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Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-thirty-seventh issue:

“Tocharian Bilingualism, Language Shift, and Language Death in the Old Turkic Context,” by Hakan Aydemir.

pdf

ABSTRACT

The death of a language is a sad and dramatic event. It is, however, a fact that many languages died out in the past and are now dying out as well. However, although we often know the time and causes of present or recent language deaths and have a relatively large amount of information about them, we often do not know the time and causes of past language deaths, or our knowledge of these processes is very limited. In other words, the very limited written sources or linguistic material make it very difficult to study “language shift” or “language death” phenomena in historical periods.

This is also true for Tocharian languages named A and B of Indo-European origin that are extinct. Namely, we do not know at all what happened to the Tocharians, when, how, and why they disappeared, or when the Tocharian languages died out. This study tries to solve these fundamental questions from the perspective of Turkic historical linguistics. In connection with this, the Turkic background of Tocharian-Turkic interethnic and linguistic contact is first examined in order to understand how the Tocharian-Turkic language contact came about in the first place and how long it lasted. Based on the most current archaeological, historical, philological, and linguistic data, the study tentatively divides these relationships into three major stages, which better describe the spatial and temporal dimensions of Tocharian-Turkic relations. However, only the last period (ninth–thirteenth centuries) is subjected to detailed examination in the study. It examines what kinds of historical, socio-cultural, socio-political, sociolinguistic, and other extralinguistic factors were responsible for the process of Turkization of Tocharians. It also gives a detailed description of every stage of the language shift and language death processes in the Old Turkic context, both factually and theoretically, using all available evidence. Some of the linguistic output of these processes in Turkic is also briefly discussed.

The study also identifies a previously unknown Tocharian A tribe, the Argu, which has so far escaped the attention of researchers. Argu (< Argi < *Arki > Ārśi) was a bilingual Karakhanid Turkic tribe in the late eleventh century. They were undoubtedly the descendants of Yuezhi (i.e., Tocharian A speakers) in the south of the Ili Valley, where Chinese sources mention Yuezhi, who migrated there from Gansu (China) in 162 bce.

Keywords: Tocharian, Tocharians, Yuezhi, Old Turkic, Uyghurs, language contact, language shift, language death, historical linguistics.

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This and all other issues of Sino-Platonic Papers are available in full for no charge.

To view our catalog, visit http://www.sino-platonic.org/

 

Selected readings on Tocharian

• "The origins and affinities of Tocharian" (8/20/23)
• "Tocharian words for oil" (6/22/22)
• "The geographical, archeological, genetic, and linguistic origins of Tocharian" (7/14/20) — with a lengthy, comprehensive bibliography

The language, the people, and their history

• "Tocharian love poem" (4/1/20)
• "The sound and sense of Tocharian" (5/4/20)
• "The Tocharian A word for 'rug' and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (1/3/20)
• "The Tocharian A word for 'rug' and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 2" (1/26/20)
• "Tocharian C: its discovery and implications" (4/2/19)
• "'Tocharian C' Again: The Plot Thickens and the Mystery Deepens"
• "Tocharian, Turkic, and Old Sinitic 'ten thousand'" (4/23/19)
• "Tocharians" (Wikipedia)
• "Tocharian languages" (Wikipedia)
• J. P. Mallory, The Problem of Tocharian Origins: An Archaeological Perspective (Sino-Platonic Papers, 259 [Nov. 2015]; free pdf, 63 pp.)
• "James Mallory, The problem of Tocharian origins:  A doorway to insanity" (12/13/12; 1:11:39) — pay particular attention to what happens at 10:42
• "Hannes A. Fellner (Vienna): Linguistic Contact between Indo-European and Old Chinese" (2015; 29:03)
• "Genetic evidence for the spread of Indo-Aryan languages" (6/22/17)

Archeology and language

• "The importance of archeology for historical linguistics" (5/1/20)
• "University of Texas Linguistics Research Center" (4/24/20)
• "Archeological and linguistic evidence for the wheel in East Asia" (3/11/20)
• "Horses, soma, riddles, magi, and animal style art in southern China" (11/11/19)
• "Of armaments and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 6" (12/23/17) — particularly pertinent, and also draws on art history as well as archeology
• "Of felt hats, feathers, macaroni, and weasels" (3/13/16)
• Walter, Mariko Namba.  "Tocharian Buddhism in Kucha: Buddhism of Indo-European Centum Speakers in Chinese Turkestan before the 10th Century C.E." Sino-Platonic Papers, 85 (1998).
• Xu, Wenkan. "The Discovery of the Xinjiang Mummies and Studies of the Origin of the Tocharians". The Journal of Indo-European Studies, 23.3-4 (Fall/Winter, 1995), 357–369.
• Xu, Wenkan.  "The Tokharians and Buddhism". In Studies in Central and East Asian Religions, 9 (1996), 1–17.
• Xu, Wenkan. "Beyond Deciphering: An Overview of Tocharian Studies over the Past Thirty Years".  In Great Journeys across the Pamir Mountains.  Leiden:  Brill, 2018. Pp. 128–139.
• Wei, Lanhai, Hui Li, and Wenkan Xu. "The separate origins of the Tocharians and the Yuezhi:  Results from recent advances in archaeology and genetics".  In: M. Malzahn, Michaël Peyrot, Hannes Fellner, and Theresa-Susanna Illés, eds. Tocharian Texts in Context: International Conference on Tocharian Manuscripts and Silk Road Culture, June 25-29th, 2013. Bremen: Hempen Verlag, 2015.  Pp. 277-300.

The origin of the Tocharians and their relationship to the Yuezhi (月氏) have been debated for more than a century, since the discovery of the Tocharian language. This debate has led to progress on both the scope and depth of our knowledge about the origin of the Indo-European language family and of the Indo-Europeans. Archaeological evidence supporting these theories, however, has until now sadly been lacking

There are many other Language Log posts that mention Tocharian and the Tocharians.  Readers are encouraged to search for them in various contexts.

Selected readings on PIE

• "Where did the PIEs come from; when was that?" (7/28/23)
• "The Linguistic Diversity of Aboriginal Europe" (1/6/09) — classic post by Don Ringe
• "Horse and wheel in the early history of Indo-European" (1/10/09)
• "More on IE wheels and horses" (1/10/09)
• "Inheritance versus lexical borrowing: a case with decisive sound-change evidence" (1/13/09)
• "The linguistic history of horses, gods, and wheeled vehicles" (1/13/09)
• "Some Wanderwörter in Indo-European languages" (1/16/09)
• "Don Ringe ties up some loose ends" (2/20/09)

• "The place and time of Proto-Indo-European: Another round" (8/24/12)
• "Proto-Indo-European laks- > Modern English 'lox'" (12/26/20)

Two by Hamp

• Eric P. Hamp, with annotations and comments by Douglas Q. Adams.  "The Expansion of the Indo-European Languages: An Indo-Europeanist’s Evolving View".  Sino-Platonic Papers, 239 (August, 2013), 1-14.
• Hamp, E. P. (1998). “Whose were the Tocharians?: Linguistic subgrouping and diagnostic idiosyncrasy,” in The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia, ed. V. H. Mair, 1: 307–346.  Washington and Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Man and the University of Pennsylvania Museum.

December 21, 2023 @ 8:19 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Announcements, Bilingualism, Historical linguistics, Language extinction

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