Niels Schoubben
Postdoc
- Name
- Dr. N. Schoubben MA
- Telephone
- +31 71 527 2727
- n.schoubben@hum.leidenuniv.nl
- ORCID iD
- 0000-0002-1190-1838
Niels Schoubben is a PhD-student in the ERC-project "The Tocharian Trek" under the supervision of dr. Michaël Peyrot and prof. dr. Sasha Lubotsky. He researches language contact between Middle Indic (Niya Gāndhārī), Middle Iranian and Tocharian in the administrative documents (3rd-4th century AD) from the Middle Indic Shan-Shan kingdom at the former southern Silk Road in present-day Xinjiang (NW China). More generally, he is interested in the application of modern linguistic theory in the study of ancient Indo-European languages, most notably Indo-Iranian, Tocharian & Greek.
More information about Niels Schoubben
Fields of interest
- Indo-Iranian linguistics
- Tocharian linguistics
- Language Contact
- Historical sociolinguistics
- Comparative Indo-European Linguistics
- Greek linguistics
- Metrics & oral poetry
Research
My PhD-research is concerned with language contact between Middle Indic (Niya Gāndhārī), Middle Iranian and Tocharian in the administrative documents (3rd-4th century AD) from the Middle Indic Shan-Shan kingdom at the former southern Silk Road in present-day Xinjiang (NW China). This research is part of the larger ERC-project ‘The Tocharian Trek’ under the supervision of dr. Michaël Peyrot (the PI) and prof. dr. Sasha Lubotsky It is the aim of my research to test whether the suggestion made by Thomas Burrow (1935; 1937) that these texts have been influenced by an otherwise unattested variety of Tocharian (Tocharian C) stands up to scrutiny when considered in the light of the advances in Tocharology and Gandharan studies.
Previously, I studied Classics, Modern Greek and Sanskrit at Ghent University and Classics and Indo-European linguistics (mainly Indo-Iranian and Tocharian) at Leiden University. In my BA & MA theses, I studied language contact in the Greek Kandahar Inscriptions, the prehistory of the Homeric hexameter, the words for “sorrow” in Epic Greek and the dialinguistics of the phoneme /l/ in R̥gvedic Sanskrit.
In general, I am interested in the application of modern linguistic theory (e.g. language contact, sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics) to ancient Indo-European languages, in order to get a better understanding of both their synchrony and diachrony. The Indo-European languages that attract my attention the most include the Indo-Iranian family (e.g. (Vedic) Sanskrit, Prakrit, Old Persian & Khotanese), Tocharian and (Ancient) Greek.
CV
- 2019-present: PhD-student in Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (Leiden University).
- 2018-2019: MA. Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (Leiden University) Summa cum laude.
- 2018-2019: MA. Classics & Ancient Civilizations: Classics (Leiden University) Cum laude.
- 2017-2018: MA. Languages & Linguistics: Latin-Greek (Ghent University) Summa cum laude with special congratulations. Extra courses in classical Indology.
- 2014-2017: BA. Languages & Linguistics: Latin-Greek (Ghent University) Summa cum laude. Extra courses in Sanskrit (2016-2017).
Grants and awards
- 2018: Laureate GIKS-price (Ghent University) Price for the best MA. thesis in Classics submitted in the academical year 2017-2018 at Ghent University, awarded by the Ghent Institute for Classical Studies (GIKS).
Postdoc
- Faculty of Humanities
- Leiden Univ Centre for Linguistics
- LUCL VIET
- Schoubben N. (6 November 2024), Traces of language contact in Niya Prakrit: Bactrian and other foreign elements (Dissertatie. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University). Supervisor(s): Peyrot M. & Lubotsky A.
- Schoubben N. (2023), The Iranian sound change *w- > *γw- in the Indo-Iranian borderlands and a new etymology for Gāndhārī and Sanskrit guśura(ka)-, Iran and the Caucasus 27(3): 285-298.
- Schoubben N., Koning J., Velthoven B.R.W. van & Probert P. (2023), Of tortoise necks and dialects: a new edition of the Grammaticus Leidensis, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 116(3): 929-964.
- Schoubben N. (2022), The son of the king: Iranistic notes on Gāndhārī kṣabura, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 172(1): 149-153.
- Schoubben N. (2022), Tu quoque?! : On the second person pronoun tusya (tus̱a) and the second person verbal ending -tu (-du) in Niya Prakrit, Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics 9(1-2): 1-27.
- Schoubben N. (2022), Linguistic evidence for Kuṣāṇa trade routes: Bactrian *λιρτο ‘load, cargo’ and Sanskrit lardayati ‘to load’, Indogermanische Forschungen 127(1): 343-357.
- Schoubben N. (2021) Book review of [Reading the Buddha’s Discourses in Pāli] by [Bhikkhu Bodhi]. Review of: Bodhi B. (2020), Reading the Buddha’s Discourses in Pāli. Somerville: Wisdom Publications. Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies 20: 187-192.
- Schoubben N. (2021), Accent sign matters: the Niya prakrit grapheme < ḱ > and its connection to Bactrian < Þκ >, Journal Asiatique 309(1): 47-59.
- Dragoni F., Schoubben N. & Peyrot M. (2020), The Formal Kharoṣṭhī script from the Northern Tarim Basin in Northwest China may write an Iranian language, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 73(3): 335-373.
- Schoubben N. (30 July 2019), Hippocrene reeks over de Ṛgveda: 1. Introductie. [blog entry].
- Schoubben N. (2018), Review of: Gunkel Dieter & Hackstein Olav (2018), Language & Meter. Brill Studies in Indo-European Languages & Linguistics no. 18. Leiden: Brill. Journal of Indo-European Studies 46(3-4): 472-489.
- Schoubben N. (2018), À la grecque comme à la grecque - The Greek Kandahar Inscriptions as a case study in Indo-Greek language contact during the Hellenistic Period, Indologica Taurinensia 43-44: 79-118.