Current consensus on the pronunciation of Tocharian palatals?

Phonology

Do we have any strong ideas on what type of sounds the Tocharian sibilants (written s, ś and ṣ) represent? Scholarly perspectives that I've read seem to agree that ⟨ṣ⟩ is likely a palatal sound of sorts and not a retroflex as the spelling might indicate (based on it evolving from a palatalised alveolar fricative). However it then brings into question what sound ⟨ś⟩ (evolved form the palatalisation of alveolar and velar plosives) represents? It's clear that it patterns with ⟨c⟩, often argued to be a palatal affricate such as /tɕ/, so perhaps ⟨ś⟩ = /ɕ/? If that's the case, doesn't that make it unlikely on a statistcal basis that ⟨ṣ⟩ represents something such as /ʃ/? Are there any languages that actually phonemically distinguish /ʃ/ and /ɕ/? In my mind there's a few different realisations that I thought seemed plausible to me:

1: ⟨s⟩ = /s/, ⟨ṣ⟩ = /ʃ~ɕ/, ⟨ś⟩ = /ç/, ⟨c⟩ = /cç/

2: ⟨s⟩ = /s/, ⟨ṣ⟩ = /sʲ/, ⟨ś⟩ = /ʃ~ɕ/, ⟨c⟩ = /tʃ~tɕ/

3: ⟨s⟩ = /s/, ⟨ṣ⟩ = /ʃ~ɕ/, ⟨ś⟩ = /sʲ/, ⟨c⟩ = /tsʲ/

Posted Sep 5, 2026, 3:49 PM UTC

66
Loading comments…