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The Silk Road Language Web: A linguistic prehistory of the Tarim Basin in Northwest China

Descrizione del progetto

Alla scoperta della preistoria linguistica del bacino del Tarim

Il bacino del fiume Tarim, nella Cina nord-occidentale, ha svolto un ruolo centrale nella via della seta, collegando la Cina, l’India e le steppe eurasiatiche. Nonostante l’attuale predominio dell’uiguro e del mandarino, i manoscritti rivelano una storia di antiche lingue indoeuropee, che formano una rete linguistica: la rete linguistica della via della seta. Il progetto SilkRoadLanguageWeb, finanziato dal CER, sfrutterà le prove dei contatti a lungo termine tra questa rete per scoprire la preistoria linguistica del bacino del Tarim, contribuendo in modo significativo alla preistoria linguistica e migratoria dell’Eurasia. Il progetto intende stabilire le rotte e le date di ingresso delle lingue khotanese, tumšuqese e tochariana nel bacino del Tarim, esaminando il loro vocabolario alla ricerca di tracce di lingue precedenti e seguendone lo sviluppo nel tempo.

Obiettivo

On the crossroads between China, India and the Eurasian Steppes, the Tarim Basin in present-day Northwest China was a crucial part of the famous Silk Road trading network. Today, the main languages of the area are Uyghur and Mandarin, but numerous manuscript finds are proof of a past rich in entirely different languages. Next to literary languages like Sanskrit, the local vernaculars were Middle Indic, Tocharian, and the Iranian languages Khotanese and Tumuqese. All Indo-European and hailing ultimately from the west, these languages show the effects of intricate patterns of long-term influence, thus forming a network of linguistic contact: the Silk Road Language Web.

The interpretation of this intriguing linguistic complex has been dominated by the narrative that the Tocharians are to be identified with the Bronze Age Tarim Mummies, to the detriment of other groups. However, in concordance with genetic evidence, the linguistic findings of the PIs ERC-Starting Grant and NWO-VIDI projects show that the Tocharians arrived much later, while the Iranians arrived earlier and spread over a larger area than previously assumed. Thus, an entirely new approach to the linguistic past of the Tarim Basin is called for.

Based on the evidence from long-term language contact contained in the Silk Road Language Web, this project will unravel the linguistic past of the Tarim Basin to make a groundbreaking contribution to the linguistic and migrational prehistory of Eurasia. Reconstructing the dates of the splits and spreads of Khotanese, Tumuqese and Tocharian, it will establish their routes and dates of entry into the Tarim Basin. Further, Khotanese and Tocharian vocabulary of unclear origin will be scrutinised for traces of languages of the earlier Bronze Age populations. Finally, the linguistic developments will be followed into historical times, tracing how the attested languages were eventually shaped by the later formative impact of Middle Indic and Middle Iranian.

Campo scientifico (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifica i progetti con EuroSciVoc, una tassonomia multilingue dei campi scientifici, attraverso un processo semi-automatico basato su tecniche NLP.

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Meccanismo di finanziamento

HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

Istituzione ospitante

UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
Contribution nette de l'UE
€ 1 999 863,00
Indirizzo
RAPENBURG 70
2311 EZ Leiden
Paesi Bassi

Mostra sulla mappa

Tipo di attività
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Collegamenti
Costo totale
€ 1 999 863,00

Beneficiari (1)