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From: alderson@netcom20.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Anyone heard of "Trocharian"
In-Reply-To: Craig Cockburn's message of Sat, 12 Oct 1996 18:23:48 +0100
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References: <53od01$15p@gilbaby.dinoco.de> <JAv7RHAkQ9XyEwYm@scot.demon.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 23:13:12 GMT
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In article <JAv7RHAkQ9XyEwYm@scot.demon.co.uk> Craig Cockburn
<craig@scot.demon.co.uk> writes:

>Ann an sgriobhainn <53od01$15p@gilbaby.dinoco.de>, sgriobh gil
><gil@gilbaby.dinoco.de>

>>I remember reading a while ago that on the old silk road there was a culture
>>called "Trocharian" who had a written language that was a Celtic cousin 
>>language. 

>Tocharian is the name of a subgroup of Indo-European (others are Celtic,
>Germanic, Italic, Balto-slavic). It's my understanding that Tocharian gave
>rise to Iranian and Indo-Iranian language groups. Maybe someone on sci.lang
>can add more.

No, Tokharian did not give rise to Indo-Iranian (of which Iranian is a daughter
group); the two families are co-equally descended from Indo-European.

When the Tokharian languages (A & B, or Kuchean & Turfanian) were discovered in
the early part of the 20th Century, Indo-Europeanists were shocked to find a
so-called "centum" language far to the east of the "satem" Iranians, then the
easternmost Indo-European languages known (where we are speaking in terms of
first appearance in the historical record, *not* modern placements).

In addition to the phonological surprise, the Tokharian languages shared mor-
phological features with Italic and Celtic (such as the r-passive) which at the
time were thought to indicate a sub-family relationship for Italo-Celtic, like
that of Indo-Iranian.  This led to wild-eyed descriptions of a long migration
from western Europe to Chinese Turkestan.

The recognition of the r-passive in Hittite, along with developments within the
theoretical side of historical linguistics, provides us with a more realistic
picture:  There is within the Indo-European family a central group of language
families which shared a number of important morphological innovations, compris-
ing Greek, Indo-Iranian, Armenian, and Balto-Slavic.  Note that this grouping
lies across the once-diagnostic "centum"/"satem" phonological grouping.  (NB:
Each of these also shares features with languages outside this central group,
such as *m instead of *bh in certain nominal endings in Balto-Slavic and Ger-
manic.)

It is now recognized that peripheral languages or dialects within a family may
*retain* common older features lost in a central innovating group; such shared
retentions are then *not* indicative of a closer relationship among the group.

We now know that the r-ending once thought to be indicative of an Italo-Celtic
unity is to be found in the Sanskrit perfect, for example, as well as in the
Tokharian and Anatolian families.

It is thought now that the Tokharians were the relict population of an early
eastward advance, ahead of that of the Indo-Iranians, and that there is no par-
ticular connection between them and the Celts, or between either and the Italic
peoples.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
