TOCHARIAN LANGUAGES

Tocharian also spelled Tokharian, small group of extinct Indo-European languages that were spoken in the Tarim River Basin (in the centre of the modern Uighur Autonomous Region of Sinkiang, China) during the latter half of the 1st millennium AD. Documents from AD 500700 attest to two: Tocharian A, from the area of Turfan in the east; and Tocharian B, chiefly from the region of Kucha in the west but also from the Turfan area. Additional reading Douglas Q. Adams, Tocharian Historical Phonology and Morphology (1988), is an introduction to Tocharian from the Indo-European point of view; though Holger Pedersen, Tocharisch vom Gesichtspunkt der indoeuropischen Sprachvergleichung (1941), is also still of value. Emil Sieg and Wilhelm Siegling (eds.), Tocharische Sprachreste, 1 vol. in 2 (1921), gives the transcription of all the manuscripts in Tocharian A and reproduces a number of the best-preserved leaves in facsimile. Wilhelm Schulze, Emil Sieg, and Wilhelm Siegling, Tocharische Grammatik (1931), is an exhaustive grammar of Tocharian A, with a verbal index identifying and listing all verb forms in that language. Wolfgang Krause, Westtocharische Grammatik, vol. 1, Das Verbum (1952), is indispensable for the verb in Tocharian B. Wolfgang Krause and Werner Thomas, Tocharisches Elementarbuch, 2 vol. (196064), comprises a grammar, glossary, and texts for both languages; while A.J. van Windekens, Le tokharien confront avec les autres langues indo-europennes, 2 vol. (197682), provides a general, if at times idiosyncratic, etymological dictionary and comparative phonology and morphology of both languages. George S. Lane, On the Interrelationship of the Tocharian Dialects, in Henrik Birnbaum and Jaan Puhvel (eds.), Ancient Indo-European Dialects (1966), pp. 213233, attempts to solve some of the problems concerning the varied uses of the two languages. George S. Lane Douglas Q. Adams