, which uses reduplication in Tocharian A (possibly from the reduplicated

aorist Aorist ( ; abbreviated ) verb forms usually express perfective aspect and refer to past events, similar to a preterite. Ancient Greek grammar had the aorist form, and the grammars of other Indo-European languages and languages influenced by the ...

) but long PIE ''ē'' in Tocharian B (possibly related to the long-vowel perfect found in Latin ''lēgī'', ''fēcī'', etc.). Tocharian B shows an internal chronological development; three linguistic stages have been detected. The oldest stage is attested only in Kucha. There are also the middle ("classical") and the late stage.

Tocharian C

A third Tocharian language was first suggested by

Thomas Burrow Thomas Burrow (; 29 June 1909 – 8 June 1986) was an Indologist and the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford from 1944 to 1976; he was also a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford during this time. His work includes ''A Dravidi ...

in the 1930s, while discussing 3rd-century documents from

Krorän Loulan ( zh, t=, p=Lóulán <

Eastern Han Chinese

''lo-lɑn'' <

Niya. The texts were written in Gandhari Prakrit, but contained loanwords of evidently Tocharian origin, such as ''kilme'' ('district'), ''ṣoṣthaṃga'' ('tax collector'), and ''ṣilpoga'' ('document'). This hypothetical language later became generally known as Tocharian C. It has also sometimes been called Kroränian or Krorainic. In papers published posthumously in 2018, Klaus T. Schmidt, a scholar of Tocharian, presented a decipherment of 10 texts written in the Kharoṣṭhī script. Schmidt claimed that these texts were written in a third Tocharian language he called . He also suggested that the language was closer to Tocharian B than to Tocharian A. In 2019 a group of linguists led by

Georges-Jean Pinault Georges-Jean Pinault (; born 4 July 1955) is a French linguist who is professor of linguistics at the École pratique des hautes études.UMR 7528 - Mondes iranien et indienPinault, Georges-Jean He is one of the leading experts on Tocharian langua ...

and Michaël Peyrot convened in

Leiden Leiden ( ; ; in English language, English and Archaism, archaic Dutch language, Dutch also Leyden) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Nethe ...

to examine Schmidt's translations against the original texts. They concluded that Schmidt's decipherment was fundamentally flawed, that there was no reason to associate the texts with Krörän, and that the language they recorded was neither Tocharian nor Indic, but Iranian. In 2024, Schoubben conducted a systematic review of Niya Prakrit and the loanwords claimed as evidence for Tocharian C. He argued that most of the words in question could be explained as loanwords from Bactrian or other

Iranian languages The Iranian languages, also called the Iranic languages, are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau. The Iranian langu ...

, and found no compelling evidence for a Tocharian substrate. For example, Burrow proposed that ''aṃklatsa'', 'a type of camel', corresponded to Tocharian A ''āknats'' and Tocharian B ''aknātsa'' 'stupid, foolish', believing that this would refer to an 'untrained camel', from a Tocharian form *''anknats'' (with the negative prefix *''en-''). Not only does this etymology presuppose an ''ad hoc'' sound change from *-''nkn''- to *-''nkl''-, but the variant ''agiltsa'' also found in Niya becomes aberrant. Schoubben suggests that this is might be a Bactrian word, as camels originally come from Bactria, but could not find a convincing etymology. He had earlier argued that <ḱ> was used in Niya Prakrit to transcribe Bactrian -''šk''- (spelled ϸκ in the Bactrian alphabet). For example, Burrow had tentatively connected ''maḱa'', a Niya Prakrit word for an unidentified food produced on farms, with Tocharian A ''malke'' 'milk', but Schoubben derives it from

Proto-Iranian Proto-Iranian or Proto-Iranic is the reconstructed proto-language of the Iranian languages branch of Indo-European language family and thus the ancestor of the Iranian languages such as Persian, Pashto, Sogdian, Zazaki, Ossetian, Mazandara ...

*''māšaka-'' 'bean'.

Phonology

Phonetically, Tocharian languages are " centum" Indo-European languages, meaning that they merge the

palatovelar Velar consonants are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (also known as the "velum"). Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively ...

consonants of

with the plain

velars Velar consonants are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (also known as the "velum"). Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively ...

(*k, *g, *gʰ) rather than palatalizing them to affricates or sibilants. Centum languages are mostly found in western and southern Europe (

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

, Italic,

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language *Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Foot ...

, Germanic). In that sense Tocharian (to some extent like the

and the

Anatolian languages The Anatolian languages are an extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Anatolia. The best known Anatolian language is Hittite, which is considered the earliest-attested Indo-European language. Undiscovered until the late ...

) seems to have been an isolate in the "

satem Languages of the Indo-European family are classified as either centum languages or satem languages according to how the dorsal consonants (sounds of "K", "G" and "Y" type) of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) developed. An ...

" (i.e.

sibilant Sibilants (from 'hissing') are fricative and affricate consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English w ...

) phonetic regions of Indo-European-speaking populations. The discovery of Tocharian contributed to doubts that Proto-Indo-European had originally split into western and eastern branches; today, the centum–satem division is not seen as a real familial division.

Vowels

Tocharian A and Tocharian B have the same set of vowels, but they often do not correspond to each other. For example, the sound ''a'' did not occur in Proto-Tocharian. Tocharian B ''a'' is derived from former stressed ''ä'' or unstressed ''ā'' (reflected unchanged in Tocharian A), while Tocharian A ''a'' stems from Proto-Tocharian or (reflected as and in Tocharian B), and Tocharian A ''e'' and ''o'' stem largely from monophthongization of former diphthongs (still present in Tocharian B).

Diphthongs

Diphthongs occur in Tocharian B only.

Consonants

The following table lists the reconstructed phonemes in Tocharian along with their standard transcription. Because Tocharian is written in an alphabet used originally for Sanskrit and its descendants, the transcription reflects Sanskrit phonology, and may not represent Tocharian phonology accurately. The Tocharian alphabet also has letters representing all of the remaining Sanskrit sounds, but these appear only in Sanskrit loanwords and are not thought to have had distinct pronunciations in Tocharian. There is some uncertainty as to actual pronunciation of some of the letters, particularly those representing palatalized obstruents (see below). # is transcribed by two different letters in the Tocharian alphabet depending on position. Based on the corresponding letters in Sanskrit, these are transcribed (word-finally, including before certain

clitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic ( , backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a ...

s) and ''n'' (elsewhere), but represents , not . # The sound written is thought to correspond to a alveolo-palatal affricate in Sanskrit. The Tocharian pronunciation is suggested by the common occurrence of the cluster ''śc'', but the exact pronunciation cannot be determined with certainty. # The sound written seems more likely to have been a palato-alveolar sibilant (as in English "''ship''"), because it derives from a palatalized .Ringe, Donald A. (1996). ''On the Chronology of Sound Changes in Tocharian: Volume I: From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Tocharian''. New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society. # The sound ''ṅ'' occurs only before ''k'', or in some clusters where a ''k'' has been deleted between consonants. It is clearly phonemic because sequences ''nk'' and ''ñk'' also exist (from syncope of a former ''ä'' between them).

Morphology

Nouns

Tocharian has completely re-worked the nominal declension system of Proto-Indo-European. The only cases inherited from the proto-language are nominative, genitive,

accusative In grammar, the accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "her", " ...

, and (in Tocharian B only) vocative; in Tocharian the old accusative is known as the ''oblique'' case. In addition to these primary cases, however, each Tocharian language has six cases formed by the addition of an invariant suffix to the oblique case — although the set of six cases is not the same in each language, and the suffixes are largely non-cognate. For example, the Tocharian word ' (Toch B), ' (Toch A) "horse" < PIE ''*eḱwos'' is declined as follows: The Tocharian A instrumental case rarely occurs with humans. When referring to humans, the oblique singular of most adjectives and of some nouns is marked in both varieties by an ending ''-(a)ṃ'', which also appears in the secondary cases. An example is ' (Toch B), ' (Toch A) "man", which belongs to the same declension as above, but has oblique singular ' (Toch B), ' (Toch A), and corresponding oblique stems ' (Toch B), ' (Toch A) for the secondary cases. This is thought to stem from the generalization of ''n''-stem adjectives as an indication of determinative semantics, seen most prominently in the weak adjective declension in the

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoke ...

(where it cooccurs with definite articles and determiners), but also in Latin and Greek ''n''-stem nouns (especially proper names) formed from adjectives, e.g. Latin ''Catō'' (genitive ''Catōnis'') literally "the sly one" < ''catus'' "sly", Greek ''Plátōn'' literally "the broad-shouldered one" < ''platús'' "broad".

Verbs

In contrast, the verbal conjugation system is quite conservative. The majority of Proto-Indo-European verbal classes and categories are represented in some manner in Tocharian, although not necessarily with the same function. Some examples: athematic and thematic present tenses, including null-, ''-y-'', ''-sḱ-'', ''-s-'', ''-n-'' and ''-nH-'' suffixes as well as ''n''-infixes and various laryngeal-ending stems; ''o''-grade and possibly lengthened-grade perfects (although lacking reduplication or augment); sigmatic, reduplicated, thematic, and possibly lengthened-grade aorists; optatives; imperatives; and possibly PIE subjunctives. In addition, most PIE sets of endings are found in some form in Tocharian (although with significant innovations), including thematic and athematic endings, primary (non-past) and secondary (past) endings, active and mediopassive endings, and perfect endings. Dual endings are still found, although they are rarely attested and generally restricted to the third person. The mediopassive still reflects the distinction between primary ''-r'' and secondary ''-i'', effaced in most Indo-European languages. Both root and suffix ablaut is still well-represented, although again with significant innovations.

Classes

A given verb belongs to one of a large number of classes, according to its conjugation. As in

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

, and (to a lesser extent)

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

, there are independent sets of classes in the indicative present,

subjunctive The subjunctive (also known as the conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of an utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude toward it. Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unrealit ...

perfect Perfect commonly refers to: * Perfection; completeness, and excellence * Perfect (grammar), a grammatical category in some languages Perfect may also refer to: Film and television * ''Perfect'' (1985 film), a romantic drama * ''Perfect'' (20 ...

, imperative, and to a limited extent

optative The optative mood ( or ; abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood that indicates a wish or hope regarding a given action. It is a superset of the cohortative mood and is closely related to the subjunctive mood but is distinct from the desiderative ...

and

imperfect The imperfect ( abbreviated ) is a verb form that combines past tense (reference to a past time) and imperfective aspect (reference to a continuing or repeated event or state). It can have meanings similar to the English "was doing (something)" o ...

, and there is no general correspondence among the different sets of classes, meaning that each verb must be specified using a number of

principal parts In language learning, the principal parts of a verb are the most fundamental forms of a verb that can be grammatical conjugation, conjugated into any form of the verb. The concept originates in the humanist Latin schools, where students learned v ...

=Present indicative

= The most complex system is the present indicative, consisting of 12 classes, 8 thematic and 4 athematic, with distinct sets of thematic and athematic endings. The following classes occur in Tocharian B (some are missing in Tocharian A): *I: Athematic without suffix < PIE root athematic. *II: Thematic without suffix < PIE root thematic. *III: Thematic with PToch suffix ''*-ë-''. Mediopassive only. Apparently reflecting consistent PIE ''o'' theme rather than the normal alternating ''o/e'' theme. *IV: Thematic with PToch suffix ''*-ɔ-''. Mediopassive only. Same PIE origin as previous class, but diverging within Proto-Tocharian. *V: Athematic with PToch suffix ''*-ā-'', likely from either PIE verbs ending in a syllabic laryngeal or PIE derived verbs in ''*-eh₂-'' (but extended to other verbs). *VI: Athematic with PToch suffix ''*-nā-'', from PIE verbs in ''*-nH-''. *VII: Athematic with infixed nasal, from PIE infixed nasal verbs. *VIII: Thematic with suffix ''-s-'', possibly from PIE ''-sḱ-''? *IX: Thematic with suffix ''-sk-'' < PIE ''-sḱ-''. *X: Thematic with PToch suffix ''*-näsk/nāsk-'' (evidently a combination of classes VI and IX). *XI: Thematic in PToch suffix ''*-säsk-'' (evidently a combination of classes VIII and IX). *XII: Thematic with PToch suffix ''*-(ä)ññ-'' < either PIE ''*-n-y-'' (denominative to n-stem nouns) or PIE ''*-nH-y-'' (deverbative from PIE ''*-nH-'' verbs).

Palatalization Palatalization may refer to: *Palatalization (phonetics), the phonetic feature of palatal secondary articulation *Palatalization (sound change) Palatalization ( ) is a historical-linguistic sound change that results in a palatalized articulati ...

of the final root

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

occurs in the 2nd singular, 3rd singular, 3rd dual and 2nd plural in thematic classes II and VIII-XII as a result of the original PIE thematic vowel ''e''.

=Subjunctive

= The

likewise has 12 classes, denoted ''i'' through ''xii''. Most are conjugated identically to the corresponding indicative classes; indicative and subjunctive are distinguished by the fact that a verb in a given indicative class will usually belong to a different subjunctive class. In addition, four subjunctive classes differ from the corresponding indicative classes, two "special subjunctive" classes with differing suffixes and two "varying subjunctive" classes with root ablaut reflecting the PIE perfect. Special subjunctives: *iv: Thematic with suffix ''i'' < PIE ''-y-'', with consistent palatalization of final root consonant. Tocharian B only, rare. *vii: Thematic (''not'' athematic, as in indicative class VII) with suffix ''ñ'' < PIE ''-n-'' (palatalized by thematic ''e'', with palatalized variant generalized). Varying subjunctives: *i: Athematic without suffix, with root ablaut reflecting PIE ''o''-grade in active singular, zero-grade elsewhere. Derived from PIE perfect. *v: Identical to class i but with PToch suffix ''*-ā-'', originally reflecting laryngeal-final roots but generalized.

=Preterite

= The

preterite The preterite or preterit ( ; abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense or verb form serving to denote events that took place or were completed in the past; in some languages, such as Spanish, French, and English, it is equivalent to the simple p ...

has 6 classes: *I: The most common class, with a suffix ''ā'' < PIE ''Ḥ'' (i.e. roots ending in a laryngeal, although widely extended to other roots). This class shows root ablaut, with original ''e''-grade (and palatalization of the initial root consonant) in the active singular, contrasting with zero-grade (and no palatalization) elsewhere. *II: This class has reduplication in Tocharian A (possibly reflecting the PIE reduplicated aorist). However, Tocharian B has a vowel reflecting long PIE ''ē'', along with palatalization of the initial root consonant. There is no

ablaut In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut ( , from German ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its relate ...

in this class. *III: This class has a suffix ''s'' in the 3rd singular active and throughout the mediopassive, evidently reflecting the PIE sigmatic

. Root ablaut occurs between active and mediopassive. A few verbs have palatalization in the active along with ''s'' in the 3rd singular, but no palatalization and no ''s'' in the mediopassive, along with no root ablaut (the vowel reflects PToch ''ë''). This suggests that, for these verbs in particular, the active originates in the PIE sigmatic aorist (with ''s'' suffix and ''ē'' vocalism) while the mediopassive stems from the PIE perfect (with ''o'' vocalism). *IV: This class has suffix ''ṣṣā'', with no ablaut. Most verbs in this class are causatives. *V: This class has suffix ''ñ(ñ)ā'', with no ablaut. Only a few verbs belong to this class. *VI: This class, which has only two verbs, is derived from the PIE thematic aorist. As in Greek, this class has different endings from all the others, which partly reflect the PIE secondary endings (as expected for the thematic aorist). All except preterite class VI have a common set of endings that stem from the PIE perfect endings, although with significant innovations.

=Imperative

= The imperative likewise shows 6 classes, with a unique set of endings, found only in the second person, and a prefix beginning with ''p-''. This prefix usually reflects Proto-Tocharian ''*pä-'' but unexpected connecting vowels occasionally occur, and the prefix combines with vowel-initial and glide-initial roots in unexpected ways. The prefix is often compared with the Slavic perfective prefix ''po-'', although the phonology is difficult to explain. Classes i through v tend to co-occur with preterite classes I through V, although there are many exceptions. Class vi is not so much a coherent class as an "irregular" class with all verbs not fitting in other categories. The imperative classes tend to share the same suffix as the corresponding preterite (if any), but to have root vocalism that matches the vocalism of a verb's subjunctive. This includes the root ablaut of subjunctive classes i and v, which tend to co-occur with imperative class i.

=Optative and imperfect

= The

and

have related formations. The optative is generally built by adding ''i'' onto the subjunctive stem. Tocharian B likewise forms the imperfect by adding ''i'' onto the present indicative stem, while Tocharian A has 4 separate imperfect formations: usually ''ā'' is added to the subjunctive stem, but occasionally to the indicative stem, and sometimes either ''ā'' or ''s'' is added directly onto the root. The endings differ between the two languages: Tocharian A uses present endings for the optative and preterite endings for the imperfect, while Tocharian B uses the same endings for both, which are a combination of preterite and unique endings (the latter used in the singular active).

Endings

As suggested by the above discussion, there are a large number of sets of endings. The present-tense endings come in both thematic and athematic variants, although they are related, with the thematic endings generally reflecting a theme vowel (PIE ''e'' or ''o'') plus the athematic endings. There are different sets for the preterite classes I through V; preterite class VI; the imperative; and in Tocharian B, in the singular active of the optative and imperfect. Furthermore, each set of endings comes with both active and mediopassive forms. The mediopassive forms are quite conservative, directly reflecting the PIE variation between ''-r'' in the present and ''-i'' in the past. (Most other languages with the mediopassive have generalized one of the two.) The present-tense endings are almost completely divergent between Tocharian A and B. The following shows the thematic endings, with their origin:

Comparison to other Indo-European languages

In traditional Indo-European studies, no hypothesis of a closer genealogical relationship of the Tocharian languages has been widely accepted by linguists. However,

lexicostatistical Lexicostatistics is a method of comparative linguistics that involves comparing the percentage of lexical cognates between languages to determine their relationship. Lexicostatistics is related to the comparative method but does not reconstruct a ...

and glottochronological approaches suggest the

, including Hittite, might be the closest relatives of Tocharian. As an example, the same Proto-Indo-European root (but not a common suffixed formation) can be reconstructed to underlie the words for 'wheel': Tocharian A ''wärkänt'', Tokharian B ''yerkwanto'', and Hittite ''ḫūrkis''.

Contact with other languages

Michaël Peyrot argues that several of the most striking typological peculiarities of Tocharian are rooted in a prolonged contact of Proto-Tocharian with an early stage of

Proto-Samoyedic Proto-Samoyedic, or Proto-Samoyed, is the reconstructed ancestral language of the Samoyedic languages: Nenets (Tundra and Forest), Enets, Nganasan, Selkup, as well as extinct Kamas and Mator. Samoyedic is one of the principal branches of ...

in South Siberia. This might explain the merger of all three stop series (e.g. *t, *d, *dʰ > *t), which must have led to a huge number of

homonyms In linguistics, homonyms are words which are either; ''homographs''—words that mean different things, but have the same spelling (regardless of pronunciation), or ''homophones''—words that mean different things, but have the same pronunciatio ...

, restructuring of the vowel system, development of

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglu ...

case marking, the loss of the

dative case In grammar, the dative case ( abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a drink". In this examp ...

, and others. In historic times, the Tocharian language stood in contact with various surrounding languages, including

Iranian Iranian () may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Iran ** Iranian diaspora, Iranians living outside Iran ** Iranian architecture, architecture of Iran and parts of the rest of West Asia ** Iranian cuisine, cooking traditions and practic ...

, Turkic, and

Sinitic languages The Sinitic languages (), often synonymous with the Chinese languages, are a language group, group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute a major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is a p ...

. Tocharian borrowings, and other Indo-European loanwords transmitted to Uralic, Turkic and Sinitic speakers, have been confirmed. Tocharian had a high social position within the region, and influenced the

Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic langua ...

, which would later replace Tocharian in the

Notable example

Most of the texts known from the Tocharians are religious, but one noted text is a fragment of a love poem in Tocharian B (manuscript B-496, found in Kizil):

References

Citations

Sources

* * * * * * * * * Carling, Gerd (2009). ''Dictionary and Thesaurus of Tocharian A''. Volume 1: a-j. (in collaboration with Georges-Jean Pinault and Werner Winter), Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz Verlag, . * * * * * * * Lévi, Sylvain (1913).
Tokharian Pratimoksa Fragment
. ''The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland'', pp. 109–120. * * Malzahn, Melanie (ed.) (2007). ''Instrumenta Tocharica''. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, . * * * Pinault, Georges-Jean (2008). ''Chrestomathie tokharienne: Textes et grammaire''. Leuven-Paris: Peeters (Collection linguistique publiée par la Société de Linguistique de Paris, no. XCV), . * *Ringe, Donald A. (1996). ''On the Chronology of Sound Changes in Tocharian: Volume I: From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Tocharian''. New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society. * Schmalsteig, William R. (1974).
Tokharian and Baltic
." ''Lituanus''. v. 20, no. 3. * * Winter, Werner (1998). "Tocharian." In Ramat, Giacalone Anna and Paolo Ramat (eds). ''The Indo-European languages'', 154–168. London: Routledge, .

External links

Tocharian alphabet (from Omniglot)
* Thesaurus Indogermanischer Text- und Sprachmaterialien (TITUS): *

*
Conjugation tables for Tocharian A and B
*

* Mark Dickens
"Everything you always wanted to know about Tocharian"

Tocharian Online
by Todd B. Krause and Jonathan Slocum, free online lessons at th
Linguistics Research Center
at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

Online dictionary of Tocharian B
based upon D. Q. Adams's ''A Dictionary of Tocharian B'' (1999)
Tocharian B Swadesh list
(From Wiktionary)
Comprehensive Edition of Tocharian Manuscripts
University of Vienna, with images, transcriptions and (in many cases) translations and other information. * Transcriptions of Tocharian A manuscripts. *

an online collection of introductory videos to Ancient Indo-European languages produced by the University of Göttingen {{DEFAULTSORT:Tocharian Languages Medieval languages Indo-European languages Languages of Xinjiang Central Asia Extinct languages of Asia Languages attested from the 6th century Languages extinct in the 9th century

Discovery and significance

Names

Writing system

Tocharian A and B

Tocharian C

Phonology

Vowels

Diphthongs

Consonants

Morphology

Nouns

Verbs

Categories

Classes

=Present indicative

=Subjunctive

=Preterite

=Imperative

=Optative and imperfect

Endings

Comparison to other Indo-European languages

Contact with other languages

Notable example

See also

References

Citations

Sources

Further reading

External links