Talk:Tocharian languages

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[edit] Tokharian merge

There is an entry titled Tokharian, which reads, in its entirety:

Tokharian is an extinct Indo-European language known from manuscript fragments of the 6th to 8th centuries A.D., coming from East (or Chinese) Turkestan.

Tokharian the extinct language has no relation to Iranian Tokharian (alt Tókharoi, Tukh?ra, Tuholo), which is a distinct language.

(HEADING:) References

William R. Schmalstieg Tokharian and Baltic Lituanus (1974)

Tokharian Pratimoksa Fragment Sylvain Levi (1913)

I have added these references to the current article and made Tokharian a redirect to this page. I did not copy in the reference to a distinct "Iranian Tokharian", as I have seen no reference that was not compativle with these Tocharian languages. If it is supported, feel free to add it in. Dpv 18:50, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Name for selves

What would Tocharian be called in Tocharian itself? Meursault2004 01:25, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

According to J.P. Mallory: possibly "Kuchean" (kuśiññe), "of the kingdom of Kucha and Agni." The native name of Agni was possibly ārśi, and one Toch A text has ārśi-käntwā, "In the tongue of Arsi". (ārśi is probably cognate to argenteus, i.e. "shining, brilliant"). According to D.Q.Adams, ākñi may be how the Tocharians may have referred to themselves, meaning "borderers, marchers" (c.f. Ukraine). dab (ᛏ) 16:27, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! Meursault2004 14:37, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What evidence for Tocharian-speaking Kushans?

The page as it now stands states that Tocharian was the language of the Kushan empire. But as far as I know:

the Kushans used the Bactrian language on their coins and inscriptions. [1] Bactrian is an Iranian language, and thus not even in the same branch as Tocharian; the Bactrian language was also, apparently, in use till about the eighth century AD, thus contemporaneously with Tocharian;

The Kushans first essentially used Greek on their coins (Vima Takto, Kujula Kadphises, Heraios) and progressively introduced language in the Kharoshthi script from the time of Vima Kadphises. PHG 22:58, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

True about the coins—the titles (though not the names, except perhaps Heraios) are clearly Greek: tyrranos, soter megas, etc. But there are other inscriptions in Bactrian in a variant of the Greek alphabet, e.g. [2]. —Muke Tever 05:38, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The earliest records of the Tocharian language are, even according to this article, from at least five hundred years after the time of the Kushan empire...

By the time of the first known artifacts (6th century), Tocharian had already split in 3 groups with rather strong differenciations. The divergence point is roughly estimated to be anterior by about 1000 years (cf "The Tarim mummies" Mallory).PHG 22:58, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

All right, but where's the evidence that any language of Kushan was one of these branches of Tocharian? —Muke Tever 05:38, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm not going to remove it directly, on the off chance I'm wrong, but I think this is a misunderstanding—possibly by mixing up Kuchean and Kushan? I'm willing to concede that the Kushan rulers may have been ethnically Tocharian, but what evidence states that the Kushan empire was linguistically Tocharian? —Muke Tever 17:23, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Muke Tever presents very sensible points. --Wetman 21:23, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

As far as I know, the Kushan were a tribe of the Yuezhi, who lived in the Tarim Basin around 200 BCE (Chinese historical sources, the Shiji) before their migration to the south, and are often considered to be the same as the Tocharian, who were also of the Indo-European type and resided in the same geographical area. [3], [4]. I don't think the link is 100% confirmed, so it is necessary to keep slightly cautious language. PHG 22:04, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

definitely a mixup, good catch! It should be Kuchean, not Kushan. The two names may be related, and there may be an ethnic connection, but there is no evidence that would allow a link of the Kushan Empire with the Tocharian language, at all. dab (ᛏ) 22:11, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Definitely not a mixup. There is a lot of research connecting the Kushans with the Tocharian language (Goggle "Kushan Tocharian" for a quick check + above references). Bactria was only the area of settlement of the Kushans for a century and a half (160-30 BCE) before they moved into India, so calling their language "Bactrian" seems disputable. PHG 23:02, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, are we talking about "Kushans" as an ethnic group, or the Kushan Empire? The latter is impossible to connect with the Tocharian language, but I readily believe that "Kushan" and "Kuchean" is ultimately the same word, referring to the same ethnicity, and Tocharian was, in fact the language of the kingdom of Kucha. dab (ᛏ) 06:36, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In this case, the statement about the Kushan empire on this page should be replaced with an equivalent statement about the Kuchean one. If it later is shown that the Kushans, too, spoke Tocharian, it can be added additionally... —Muke Tever 02:42, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I do not know about the connection between Kushan and Kuchean, but Kushan or Kushan Empire are often connected with the Tocharian language (cf Narain A.K. "On the first Indo-Europeans: the Tokharian-Yuezhi and their Chinese homeland", also extensive discussion in "The Tarim mummies" by Mallory). Since most of these things are conjectures, maybe the phrase in the article could be more cautious, like "Tocharian may have been the language of the short-lived, yet influential Kushan empire."PHG 13:06, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

ah, wait a minute, there is another mixup. The Kushan empire corresponds indeed to the people that the Greeks called Tokharoi. These are, however, not identical with the speakers of what we now call the Tocharian languages. This was a misinterpretation a century ago, when these languages were discovered. We need to cleanly unravel the terminology involved. This is similar to the Hittites who did not call themselves, or their language, Hittite at all. dab (ᛏ) 06:41, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

And in this case, perhaps the statements on the Kushan Empire that refer to "Tocharian languages" should be emended as well. Actually, if the timespans are any indication, it's just as likely that it was Kushans that went north and became Kucheans, not the other way around—the Kucha article says it may have been ruled by kings from India, no? But I can't press this, as my studies are in linguistics, not ethnography. —Muke Tever 02:42, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The Kushans originated from the Tarim Basin, where they were known to the Chinese as the Yuezhi (the name for the larger tribal group of which the Kushans were a part). They left the Tarim Basin in the 2nd century BCE as they were chased by the Xiongnu. After they built an empire in India in the 1st-3rd century, they expanded north again and occupied the western part of the Tarim Basin, including Kucha.PHG 13:06, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Kuchean refers to Kucha, the town in the Tarim Basin/Taklamakan. The Kushans may have been of the same ethnic stock as the Kucheans, they may be the Tokharoi of Greek sources, but they were not Tocharians in the linguistic sense, since the language of the Kushan Empire was the Bactrian language. The Kushan rulers (Kanishka) adopted the Bactrian language, and it is not impossible that their former language was Tocharian, but it is not attested, afaik. Kings before Kanishka seem to have used Greek, though (c.f. Sapadbizes). It is therefore misleading to say, "the Kushans were Tocharians" leading to the false statement that the language of the Kushan Empire was Tocharian. I think it would be correct to say that the Kushan rulers' were of Saka and Tocharian stock, ruling over an essentially Iranian kingdom. It would be interesting if the names of the rulers have Tocharian etymologies, but I no nothing to indicate that they do. dab (ᛏ) 14:20, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi Dab. Do you have sources for "The Kushans adopted the Bactrian language"?. Professor Williams-Sims indeed says that "A crucial moment in the history of this language was the decision of the Kushan ruler Kanishka to adopt Bactrian as the language of his coinage. After the first issues of Kanishka, Greek disappears from the coinage once and for all, to be replaced by Bactrian." However, the reign of Kanishka is actually around 120 CE, a long time after the Kushans had moved their center of power to the Indian subcontinent (around 20 CE). Isn't hard to believe that the Kushans, a succesfull conquering people, would abandon their own original "Yuezhi" language from the Tarim Basin (probably Tocharian), and adopt the Bactrian language, more than a century after they had essentially left their temporary settlement in Bactria to move to India? I would be interested if somebody has references to a study showing that the language on later Kushan coins is indeed equivalent to Bactrian, and if there are some proof that the Kushan abandoned their original tongue for the Bactrian language. PHG 22:51, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I do think the claim is based on the coins. They used Greek first and Bactrian later. I don't think anyone can say what language they spoke in their homes, privately. But my impression is that they were "foreign rulers" who had to adopt the local language for their everyday dealings. I don't know of any texts of the time, but they would invariably have been either in Greek or in Bactrian, and the Tocharian language is not attested, not even in fragments, until centuries later. dab (ᛏ) 07:27, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

fr-Wiki has a pretty good summary, fr:Tokhariens#Les_Tokhariens_s.27appelaient-ils_vraiment_ainsi_.3F, I think if we paraphrase that, we're good (or at least better off than now) dab (ᛏ) 08:09, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

3/31/08 - Is there any known connection between the Tocharian languages/Tocharian people (as well as the Kushans) and the Hepthalites? It seems that the Hepthalites and the Kushans originated in the same geographic area, around the same time, and some of the written Tocharian examples we have appear on Hepthalite coins (Brahmic, yes?). If not, what written language is on the Hepthalite coins? Can anybody elaborate? Thank you - Myrddin_Wyllt7 (talk) 20:34, 31 March 2008 (UTC)Myrddin_Wyllt7

[edit] Word list

Maybe the word list should include a sixth column, featuring reconstructed Proto-Indo-European.

I added it now. I had to use the HTML encoding for the first asterisk, since it messed up the table. I used http://www.bartleby.com/61/IEroots.html and http:/www.etymonline.com for sources. Feel free to edit, if you think the words given are way too sloppy and imprecise.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Yuezhi"

[edit] Speaking of Hittite

I don't have much Tocharian vocab in my notes, and I'm not sure if these samples are A or B dialect. (Note some of the similarities of some words here with Hittite; also a couple curious parallels with Telugu, a Dravidian language, possibly a coincidence)

Earth - Tikam (Hittite Tekan)

Water - Wer, War (Hittite Watar; Thracian Warios)

Air - Eprer (Hittite Paras)

Wisdom - Knanmune (cf. Telugu Gnyanmem)

Joy - Suk (cf. Telugu Suqem, Sanskrit Suqa)

Life - Shol

Love (n) - Tunk

Work (n) - Wles

(These are some words I have collected samples of in as many languages as possible, for comparative purposes.) Codex Sinaiticus 16:30, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

By the way, if anyone is interested, I have just added a similar list of most of these same words in Saka Scythian, over at Talk:Scythian_languages. It should be apparent just from these small samples, that Scythian (Saka) and Tocharian are quite unrelated. Codex Sinaiticus 05:17, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Interesting,Hittite/Tocharian homeland split into two by invading Indo-Iranians ?. (213.48.46.141)

Well, such a scenario could explain the linguistic situation, but unfortunately, there is basically no evidence to recommend that theory. The confines of the Hittite "homeland" are pretty well known from archeology, for the period ca. 1680-1180 -- at least that they certainly did not extend out into Central Asia. The Hittite Empire was overrun by Phrygians and disintegrated in 1180 BC, and the Tocharian "homeland" only appears some 2000 miles to the West, and somewhat later than that. Just the other day I posted another list in Talk:Tocharians of several more Hittite words that seem to closely match Tocharian vocab, along with a more likely explanation... Codex Sinaiticus 6 July 2005 15:35 (UTC)

I thought the "Hittites" where mostly Hurrain speaking with a invasive Hittite speaking elite.

Is Gnyanmem really a native Dravidian word? It looks like it could be from Sanskrit jnana, from a common Indo-European root (seen in English know, Russian znanie, etc.) In that case the resemblance would be natural. --Reuben 16:03, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Judging dead people by appearance is not always accurate

mtDNA of Scytho-Siberian skeleton Human Biology 76.1 (2004) 109-125

Genetic Analysis of a Scytho-Siberian Skeleton and Its Implications for Ancient Central Asian Migrations

François-X. Ricaut et al.

Abstract The excavation of a frozen grave on the Kizil site (dated to be 2500 years old) in the Altai Republic (Central Asia) revealed a skeleton belonging to the Scytho-Siberian population. DNA was extracted from a bone sample and analyzed by autosomal STRs (short tandem repeats) and by sequencing the hypervariable region I (HV1) of the mitochondrial DNA. The resulting STR profile, mitochondrial haplotype, and haplogroup were compared with data from modern Eurasian and northern native American populations and were found only in European populations historically influenced by ancient nomadic tribes of Central Asia.

...

The mutations at nucleotide position 16147 C→A, 16172 T→C, 16223 C→T, 16248 C→T, and 16355 C→T correspond to substitutions characteristic of the Eurasian haplogroup N1a (Richards et al. 2000). The haplotype comparison with the mtDNA sequences of 8534 individuals showed that this sequence was not found in any other population.

...

The N1a haplogroup was not observed among the native American, east Asian, Siberian, Central Asian, and western European populations. The geographic distribution of haplogroup N1a is restricted to regions neighboring the Eurasian steppe zone. Its frequency is very low, less than 1.5% (Table 6), in the populations located in the western and southwestern areas of the Eurasian steppe. Haplogroup N1a is, however, more frequent in the populations of the southeastern region of the Eurasian steppe, as in Iran (but only 12 individuals were studied) and southeastern India (Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh territories). More precisely, in India haplogroup N1a is absent from the Dravidic-speaking population and is present in only five Indo-Aryan-speaking individuals, four of whom belonged to the Havik group, an upper Brahman caste (Mountain et al. 1995).

...

The absence of the Eurasian haplogroup N1a in the 490 modern individuals of Central Asia (Shields et al. 1993; Kolman et al. 1996; Comas et al. 1998; Derenko et al. 2000; Yao et al. 2000; Yao, Nie et al. 2002) suggests changes in the genetic structure of Central Asian populations, probably as a result of Asian population movements to the west during the past 2500 years.

AAPA 2004

East of Eden, west of Cathay: An investigation of Bronze Age interactions along the Great Silk Road.

B.E. Hemphill.

The Great Silk Road has long been known as a conduit for contacts between East and West. Until recently, these interactions were believed to date no earlier than the second century B.C. However, recent discoveries in the Tarim Basin of Xinjiang (western China) suggest that initial contact may have occurred during the first half of the second millennium B.C. The site of Yanbulaq has been offered as empirical evidence for direct physical contact between Eastern and Western populations, due to architectural, agricultural, and metallurgical practices like those from the West, ceramic vessels like those from the East, and human remains identified as encompassing both Europoid and Mongoloid physical types.

Eight cranial measurements from 30 Aeneolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and modern samples, encompassing 1505 adults from the Russian steppe, China, Central Asia, Iran, Tibet, Nepal and the Indus Valley were compared to test whether those inhabitants of Yanbulaq identified as Europoid and Mongoloid exhibit closest phenetic affinities to Russian steppe and Chinese samples, respectively. Differences between samples were compared with Mahalanobis generalized distance (d2), and patterns of phenetic affinity were assessed with cluster analysis, multidimensional scaling, and principal coordinates analysis.

Results indicate that, despite identification as Europoid and Mongoloid, inhabitants of Yanbulaq exhibit closest affinities to one another. No one recovered from Yanbulaq exhibits affinity to Russian steppe samples. Rather, the people of Yanbulaq possess closest affinities to other Bronze Age Tarim Basin dwellers, intermediate affinities to residents of the Indus Valley, and only distant affinities to Chinese and Tibetan samples

[edit] Ambiguity

what does: "English meaning, unrelated word" mean?

Are you saying that the english word is entirely new and unrelated to any other column?

I think all three footnotes for that table need to be rewritten with less ambiguity, but I don't understand what they mean.

njaard 16:59, 2005 July 20 (UTC)

¹ = Cognate, with shifted meaning ² = Borrowed cognate, not native. ³ = English meaning, unrelated word

¹ means that the word is genetically related, but that it has mainly taken on another semantic meaning in the language given. ² means that the word is a borrowed word, and not a native word since the origin of the language, ³ means that the (English) word is genetically unrelated to the rest of the words, only giving the meaning for the sake of clarity. I am talking mainly about "genetical relationship" in the comparative linguistic sense here, hopefully my explanation would make things more clear.

[edit] This and that

Afanasevo culture has been added.

I will be returning to this page with some questions and comments, but this this leapt out at me:

The one Indo-European language that seems to hold the most similarity to Tocharian is the ancient Hittite language, which ceased to be spoken around 1000 BC

By what authority is this statement made? If anything, Tocharian is closest to German.

Suprisingly, Tocharian seems to share more vocabulary with Germanic than with any other Indo-European stock and in general its lexical and morphological closest kin seem to be with the western Indo-European languages rather than with those of the eastern rim. -- EEIC, "Tocharian Languages" --FourthAve 14:07, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

OK, tell ya what - see the list of Tocharian and Hittite words I put at Talk:Tocharians (last section)... If you can come up with as many close similarities with German, I'll believe you... Codex Sinaiticus 14:25, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

I looked. Is this "original research"?

Another niggle. Brahmi script is not an alphabet; it's a syllabary --FourthAve 14:53, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

I found both the short Hittite glossary and the short Tocharian glossary (abt. 200 words each) on the same website -- but I admit to comparing the two myself, which is why I would be hesitant to put that list in an actual article, rather than a talk page... But I have definitely seen it in print somewhere that Tocharian is closest to Hittite, so I'm definitely not the first one to come up with that observation... I don't follow your remark about Brahmi, if it was meant for me; I don't recall ever having said anything about it one way or the other... Codex Sinaiticus 15:13, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Original research is IMHO, the worst problem Wikipedia has, and it is not permitted. I have hidden the statement awaiting references.--Wiglaf 15:57, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, I've just told you, it's not "original research"... I didn't come up with this on my own; the only reason I ever got the idea that Tocharian and Hittite were closest relatives is because I read it somewhere (and no, not on wikipedia - this was in a hard book several years ago)... But, you have every right to insist on a reference, so I guess I'll have to see if I can dig it up and get back to you... Codex Sinaiticus 16:26, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Were you reading something in support of Lord Renfrew's hypothesis? There are a couple or so misguided individuals trying to build a career on it. (65.54.155.41)

there is no academic consensus of Tocharian being 'closest' to anything. I think there are references for all other branches being considered as possible closer relatives. Just quoting one of them is misleading. (4thAve, Brahmi is an abugida, it is a matter of taste whether you call it an 'alphabet', but it is certainly descended from an alphabet). dab (ᛏ) 07:09, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Brahmi and Kharoshthi scrips

Richard G. Salomon does the article on the "Brahmi and Karoshthi" scrips in Section 30 (pp. 373-83) of The World's Writing Systems, edited by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, OUP, 1996.

Salomon describes both as alphasyllabaries, i.e., a syllabary that includes a default vowel in each element. This compares exactly to the Cherokee syllabary developed by Sequoiah.

Kharoshthi (along with Brahmi) spread to Inner Asia, where is it abundantly attested around the second and third centuries in the oasis cities around the Tarim Basin ... and neighboring regions of Western Inner Asia.

--FourthAve 10:08, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Following-up myself, see also Brahmi.

[edit] The name "Tocharian"

From Mallory's In Search of the Indo-Europeans, Thames and Hudson, 1989, p. 56 (the paperback edition):

The language was named Tocharian after the historical Tokharoi who were known to the Greeks to have migrated from Turkestan to Bactria in the second century BC. The full arguments for the validity of this designation and other ethnic labels that have been pinned on the creators of the manuscripts has been hotly debated for decades and comprise a remarkably large percentage of Tocharian scholarship. This will not concern us here other than to conclude that there is not a shred of linguistic evidence to indicate the people of historical Tokharistan spoke the same language found in the manuscripts of the Tarim Basin well over 1,000 kilometres to the east. Today, few if any would accept that the proper designation for these people is Tocharian but as no other alternative has ever achieved sufficiently wide approval, the earlier name, misnomer if you will, is still applied and will be used throughout this work.

--FourthAve 10:08, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tocharian C

On the southern edge of the [Tarim] basin, across uninhabitable desert from the areas where Tocharian A and B are found, in the Loulan (natively Kroraina) area, we find traces of another small kingdom whose administrative language was a variety of Middle Indic (Karoshthi Prakrit) but whose native language, attested in the form of a few loanwords in the Middle Indic administrative language, looks to have been a third Tocharian language, "Tocharian C" if you will.

--JP Mallory, DQ Adams, EIEC, "Tocharian Languages", p. 591. --FourthAve 07:03, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tarim Lake

See Lop Nur. The wall paintings and other archaeological remains indicate the Tocharian speakers dwelt at the lake edge. This lake largely dried up by the 1st millennium AD. Need better source. --FourthAve 07:21, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tocharian and Hittite

From the phonological point of view Tocharian is distinctive in the merger of all three manners of stops (voiceless, aspirated, voiceless unaspirated) in a single series of voiceless stops. Many IE stocks merge the voiced aspirated and voiced unaspirated stops but only Tocharian and Anatolian merge all three and in Anatolian the merger is not complete in word-internal position. --EIEC, "Tocharian Languages", p. 591.

Tocharian is part of the "post-Anatolic PIE" language, and with the remaining PIE non-Anatolian languages, is quite different from Anatolian. Nonetheless, nothing prohibits Tocharian from having conserved some highly archaic features otherwise lost in the other post-Anatolic stocks.

Is this what you had in mind? --FourthAve 07:28, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I have no idea who Renfrew is, and I haven't had time to properly research this at a nearby University yet, but a quick Google for: [Hittite Tocharian -wikipedia] should be enough to satisfy anyone that these two languages have been demonstrably linked by numerous scholars ever since they were both 'discovered' (around the same time as it happens)... So it's hardly my original research...

One of the early linguists to make this connection was apparently: Petersen, Walter. "Hittite and Tocharian," Language 11 (1933), 12-34.

I'm not sure exactly what the motives would be in trying to establish a Germanic connection, but I've yet to see any hard evidence (vocabulary, proposed phonetic shift rules, inflectional parallels, that sort of thing). Of course, even if we assume that Toch. is directly descended from Hittite, that doesn't rule out that Germanic is a later descendant of this same stock. So it is plausible that both views are correct. The evidence already seeming to indicate that the Toch. speakers were fair-haired, is independent of any linguistic consideration. By the way, there are some linguists you can find who are just as ardent in asserting lexical evidence that the nearest spoken languages to ancient Tocharian is the Slavic family, esp. Russian. Regards, Codex Sinaiticus 14:39, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

see Indo-Hittite, Colin Renfrew, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, Hittite language, Anatolian languages. The Indo-Anatolian theory makes the Anatolian languages a sister language family; few hold to this, however. Rather, the usual view is that the stock broke off from the remaining IE languages at a very early date, probably before 4000, perhaps earlier.

The remainder of the IE speaking stock remained together in approximate linguistic unity, undergoing a number of shared developments. The Anatolian languages, separated from the remaining stock of IE speakers, underwent independent innovations, while retaining some archaic features lost by the remaining IE-speakers.

Tocharian would seem to be the first stock to break off from the common unified center (with Germanic breaking off not too much later). The remainder of the IE-speakers (sans Tocharians, sans the by now long-gone Anatolian-speakers) remained in approximate unity, sharing additional developments lacking in Tocharian, but by this time (3500 BC?) the unity was only approximate, a chain of dialects that by ca. 3200 had probably broken into distinct languages, ancestors of the known stocks (as well as some that have left no trace).--FourthAve 16:25, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] More

Mallory, in In Search of the Indo-Europeans, p. 61, notes

similarities shared between Tocharian, Celtic, Italic and Hittite as essentially archaic features inherited from the Proto-Indo-European language at a very early period. These grammatical features were then replaced in later Proto-Indo-European by new forms that spread among ancestors of the Greek, Armenian and Indo-Iranian continuum -- the ancestors of Celtic and Italic, Hittite and possibly Phrygian to the south, and Tocharian on the east.

In a note (12), in the endnotes on p. 274, he says

Here I follow Pederson, Crossland, Adrados, Gamkredlidze and Ivanov, and others, who regard Tocharian as an archaic peripheral dialect. There are, however, many who would associate Tocharian much more closely with languages such as Germanic or Greek.... [DQ] Adams himself relates Tocharian closest to Germanic and sees no great difficulty in getting them to their ultimate homes. --FourthAve 08:37, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I believe that this question depends more on the scholars' estimation of the movement possibilities of the tribes at this time. I personally believe that it is erroneous to understimate the will to migrate in order to find good pastures. Just compare the cattle herding across the US during the 19th century with roughly the same technology (horses, cattle and wagons). After a few generations of movements, wars and negotiations, a tribe could probably have crossed all the distance.--Wiglaf 08:44, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I have no problems with this thesis. In fact, I've made the comparison to what happened in North America -- at two levels. The first is what happened to native American cultures (particularly on the Great Plains) after the [re-]introduction of the horse: the culture was transformed from a slow-moving pedestrian culture to a swiftly mobile one. With the English-speaking Americans (as well as Canadians) we encapsulated in 100 years (vis-a-vis the American west) what took Europe thousands of years to do.

I see the Tocharaian-speakers as simply have been the first to move east, they being following much later by the Indo-Iranian stock. There were doubless others, but they have left no trace. There is nothing magical or even particularly remarkable about this.

--FourthAve 09:17, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes. The big problem with population movements in pre-history is that we have all those modern politics interfering. Just look at the discussion dab and I have had at Talk:Tocharians, where someone has racial motivations against an Eastward migration.--Wiglaf 09:22, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation guide

I guess this request sounds silly among the indo-europeaninsts among us, but could someone please indicate the sounds of ñ, ś and ä. I'd normally assume that the first is a palatalized n, and that the second is a sibilant and that the third is the æ sound, but I know that such standards vary.--Wiglaf 13:39, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

"ä" is /ɨ/. The transcription "ä" comes not from the usual value of "ä" in the Latin alphabet, but rather from the fact that in the Tocharian abugida, a consonant letter by itself had the inherent vowel "a", while a consonant letter with two dots over it had the vowel /ɨ/. User:Angr 10:22, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vowels reconstruction

I assume it is a rather controversial thing (how they were pronounced), so I'd like to see explicit citation supporting the point of view that is presented in the article.--Imz 19:48, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

My guess is that the tablets would have contained Sanskrit loanwords, and since Sanskrit pronunciation is relatively certain among scholars, a likely pronunciation could be derived from the Tocharian spellings of these words. This was the technique used for defining a lot of Gothic pronunciation (compaing Greek loanwords), and I don't see it unlikely that similar methods would have been used in this case. 惑乱分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 13:06, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Also, there are probably probable guesses that could be derived from comparision with Indo-European cognates and related ortographies of other Brahmi abugidas. 惑乱分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 13:15, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comparison to other Indo-European languages

Why isn't the Persian language included in the chart "Comparison to other Indo-European languages"? Badagnani 01:51, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, we have Sanskrit as an Indo-Iranian language, already. I don't see the point in adding that much more cognates to the table, although it isn't such a big point for me, currently. Anyway, older Persian would be preferable to modern. 惑乱分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * (talk) 09:45, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

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