Variation and change in Tocharian B

Michaël Peyrot’s research focuses on the philology and synchronic linguistics of Tocharian, as well as the prehistory of the Tocharian languages, from both an Indo-European and a language contact perspective. He studied comparative Indo-European linguistics and Tocharian in Leiden and Paris, and edited a large number of Tocharian manuscripts for the International Dunhuang Project of the British Library. He is a contributor of the Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary, and currently carries out research on the Tocharian subjunctive.

• PrefaceAbbreviations Citation codesIntroductionAimMethodVariant formsInterpretationConclusionMapsAppendicesReferencesIndex of Tocharian B word forms

"If it is not already, this book will become an essential volume on the desk of researchers of Tocharian B. … solid and convincing … may represent a turning point in Tocharian B studies … It put historical linguistic analyses of B on much firmer footing." – in: Journal of the American Oriental Society 132/3 (2012)"Zusammenfassend lässt sich sagen, dass P[eyrot] in dieser hochbedeutsamen und vollauf gelungenen Arbeit zeigen kann, dass Stumpfs These … zweifellos richtig ist. Alle Studien zu tocharischem Sprachmaterial werden in Zukunft die von P[eyrot] vorgenommene chronologische Einordnung der T[ocharisch-]B-Sprachvarianten und seine Klassifikation der Texte zu berücksichtigen haben." – in: Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 105 (2010), 2"P[eyrot]’s study has greatly expanded our understanding both of the nature of variation within the TB documents and of the relation between the spoken and written languages over a time span of several centuries, far longer than previously assumed … it is noteworthy that the chronology arrived at by P is consistent with the known political and cultural history of the Tarim Basin. … P’s book is an excellent example of corpus research on an extinct language, one where our ignorance of individual writers’ identities and much of the external history forces us to reconstruct a plausible picture of synchronic and diachronic variation on the basis of the texts themselves." – in: LANGUAGE 85/2 (2009)"Zusammenfassend lässt sich sagen: P[eyrot] kann in dieser hochbedeutsamen und vollauf gelungenen Arbeit zeigen kann, dass Stumpfs These … zweifellos richtig ist. Alle Studien zu tocharischem Sprachmaterial werden in Zukunft die von P[eyrot] vorgenommene chronologische Einordnung der T[ocharisch-]B-Sprachvarianten und seine Klassifikation der Texte zu berücksichtigen haben." – in: Kratylos 57 (2012)