8 posts tagged “tocharian b”

An interesting feature of the Indo-European verbal (and sometimes nominal) system is so called 'reduplication'.

Reduplication in Indo-European is the repetition of the first consonant plus an extra vowel before the action root.

A famous example is the Indo-European word for 'wheel' one of the few nominal roots with reduplication:
*kʷe-kʷlo-
Note that the reduplication is solely the first consonant, never the cluster. Well never is, of course, a big word. It does seem to happen sometimes.

Typically in Indo-European we reconstruct two types of reduplication, one with a vowel *e after the reduplicated consonant, one with the vowel *i. Obviously we like to reconstruct some kind of earlier **ə that gave both reflexes, but in the latest phase of PIE these two were definitely there.

Are these reconstructions really that natural though? Maybe not. Many languages seem to indicate a different system. For once Sanskrit was not authoritative in the opinions of the earlier Indo-Europeanists (typically, when there's doubt, the Sanskrit form is considered correct). No, this time it's Greek. Greek knows solely two types of reduplication. i-reduplication in presents (and very rare aorists), and e-reduplication in the perfect.

When we have a look at three other languages with attest reduplication, we get a very different view though. The languages I will discuss are Gothic, Sanskrit and Tocharian B. I've been told that Latin also displays some non-standard reduplication, but since my Latin isn't much better than 'dulce et decorum est pro patria mori', I'll leave that languages for people with more expertise.

First, let's talk about Gothic. Gothic is a nice language, for it displays reduplication often, and consistently throughout it's full history (which is awefully short, but still), unlike any other Germanic language. There's some proof of reduplication in other languages (I believe an odd Old-English form for 'rowed' was 'roard' (though spelling is probably wrong)). The other for is what we see in the preterite of do  did < *deda. But the *deda discussion is a different one all together where no consensus has been found yet.

Gothic reduplication, occurs in the preterite. This is exactly the way we like it in Indo-European reconstructions. There is one main issue though. The vowel use for reduplication is <ai> which phonetically is [ɛ] (some people are pro diphthong, especially in the long variant, I disagree, it has to be a monophthong).

This is not the vowel we expect in reduplication. PIE *e consistently became Gothic i in all contexts. Later though i was changed to ai in several contexts (this all happened before our first Gothic textual attestation).
 *i > ai/_r,h,ƕ This is linguist speak for 'e became <ai>  before r,h and ƕ (Similarly als *u > au/_r,h,ƕ for you symmetry lovers).

Not all reduplication verbs start with r,h or ƕ though. In fact I can't think of any. So a verb like letan you'd expect to have a preterite **lilot. What we actually have is lailot. Some people have desperately tried to explain this to say that the vocalism is analogy from the reduplicating verbs that do start with r,h and ƕ. Personally I do not find this very convincing. Nevertheless, it's very hard to have any <ai>  in Gothic outside of the above mentioned  position. Ony if it were the long variant of <ai> (not visible in writing), we would be able to have that vowel outside of that position.

If <ai> in reduplicating verbs is not from earlier i, we would expect it to be from an earlier *ai < PIE *oi, which is not at all convincing either. Because of this (and several other reasons), I think there might be reason to assume that reduplication in Gothic is not a direct descendant of Indo-European reduplication (this assumption is going to academically kill me :P),

If it is old though, we have either a very odd Indo-European reduplication, or a very odd development in Gothic. You choose ;).

Now, let us discuss Sanskrit. Sanskrit uses reduplication in much the same contexts as Greek. It's used in some presents/aorists (which, I believe, use exclusively the i-vocalism). Besides that the i-vocalic reduplication is used in desideratives and intensives (some indication of this, is also, and solely available in Greek (even more proof for my pro-Graeco-Iranian theory :P)). In the perfect though, we see a different situation all together. We don't see the velar-palatalising a that we would expect as a reflex of PIE *e. No, it reduplicates the sonorant semi-vowel or vowel of the root in the zero grade.

What does that mean? Here let me show you:
Stem: puṣ- present: puṣyati perfect: pupoṣa (< Vedic pupauṣa). So it actually reduplications the u. This is odd in many ways, especially because the sound u is not actually immediately following the first consonant when the verb is in the perfect. In the perfect plural it is though, so likely it got it from there.
This reduplication is also seen when the semi-vocalic consonant is an i. Also the a is reduplicated when it's in the zero grade of the root, or if the second consonant is a vocalic r. But to be honest, this might be the Indo-European *e, especially since it palatalises the reduplicated velars.

Note that this semi-vocalic root vowel even crosses cluster boundaries. So the root śru- gives śuśro-.

Another distinctive feature of Sanskrit reduplication is the way the consonants are treated. When a voiceless non-aspirate is reduplicated, the same consonant remains. An example was given above.

If a voiced aspirate and h < *gh, is aspirated, a voiced non-aspirate. For example
dhāv- > dadhāv
This is not that different from Greek, it's Grassmann's law. Only Greek has voiceless aspirates, and they thus give the voiceless non-aspirate. (τιθημι).

But in some roots, and this is really weird, a voiceless consonant reduplicated sometimes gives the most bizarre reflexes. One that comes to mind right now is the verb pibati 'he drinks' with the root pā-. That's right, the root shortened it's ā to a, then the root consonant became b while the reduplicative consonant remains p. Absolutely insane, but very real nevertheless. This is but a minority though. Most voiced reduplicated consonant remain voiced.

This is, once again, a very different form of reduplication than the one we see in Greek. I've been told that something similar happens in the few Latin verbs that have reduplication. But someone else is going to have to give examples.

Now we get to the last, and really crazy part. That's right, Tocharian B. Tocharian B (and probably also Tocharian A :P) is always crazy. It fails to conform to any type of normal behaviour. I love it.

Tocharian B has reduplication in only one class. The Preterite Participle.

The most normal Preterite Participle is perfectly normal. CäCaw (a<accented ä). Example:lätaw from the root lät-
The second group is C1eC1aw (a from accented ä). Example śeśaw. Though this looks like a perfectly normal reduplication, this is already bizarre. Because TochB e does not come from IE *e, rather it comes from IE *o. This o is also nowhere to be found in the root. śä-
The third group is C1eC1aC2äw (a from accented ä), For example lyelyakäw from root läk-
Next group is C1eC1éC2äw Example:  teteku (u = äw) from täk-, At last here we find a decent reduplication of the root vowel.
(j)VCäw where V is accented. For example: yáku root: yäk-
C1aC1áC2äw for example: lalālu (ā = accented a) from root: la-. TochB. a comes from Indo-European *h2e.
The next class is rather normal (no reduplication!) CäCáu for example: krämpau root: krämp-
The before last class is C1aC1áC2au for example kakārpau root: korp-
The last class I don't have any example of, but luckily isn't reduplicating either. áCau.

So in Tocharian we have reduplication with o, or h2e. And not once with *e or *i. Nor is the root semi-vowel reduplicated as we'd hope to see considering Sanskrit.

So there we have it! Three completely different reduplication systems, which are opposed directly against the Greek and reconstructed Indo-European form. Why we are still reconstructing the reduplication the way we are is actually a bit mysterious. It's the easiest, that's for sure. All these systems might have also undergone some analogy, especially Sanskrit and Gothic.

This leaves us with Tocharian B though, which went about being it's own crazy self (he likes to do that). Now we might want to mention that Tocharian split of from the Indo-European family well before the rest of the languages started branching off (but well after Anatolian branched off). Maybe this was indeed the crazy reduplication system PIE used to have, but then all reduplication was reduced to a schwa.

One thing is sure, the last word has definitely not been spoken about Indo-European reduplication, it's no where near as straight forward as some people like to think (Though in all honesty, to keep your sanity, I can imagine you'd rather think it's that simple than look at Tocharian; What can I say? I'm a linguistic masochist :P).

Tocharian B has a very interesting thing about its accent system, which makes it look like it is absolutely filled with Indo-European-like ablaut (change of vowel in the root). Sadly for us, this often isn't the case, nevertheless, it's a nice system to talk about now.

The Tocharian accent is as we call 'Hysterophobic', afraid to be in the back. In a noun, the accent can technically be anywhere, but when it's in the last syllable of a word, it will be moved a syllable forward.

As an example we'll take the noun 'palsko' 'thought'.
The root of this word is /pəlskó-/.
In the nominative, this word takes a zero-suffix so /pəlskó-/+/Ø/. Because this would mean the accented vowel would be in the back, the accent jumps to the initial syllable and gives a surface form of /pə́lsko/. This is written <palsko> (accented schwa is written <a> unaccented it's written <ä>). The oblique case of palsko is the same as the nominative. The Genitive though, has suffx /ntse/ so /pəlskó-/+/-ntse/, which means the accent isn't in the final syllable, and thus, stays in place. /pəlskóntse/ written <pälskontse>. As you can see we now have something that looks like a a/ä ablaut, while actually it's a accented/non-accented schwa alternation.

This not only plays a vital role in Nouns, also verbs will have this switch between a/ä at times, so it's important to know that it happens. There is also a alternation between <ā> and <a>. Which is to be interpreted as /á/ and /a/. So in writing, one can't distinguish an accented schwa from an unaccented a. And of course, chances are, they were homophones.

I've always found this incredibly fascinating about Tocharian, I hope you do too.

Please note: I have next to no knowledge of Tocharian A, so whenever I talk about Tocharian I mean Tocharian B. Maybe I should start calling it Kuchean.

Now we're so nicely on a roll with Tocharian B, I thought I'd 'publish' one of my translations of a Tocharian text. The text in question is B5, which you can find on TITUS, sadly without any images, so you're going to have to trust the transcription, (who would want to read that script anyway? :P).

Here's the link to the text on TITUS:
TITUS B5
Take note that the above are transliterations, I've used a far more readable transcription ;)

We'll start at Strophe 66, because 65 isn't too well preserved, besides that, a new chapter seems to start there.

List of abbreviations

impf = imperfect
prt = preterite
sbj = subjunctive
imp = imperative
voc = vocative, often identical to nominative.
nom = nominative
obl = oblique, functions as accusative, and base for the case suffixes
gen = genitive (also functions as a dative)
com = commitative, suffixed -mpa put after the Oblique expresses 'together with'
perl = perlative 'by, through, with' formed with -sa suffix to the Oblique case (-sa becomes -tsa after l, n, ñ and m).
loc = locative 'at, in, by' -ne suffixed to the oblique form.
all = allative 'to, towards' -śc suffixed to the oblique form. Also seen in the form -ś, -ścä (rare) and -śco.
abl = ablative 'from, out of' -meṃ suffix. Suffixed to the oblique form.
3 = third person
sg = singular
pl = plural
nta-pl = -nta suffix plural. Typical Alternant gender plural suffix.
med = Medium. Many verbs are lexically bound to the Medium though, even when not expressive the mediopassive voice.
adj = adjective. Adjectives can also function as adverbs without any change of form.
tstse-adj = tstse is a typical abstractifying suffix to derrive adjectives from nouns. Has a wide variety of meanings.
ññe-adj = similar to -tstse suffix, a typical abstractifying suffix, here for derriving from a verb, but nouns are also possible.
ger = gerundive, often made with the suffix -lle.
encl = enclitic, especially important in the word 'to be' nes- with it's special enclitic forms ste 3sg, skente 3pl.
encl.prn = enclitic pronoun. There's 4 enclitic pronouns. -ñ 1sg -c 2sg. -ne 3sg. -me pl. These are either Oblique or Genitive, and can also get case suffixes.

Strophe 66

nnok pudñäkte mäskīträ Śrāvāstī spe sāṅkāmpa.
again Buddha.sg.nom be.impf.3sg Śrāvāstī following(religious).sg.com
'Again the Buddha was near Śrāvāstī with his following.'

---

kokaletstse īyoy sū Prasenacī walo. ot ṣem kaukāte koklentse waiptār pwenta käskānte
wagon.tstse-adj travel.impf.3sg this.sg.nom Prasenajit.sg.nom king.sg.nom. Then axle.sg.nom break.prt.3sg wagon.sg.nom apart/scattered spoke.nom.nta-pl scatter.prt.med.3pl
'This King Prasenajit travelled by wagon. Thenn the axle of the weagon broke, the spokes scattered all around'

---

walo rano ceu preke śaultsa tāka skolkatstse ||66||
king.sg.nom also/therefore this.sg.obl time.sg.obl life.perl be.prt.3sg doubt.tstse-adj
'Thefore at that time, the king was doubtful of his life.'

Strophe 67

Jetavaṃne pudñäkteś masa. yarke ynāmñesa kekalentse katalñe preksa poyśiṃ ot walo:
Jetavana.loc buddha.sg.all go.prt.3sg. honor.sg.obl reverence.sg.perl* wheel.sg.gen break.ññe-adj. ask.prt.3sg all-knowing one.sg.obl then king.sg.nom
'He went to the Buddha at Jetavana (forest). With honour and reverence the king then asked the all-knowing one about the breaking wheel.'

*When several words with oblique case are placed behind eachother, and the last one gets a case suffix, all are considered to be in this case.

---

mai ñi tākaṃ laitalñe wrocc= asāmmeṃ laṃtuññe, epe wat no śaulantse ñyātse ñi ste nesalle. ||67||
perhaps I.gen be.sbj.3sg fall.ññe-adj big.sg.obl* throne.sg.abl king.ññe-adj**, or or but*** life.sg.gen danger.sg.nom I.gen is.encl.3sg live.ger
'Perhaps will there be falling from the throne by me? Or will there be danger to my life?'

*Oblique of orotstse is orocce. Initial o > w for metrical reasons, you'll see this often. Final e elided for initial a for metrical reasons, also this is not uncommon. Elided vowels are marked with an = sign.
** Here the non-nominative root of 'king' is used. The paradigm of walo is suppletive: Nom.Sg walo, obl.sg. lānt, gen.sg lānte nom.pl lāñc, obl.pl lāntäṃ gen.pl lantants(o)
***Adams says the phrase 'epe wat no' can be equated to the Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit athavāpi अथवापि 'or , rather.' Probably based on the original of this text.

Strophe 68

wña-neś poyśi karuntsa: mā tañ ñyatstse śolantse mā r= asānmeṃ laitalñe.
speak.prt.3sg-encl.prn.3sg. all-knowing one.sg.nom compassion.perl: not you.sg.gen danger.sg.obl  life.sg.gen, not too throne.sg.abl fall.ger
'The all-knowing one spoke towards him: There is no danger of your life, nor is there falling from the throne'

---

ceṃ sklok ptārka pälskomeṃ! kosä tne ñakta pelaikni śaiṣṣents= ānaiwacci.
this.obl doubt.obl release.2sg.imp. thought.sg.abl how here god/lord.sg.voc law.pl.nom people/world.sg.gen unwanted.tstse-adj.nom.pl
'This doubt, release it from your mind! How is it, lord, that there are laws unwanted by [all] the people?'

---

tary= akṣā-ne pudñäkte: teki, ktstaitsñe srukalñe ||68||
three.f announce.prt.3sg-encl.prn.3sg buddha.sg.nom: sickness, old-age death
'The Buddha announced to him three [things]: sickness, old-age and death'

Strophe 69

toṃ mā tākoṃ śaiṣṣene mā ṅke tsaṅkoy pudñäkte. toṃ ñyatstsenta wikässiś poyśinta tna tseṅkeṃtär.
this.pl.nom not be.opt.3pl world.sg.loc not  for arise.opt.3sg* Buddha.sg.nom this.pl.obl danger.pl.obl drive out..inf.all here arise.prs.3pl
'If these would not be in the world, a Buddha would not arise. All-knowing ones arise here to drive out these dangers.'

---

* The Optative and Imperfect have the same suffix -'äy- (' stands for palatalisation)and take the same endings. The optative uses the subjunctive stem, and the imperfect uses the present stem. When Subjunctive and Present stem are the same, the optative and imperfect naturally are too.
after an a- the suffix becomes -oy-. Optative is used to express wish or obligation. Also irreal condition, and the apodosis of such a condition. This irreal condition is what is used in this sentence. Optative can also be the past tense of the subjunctive.

---

tumeṃ weña śka-maiyya lānte palsko mrauskatsiś, kokaleṣṣe menāksa ślok ce weña kätkr= ārtho*:
this.abl speak.prt.3sg ten-powered one.nom king.sg.gen thought.sg.obl feel an aversion towards the world.inf.all, wagon.ṣṣe-adjective example.perl strophe this.nom.sg speak.prt.3sg deep.sg.obl meaning.sg.obl
'Then The ten-powered one spoke to the king in order to avert [his] mind from the world, with the example of the wagon he spoke this strophe of deep meaning:'

*A sporadically written final /ǝ/. More ofthen than not this is written <o> While inside a word it's generally written <ä>, unless it's accented then it's written <a>.

---

More to come, just keep mashing that refresh button every now and then to see if I've changed anything. For now, feel free to ask questions, I'll be happy to answer them.

I come up with the worst puns for my article titles. But okay, let's talk about the the Tocharian verbal root yäm-.

As I was learning my Sanskrit vocabulary I came across a very odd word: dā- दा 'to give'. A perfectly normal Indo-european verbal root related to the Greek root δω- 'to give'. But when we have a look at the present of this verb, is where it gets odd. The present in Greek is δίδωμι, typical reduplicated present athematic verb. No such luck with Sanskrit though, Sanskrit actually uses a completely different root in the present, namely yam- यम् giving a first person present yacchāmi यच्छामि.

This is what we call 'suppletion' when there's multiple roots in one paradigm. Especially in common words it's to be expected to see a lot of suppletion. Also, due to Sanskrit's extremely big vocabulary, it tends to sprout a lot of suppletion. Usualy though, this suppletion is through loans from the Dravidic language, as I also expected to be the case with yam-. But then suddenly, in a moment of clarity, I realised that yam- has a cognate in Tocharian, namely yäm- `achieve, obtain; reach'. I realise this actually means the exact opposite. But it's still the concept of physical transference, and it's hard to believe these words are not related.

The Indo-European root would then be *iem-. Now, the Tocharian languages (A and B) are known for their extensive suppletion. So I was secretly hoping that Tocharian would display the same suppletion as Sanskrit, so we could conclude some kind of ancient Indo-European suppletion, but no such luck. In fact, the Tocharian B verb doesn't have any suppletion at all!

Adams' Tocharian B dictionary:
Paradigm: G Ps. X /yänmāsk^'ä/_e-/ [A yänmāskau, -, yänmāṣṣäṃ//; APart. yänmāṣṣeñca `achiever'; MPPart. yänmāskemane; Ger. yänmāṣṣälye*]; ¹Ko. I /yonm-/ [A -, -, yonmäṃ//]; ²Ko. VI /yänmā-/ [A -, -, yanmaṃ//-, yänmācer, -; MP //-, -, yänmāntär; AOpt. -, -, yanmoy//; Inf. yänmātsi]; Pt. IIIa /yonm-/ [A yonmwa, yonmasta, yonmasa//]; PP /yeyänmu-/;

   K Ko. IX /yänmäsk^'ä/_e-/ [Inf. yanmäs(t)si]

Just a 'normal' verb. Although actually, it's quite a disturbing paradigm. n-infixed ske/o-suffixed present. With accented -a- suffix in between the root and the ske/o-suffix. in the present. Lovely. But in Tocharian it's definitely not unheard of.

What is crazy though, is the reduplication in the Past Participle. That's a reduplication with Tocharian B e, this might not look crazy, but believe me it is. TochB. e  comes from PIE *o. We've seen *e in reduplication, *i in reduplication, but *o?! And just to mess with us, it also adds 'a' (<h2, h2e) reduplication in some other paradigms.

Makes you wonder what the hell those Tocharians were on.

Now, I figured for completeness I'd add the paradigm of 'to give' in Tocharian B, just for completeness, though I can assure you you're not going to find the preferred *deh3 in there either.

Paradigm: Ps. IXa /āisk^'ä/_e-/ [A aiskau, -, aiṣṣäṃ//aiskem, aiścer, aiskeṃ; AImpf. -, -, aiṣṣi// -, -, aiṣṣiyeṃ; APart. aiṣṣeñca (see also aiṣṣeñcaññe below); MPPart. aiskemane; Ger. aiṣṣälle]; Ko. I /āi-/ [A āyu, ait, aiṃ// -, -, aiṃ; AOpt. -, -, āyi//; MPOpt. -, -, ayītär//; Inf. aitsi; Ger. aille]; Ipv. /pete-/ [sg. pete; pl. petso ˜ petes]; Pt. I(sg.)/III(pl.) /wäsā-/ [A wsāwa, wsāsta, wasa//wasam, -, wsar ˜ wsare]; PP /āyu-/

ai- joy, what a great root that looks nothing like what we'd like to see. It is sometimes connected to the Greek αἴνυμαι 'to take, seize'.

But luckily this paradigms has some nice suppletion. A Preterite with the root wäs- ! Go make up your own etymology for that, Adams' best guesses are as good as anyone's.

And besides that, there's a very interesting Imperative. pete. Tocharian had a prefix p- or pä- for imperatives (not pe-!) which would be prefixed to the verbal root. How exactly the prefix came to be pe- is uncertain, maybe it was affected by the following root te-. te- is interesting though, it looks like our long lost *deh3. It doesn't go too well though, we're not to sure what to do with PIE *ō's in Tocharian (or *oH or *eh3 that merge with *ō), it tends to become u, but sometimes it becomes e. taking a reconstruction of the root like *dh3e- would give us a much more safe reconstruction as te-. but there's not a clear reason to assume this.

Although not a guide to the Tocharian verbal system, I hope you've gotten an idea how incredibly crazy, and thus, incredibly interesting it really is.

What's that? Want to check out Adams' Tocharian B dictionary yourself? Go to IEED and click the link. It might take a while, the server backing the database is terrible, but after a while it starts working.

Take note though, Adams is notoriously sloppy, and his proposed etymologies are more often than note disposable. He often has rather irregular sound laws. Besides that he doesn't quote textual sources too well every time, he does quote them quite consistently though, which I guess is a plus. The translations he provides can also be rather sloppy.

Some resources:
Indo-European Etymological Dictionary - Nice site with a lot of dictionaries, including the digitalisation of the only Tocharian dictionary out there. But a server you'll instantly come to hate.

TITUS Project - A fantastic resource of an enormous amount of digitalised and transliterated Tocharian texts, both Tocharian A and B. Be sure to check this one out!

The Tocharian B verbal system is incredibly convoluted, and I can assure you, that there's absolutely now way I'm going to be able to discuss it without making mistakes. Nevertheless I'd like to give you guys a taste of what it's all about, just so you can have some nice linguistic nightmares.

Endings

Present-Subjunctive Endings

There's two sets of endings, just like we like it. The Present and the Preterite endings.

The Present endings aren't exactly straight forward but do derive from the original mi-endings.
1sg. -u, -m < PIE *-oh2, *-mi
2sg. -t < PT *-tə < PIE *tu. That's right the pronoun was used for the suffix. This is because the original ending -s > **Ø. (si would remain as **s though, no -i suffix was used.)
3sg. -n, -Ø < *et the -n was added for some kind of reason.
1pl. -m can't come from *-mes looks like *-m + pronoun *ues-
2pl. -cer < PIE *-te with random -r (probably from medium)
3pl. -n < *-nt while the Tocharian A variant comes from *-nti.

As you can see almost none of these go nicely :D Nevertheless this paradigm looks more like the mi-endings than the perfect endings. The distinction between primary (-mi, -si, -ti) and secondary (-m, -s, -t) endings is severely blurred.

the Medium forms are only slightly less confusing

1sg. -mar < *-mh2+r
2sg. -tar < *-th2+r
3sg. tär < **-tr The suggestion was that it is from *to+r where -o was removed for it is used as a preterite marker. I agree it's not very convincing. But it's the best we have :D
1pl. mtär < *-medʰh2+r
2pl. tär < *-dʰue+r
3pl. ntär <**-ntr from < *-ntro with o removed because it was the preterite marker.

Preterite endings

Let's now discuss the preterite endings

1sg. -wa < *-h2e with some odd -w- infix.
2sg. -sta < *th2e with an odd -s- infix.
3sg. -Ø < *e
1pl. -m < same origin as present-subjunctive endings
2pl. -s < unknown origin seems similar to Hittite hhi-ending -s-ten while mi -ten
3pl. -re < PIE *-ro

Middle:

1sg -mai < *-h2+i and a m infix, probably to make it more similar to present.
2sg. -tai <*th2+i
3sg. -te  <*to
1pl. -mte <*medʰh2+o as preterite marker
2pl. -t < *-dʰue
3pl. -nte < *-ntro without the r because r was a present marker.

Well that starts of nicely doesn't it? Present-subjunctive = present-aorist endings Preterite = perfect endings. The problem is though, that the stems themselves behave quite differently. Present comes straight form the PIE present, but both preterite and subjunctive seem to want to come from the perfect, while other subjunctives seem to come from the aorist.

But more about the stems soon, for now, just have a good look at the endings

One of the puzzling things about Tocharian* is the Alternant gender. This is a group of nouns which in the singular, is a masculine noun, and in the plural is a feminine noun. The adjectives will also agree to different gender depending on whether this noun is in the singular or in the plural. A good example of an alternant is the noun palsko `thought'.

	Singular	Plural
Nom	palsko	pälskonta
Obl	palsko	pälskonta
Gen	pälskontse	pälskontaṃts

As you can see for the plural a -nta suffix is added. There are also other types of  suffixes for the laternants. These are: nma, wa, a, na and a few words have sa.

I've been wondering how and why this alternant developed. The answer to the question how is a lot easier to explain than why. So I'll do this first.

The nta suffix comes from indo-european *-nt suffix in the nominative-accusative neuter plural *-nt-h2. All -a's come from the nominative-accusative neuter plural actually.
wa is from the *-u stems. nma is from the *-mn stems. a is from the *-h2 stems it seems. na is from the *-n stems and sa is from the *-s stems.

Many of these words originally seem to be Indo-European neuters. Also most loanwords were placed into this category of nouns. Indo-European Neuters completely merged with the Masculine and Alternant in Tocharian, except for the pronouns, which still have a neuter.

Now we get to several why's. First. Why do these suffixes only appear in the plural. Answer: I don't know. It's also not like these are the suffixes you'd expect in either the singular or the plural. Take "hundred" for example kante which points towards an Indo-European *dḱmtóm, which luckily is the form we expect. But kante  takes a -nma suffix. Although the indo-european plural of hundred would technically be *dḱmth2. Although the -h2 suffix is there, there's absolutely no proof except for Tocharian that it should be *dḱmtmnh2. There seems to be some reason behind it sometimes. nta seems to be very productive in loanwords, and words ending in -r. While nma seems to be especially productive with words in a final consonant that isn't r. All the other categories are closed categories (new words/loan words would not be added to this category).

Second question: Why was the Neuter Nominative-Accusative Pleural suffix interpreted as a feminine suffix? This is slightly easier to answer. h2-stems after all, are generally feminine words, and even more so for the ih2-stems. But the  nominative plural of feminine h2-stems ends in *h2-es! Luckily Tocharian solves this problem. *h2e > a and word final *s disappears. Resulting in the nominative singular *-eh2 and plural *-h2es being a homophonous "a".

This homophony was later solved by analogy (feminine ih2 stems get a -na suffix), but before this analogy this is the time the neuter plural nominative-accusative was indistinguishable from the feminine nominative plural, this is how the plural of the alternant nouns became feminine.

That was the traditional approach. But FTPlus kindly notified me of another, rather controversial option. His hypothesis was: "What if the *-h2 feminines are actually neuter plurals."

This hypothesis implies that the inanimate neuters were traditionally Singular only. While the plurals of these nouns would either be mass nouns, or abstract nouns. This would also often mean that certain plurals (mass nouns) did not even have a singular equivalent, and the other way around. Reinterpretation would then lead to a new class derived from plural-only neuters. This would then be the h2-stems. which were conjugated like any other animate consonant stem.

How exactly these abstract and mass nouns got to be associated with feminine nouns so far, is a mystery to me. FTPlus suggests that women are more emotional, and would have a closer bond with abstract things than men. But I wonder if this psychological insight would have had awareness among the Indo-Europeans. I thought this insight was more of a modern popular psychology thing.

What does this mean for Tocharian?

First off, it would be better to interpret the Masculine singular as a Neuter in the alternants. Then the expected plural *-h2 Might have been impossible to the Tocharians, for it created abstract and mass nouns, which would not be the same as the plural of a singular Neuter. Therefore the chose to add a derivative suffix behind the original singular, and then add this plural *-h2. How exactly these plural suffixes were selected is yet unclear, but this is in fact quite a plausible theory, and maybe even easier to understand than the above stated form, where we don't derive the *-h2 suffix from the nominative-accustive neuter plural

*Please note that I will almost always mean Tocharian B, and I will use Tocharian B examples. Although most things I say will also count for Tocharian A, I only have deep knowledge of Tocharian B.

I've been working on a theory with one of my classmates on the Indo-European present stem suffix *neu/nu.
As seen in the Greek δείκνυμι for example. I'm not sure if anyone else ever proposed this, but I think it's very likely that it is actually derived from the root for `now'  *neu/nu.

Not only Greek retains this suffix. Also Tocharian B has this suffix. *nu regularly gives nä. Which isn't attested along, but does appear with the suffix *-ske/o (which is -ṣṣä/ske in Tocharian B).

And the *nu version is then the suffix -nä-ṣṣä/ske. As seen in the word:
lännaṣṣä/ske- (here <a> is phonemically /ä́/) `to leave'
Interstingly, just like in Greek, besides the present there isn't another place where this *neu/nu suffix appears. Not in the subjunctive, nor the preterite or the preterite participle.

So the present class would mean something like `I VERB now', something very appropriate for a present tense I would say. There's the problem though, that you can never really prove that this is indeed the original.

Beekes though, proposes that this present suffix is actually derived from  verb roots ending in *-u with an n-infix. Which resulted in an ending in *-nu/neu which was then reinterpreted as a new suffix. Similarly he proposes that the *-nh2/-neh2 suffix is formed in a similar way but then for roots ending in *-h2.

I personally find the present marker *neu/nu as derived from the Indo-European word for `now' a far more appealing concept. This leaves us with being unable to explain where the *-nh2 is from though.

But we have another problem. Just like that the *nu-ske/o suffix appears in Tocharian B, there's also the *nh2-ske/o suffix. Which functions in same way as the other suffix. An example of the *nh2-ske/o is this:

kärnāṣṣä/ske- `to buy' (<ā> is phonemically /á/).

But unlike the *nu-ske/o suffix, this suffix also appears as a present marker without the *ske/o suffix. In fact it's one of the most productive present classes. The so called na-presents.

Example of a na-present verb is:

tärkana- `to let go' which has a preterite tarka-.

There's no such thing as a  nä-present though.  This distribution is  strange. If they would have the same sort of origin (as Beekes proposes) you'd expect them to have the same sort of distribution. This  could be seen as argument for our hypothesis that *-neu/nu comes from `now' rather than a clipping from n-infixed roots ending in *-u. Not a very strong one though.

I have not put any time into figuring out the origin of the *nh2/neh2 suffix, I will write a new post about that soon. Feel free to add any thought you might have on this subject, or questions for that matter.

All right, my blog hasn't been as active as I would like it to be. So, I'm going to change the way I'm going to go about this blog. From now on, I will make a weekly post on saturday. This post will analyse a sentence, or piece of text, from any language that I've studied, and of which I'm fairly confident I can inform people about.

Today I will start of with Tocharian B a.k.a Kuchean.

A small introduction on Tocharian

Tocharian is an Indo-European language which surprisingly enough, used to be spoken in Chinese Turkestan (around Kucha, hence the name Kuchean). The largest part of the texts that were found, were written in the 8th Century AD. This language phase is generally called Classical Tocharian, and most sentences and texts I will analyse will be from this period.

There are two main Tocharian languages, Tocharian A and Tocharian B (TA and TB respectively). I do not have much knowledge of TA, all I know is that it already seemed to be a dying language which mostly had ritualistic uses, while Tocharian B was still alive and kicking.

The Tocharians were Buddhists, so most texts that were found were Buddhist texts.

Another interesting thing about Tocharian is that it is not a satem language, but a centum language. With in the Indo-European language family, there's one big subdivision, and that's on what the languages do with the velars.

 The satem languages merge the velars and labiovelars. While the centum languages merge the velars and palatovelars.

For a long time it was believe that this subdivision indicated a big dialectal isogloss which split the Indo-European community in a western and eastern dialectal region. West being centum, and east being satem. And then there was Tocharian, the furthest in the east of all, and a centum language. This first sparked my interest.

The text

Although I'm currently working on a Tocharian font, I do not think I'll annoy you people with it, and I will just write the texts in the standard transcription. Tocharian was written in an Indic script, and thus the transcription might look similar to Sanskrit for some people, because it was more or less based on it.

tarya akṣā-ne pudñäkte: teki ktstaitsñe srukalñe.  toṃ mā tākoṃ śaiṣṣene, mā ṅke tsaṅkoy pudñäkte. toṃ ñyatstsenta wikässiś poyśinta tne tseṅkeṃtär.

The Buddha announced to him three [things]: sickness, old-age and
death. If these would not be in the world, then the Buddha would not arise.
All-knowing ones(Buddha’s) arise here for driving out these dangers.

Analysis

tarya : three (female), meant is 3 things
akṣā-ne : announce preterite 3 singular, with an enclitic 3rd person singular pronoun. This enclitic can either be the direct object or the indirect object.
pudñäkte : Buddha, in the nominative. (though, in morphology it could also be the oblique, the main use of the oblique is to mark the accusative).
teki : sickness
ktstaitsnñe : old-age
srukalñe : death

The Buddha announced to him three things: sickness, old-age and death.

toṃ :  'these' nominative plural.
mā  : not, cognate to classical Greek 'μη'
tākoṃ : 'to be'  pptative 3 plural
śaiṣṣene : world locative. Formed by the oblique 'śaiṣṣe' with locative suffix 'ne'
mā : not
ṅke : then
tsaṅkoy : `to arise' Optative 3 singular
pudñäkte : Buddha Oblique

If these would not be in the world, then the Buddha would not arise.

A point of interest is the optative here. The optative should be considered the past tense of the subjunctive here. The subjunctive is often used for if-then clauses. The main clause in the subjunctive and the condityional clause in the subjunctive give the structure of a specific condition.

toṃ : 'these' oblique plural
ñyatstsenta 'dangers' oblique plural (although in for could also be nominative plural).
wikässiś : 'to drive out'  infinitive with allative suffix(expected is "wikäṣtsiś" which But the cluster ṣts is always found as sts, or ss, as in this case). Allative here giving 'in order to drive out'
poyśinta  : All-knowing one in plural. Meaning 'Buddha' comes from po 'all' + aiśi Nomen Agentis of 'to know'.
tne : here, though a more wide translation would be 'thus' or 'so'.
tseṅkeṃtär. 'To arise' present 3rd person plural (Medium)

All-knowing ones(Buddha’s) arise here for driving out these dangers

Feel free to ask any questions.