Editing Tocharian languages (section)

=== Contact with other languages ===
Michaël Peyrot argues that several of the most striking typological peculiarities of Tocharian are rooted in a prolonged contact of Proto-Tocharian with an early stage of [[Proto-Samoyedic]] in South Siberia. This might explain the merger of [[Proto-Indo-European language#Consonants|all three stop series]] (e.g. *t, *d, *dʰ > *t), which must have led to a huge number of [[homonyms]], restructuring of the vowel system, development of [[Agglutinative language|agglutinative]] case marking, the loss of the [[dative case]], and others.{{sfnp|Peyrot|2019}}

In historic times, the Tocharian language stood in contact with various surrounding languages, including [[Iranian languages|Iranian]], Turkic, and [[Sinitic languages]]. Tocharian borrowings, and other Indo-European loanwords transmitted to Uralic, Turkic and Sinitic speakers, have been confirmed.{{sfnp|Bjørn|2022}} Tocharian had a high social position within the region, and influenced the [[Turkic languages]], which would later replace Tocharian in the [[Tarim Basin]].{{sfnp|Bjørn|2022}}