Melanie Malzahn (born 1973 in Hamburg) is a German professor of Indo-European studies at the University of Vienna specializing in the history of the Tocharian languages. [1]
Between 1992 and 1999, Malzahn studied linguistics and Ancient Near East studies in Hamburg and Vienna, receiving her magister degree from the University of Vienna in 1999 and her doctorate from the same institution in 2001; the topic of her dissertation was sandhi in the Rigveda. [1] [2] Between 2000 and 2012 she held various positions at the University of Vienna, as well as spending time as a guest researcher at the Institut de France, UCLA, and Harvard University. [1] In 2009 she received her habilitation in Indo-European linguistics for a book on the Tocharian verbal system. [1] [2] In 2012 she was appointed to the professorship of comparative Indo-European linguistics at the University of Vienna. [1]
Malzahn is an elected member of several prestigious scholarly associations. In 2013 she was elected as a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and since 2015 she has been a full member. [2] [3] In 2014 she was elected member of the Academia Europaea. [4] Since 2020 she has been a corresponding member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig. [5]
Alongside the Tocharian languages, Malzahn has published broadly across comparative Indo-European studies, including work on Vedic Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Old Irish, early Germanic, and Etruscan. [4]
Her 2010 monograph on the Tocharian verbal system, based on her habilitation thesis and running to over a thousand pages, has been praised as a magnum opus that is likely to be the standard reference work on its subject matter for many years to come. [6]
The Tocharianlanguages, also known as Arśi-Kuči, Agnean-Kuchean or Kuchean-Agnean, are an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family spoken by inhabitants of the Tarim Basin, the Tocharians. The languages are known from manuscripts dating from the 5th to the 8th century AD, which were found in oasis cities on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin and the Lop Desert. The discovery of these languages in the early 20th century contradicted the formerly prevalent idea of an east–west division of the Indo-European language family as centum and satem languages, and prompted reinvigorated study of the Indo-European family. Scholars studying these manuscripts in the early 20th century identified their authors with the Tokharoi, a name used in ancient sources for people of Bactria (Tokharistan). Although this identification is now believed to be mistaken, "Tocharian" remains the usual term for these languages.
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages.
Radoslav Katičić was a Croatian linguist, classical philologist, Indo-Europeanist, Slavist and Indologist, one of the most prominent Croatian scholars in the humanities.
Kuchean was a Western member of Tocharian branch of Indo-European languages, extinct from ninth century. Once spoken in the Tarim Basin in Central Asia. Tocharian B shows an internal chronological development; three linguistic stages have been detected. The oldest stage is attested only in Kucha. There are also the middle ('classicalʼ), and the late stage.
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