Studies in Tocharian Phonology above the Word-Level

218 Pages·2015·4.63 MB·English

UCLA
UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
Studies in Tocharian Phonology above the Word-Level
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3dk2b17w
Author
Koller, Bernhard
Publication Date
2015

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library
University of California
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles
Studies in Tocharian Phonology above the Word-Level
A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction
of the requirements for the degree
Doctor of Philosophy in Indo-European Studies
by
Bernhard Koller
2015
(cid:13)c Copyright by
Bernhard Koller
2015
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION
Studies in Tocharian Phonology above the Word-Level
by
Bernhard Koller
Doctor of Philosophy in Indo-European Studies
University of California, Los Angeles, 2015
Professor H. Craig Melchert, Chair
The present work is a collection of studies on the Tocharian languages that focuses on
the phonological properties of units larger than the word. The first chapter involves a study
of the segmental properties of external sandhi in Tocharian A couched in the framework of
Optimality Theory. A philological study involving the Tocharian br¯ahm¯ı alphabet reveals
that there exists a correlation between external sandhi and the orthographic strategy used
to render a word-final consonant. The second chapter provides an analysis of the prosodic
relationship between clitics and their hosts, showing that these elements form a prosodic
constituentintermediatebetweenthewordandthephrase. ThisisthecasebothinTocharian
A as well as in Tocharian B. The final chapter addresses two different aspects of the internal
structure of Tocharian Wh-words. First, the prosodic analysis employed for clitics and
their hosts is extended to Wh-words in Tocharian B, making it possible to account for
their otherwise aberrant accentuation as well as some of their segmental properties. The
second part of the chapter investigates the nature of indefinites in Tocharian A, showing
that, contrary to the descriptions in most handbooks, the attested forms do not belong to
a single paradigm. Instead, we are dealing with two separate sets of Wh-words doubling
as indefinites, a fact that has been obscured by a phonological process that renders one set
identical to demonstrative pronouns.
ii
The dissertation of Bernhard Koller is approved.
Stephanie W. Jamison
Dominique Sportiche
Brent Vine
H. Craig Melchert, Committee Chair
University of California, Los Angeles
2015
iii
To Anna
iv
Contents
List of Tables xiii
Symbols and Abbreviations xiv
1 Introduction 1
1.1 The Tocharian Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1 Language Variation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.2 Tocharian Segmental Inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1.3 Accent in TB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.4 Basic Properties of Tocharian Meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 The Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2.1 CEToM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2.2 Presentation of Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3 Goals of this Dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4 Overview of the Dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2 On Tocharian A Sandhi and its Rendering in the Br¯ahm¯ı Alphabet 11
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2 External Sandhi in TA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2.1 Stumpf on V#V-Sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2.2 An OT-Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
v
2.2.2.1 Glide Formation and Vowel Coalescence . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.2.2.2 Vowel Deletion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.2.2.3 Predictions of the Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.2.3 C#V-sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.2.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.3 Vira¯ma Spelling and Tocharian A Prosody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.3.1 Main Features of the Northern-Turkestan Br¯ahm¯ı Alphabet . . . . . 44
2.3.2 Vir¯ama Spelling in Tocharian Orthography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.3.3 General Distribution of Vir¯ama Spelling in Tocharian A . . . . . . . . 49
2.3.4 Complementary Distribution of Vi-Disjunction and A-linking in C#V-
Pairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
2.3.5 Apparent Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.3.5.1 Exceptional vi-disjunction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.3.5.2 Exceptional a-linking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
2.3.6 A Phonological Interpretation of the Distribution of Vir¯ama Spelling 62
2.3.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3 Prosodic Incorporation of Clitics 66
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.2 The Phonology of TA clitics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.2.1 The Clitic Group within the Prosodic Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.2.2 V-Initial Particles and Gemination Sandhi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
3.2.2.1 A-linking (32 attestations) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
3.2.2.2 Vi-disjunction (8 attestations) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
3.2.2.3 Anusva¯ra (16 attestations) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
3.2.3 Hiatus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
3.2.3.1 Hiatus with Enclitics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
vi
3.2.3.2 Hiatus in Compounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
3.2.4 Meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
3.2.4.1 V-Enclitics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
3.2.4.2 Proclitics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
3.2.4.3 C-Initial Enclitics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
3.2.4.4 A Prosodic Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
3.2.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
3.3 The Phonology of TB Clitics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
3.3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
3.3.2 TB Particles are Prosodically Dependent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
3.3.3 Particles are PWd-External . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
3.3.4 Compounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
3.3.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
4 On the Internal Structure of Tocharian Wh-Words 111
4.1 The Accent of TB Wh-words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
4.1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
4.1.2 Accounting for the Final Accent through Internal Structure . . . . . 114
4.1.3 m¨akte/m¨aksu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
4.1.4 k se . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
u
4.1.5 The Loss of Rounding in PT *kw¨a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
4.1.6 The synchronic status of TB k(w) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
4.1.7 ente/inte and intsu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
4.1.8 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
4.2 Tocharian Wh-Words as Indefinites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
4.2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
4.2.2 Indefinites in Tocharian A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
vii
4.2.3 Indefinites in Tocharian B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
4.2.4 The Synchronic Status of Indefinite sam. /cam. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
4.2.5 Obligatory N-deletion in Enclitics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
4.2.6 t¯a and ¨ant¯a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
4.2.7 The Internal Structure of Wh-Words in TA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
4.2.8 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
5 Conclusion 152
Appendix A: Form Index 156
Appendix B: Vir¯ama Statistics 177
Appendix C: Selection of Data on Vir¯ama spellings 179
Appendix D: Photographs of Manuscript Leaves 181
5.1 THT 698 (= A 56) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
5.1.1 recto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
5.1.2 verso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
5.2 THT 699 (= A 57) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
5.2.1 recto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
5.2.2 verso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
5.3 THT 641 (= A 8) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
5.3.1 recto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
5.3.2 verso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Appendix E: Text Editors on CEToM 185
References 185
viii