Adams Douglas Q. More thoughts on Tocharian B prosody

Tocharian and Indo-European Studies (TIES), Volume 14 (2013), p. 3–30.From the beginning of Tocharian studies it has been known that the fundamental metrical device in Tocharian poetry, for both Tocharian B and Tocharian A, is syllable counting. All known Tocharian poems are composed of one or more stanzas,2 each containing usually four, sometimes five, lines.3 The shortest attested line is composed of 10 syllables, the longest of 25. All lines are divided into at least two cola by caesuras (mandatory word-boundaries). Longer lines may be divided into three or even four cola. When there are more than two cola in a line, it is often, even usually, the case that there is a hierarchy among them. That is, a line might be divided into two (major) cola (or half-lines or hemistichs) and then each of those further divided into two minor cola or subcola.