Tocharian Special Agents: The nt-participles

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Abstract

Tocharian employs a number of different “agent formations” that all seem to be semantically and morphologically related. The nt-participle in B -ñca A -nt also belongs to this morphological class. From a comparative and historical point of view three things about these forms are in need of explanation: (1) The root-final palatalization of the nt-participles to thematic verbs, (2) the suffix-final palatalization in Tocharian B, and (3) the inflectional pattern with B -a and A -Ø, as in the other agent formations. I argue that the stem-final palatalization of the nt-participles in is an inner-Tocharian innovation based on analogy with the functionally related gerundives. The difference in suffix-final palatalization between B -ñca and A -nt is best explained by a morphological renewal in the history of Tocharian B that was based on a derivational variant of old *nt-participles. Finally, the ā-inflection of the Tocharian nt-participles can be compared to the inflection of present participles in NE Germanic and goes back to PIE individualizing stems in *-ō̆n-.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)53-67
Number of pages14
JournalTocharian and Indo-European Studies
Volume15
Publication statusPublished - 2014

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

  • 602017 Indo-European studies
  • 602054 Comparative linguistics
  • 602039 Phonology

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