FROM THE HISTORY OF INDO-EUROPEAN STUDIES: A STUDY OF TOCHARIAN LANGUAGES AND GENEALOGICAL CLASSIFICATION

Abstract

The task of the article is to reveal the peculiarities of the study of “dead” Tocharian languages in their connection with other Indo-European languages at all levels of the language system in linguistics of the XIX — early XXI centuries. It is noted that the discovery and study of Tocharian A and Tocharian B, qualified as centum languages, played an important role in improvement of the genealogical classification of Indo-European languages. The study of Tocharian languages are briefly described in the studios of W. Krause, W. Thomas, A. J. van Windekens, D. Q. Adams, V. V. Ivanov, T. V. Gamkrelidze, S. A. Burlak, etc. The connections of Tocharian A and Tocharian B with Celtic, Italiс, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Thracian-Phrygian, Hittite, Armenian languages are revealed. There is also traced Tocharian non-Indo-European influence of agglutinative language (W. Krause). The author of the article gives a brief description of the Tocharian languages at the phonological, lexical, morphological and syntactic levels. The archaic features of the Indo-European dictionary have been preserved in the Tocharian languages. It is concluded that the place of Tocharian languages among other Indo-European languages has not yet been clearly defined. It is necessary to emphasize the importance of the facts of Tocharian A and Tocharian B for researchers of other groups of Indo-European languages, to review a lot of statements of Indo-European studies.