Prehistoric Tocharian-Turkic Linguistic Contacts

In this paper, we focus on early Tocharian loanwords in Turkic. We argue that these can be derived from Pre-Tocharian B, an unattested precursor stage of Tocharian B, while the bulk of loanwords from Tocharian A probably only entered Turkic as Buddhist texts were translated. The early loanwords from Pre-Tocharian B must have entered Turkic before the attestation of the first Turkic sources. We compare the phonological systems of Proto-Tocharian and Proto-Turkic and discuss the phonological and phonotactic discrepancies between the two, in order to explain certain phonetic changes in the borrowing process. We attempt to establish regular sound correspondences. Established and convincing etymologies will not be discussed at length. We will explain our arguments why we think it unlikely that certain words were borrowed from Tocharian. Several new etymologies will be proposed. We also suggest Tocharian etymologies for a number of verbs in Turkic. The possibility of borrowed verb stems, which is unexpected in view of the very different conjugation systems, has hardly been discussed previously. We subdivide the etymologies in several degrees of likelihood: plausible, possible and doubtful. Finally we will discuss the importance of these findings for the chronology of Tocharian-Turkic contacts and the absolute chronology of prehistoric Turkic.