Recommended for publication by the Department of Contemporary Armenian, Institute of Language, Armenian National Academy of Sciences
Summary
Seda Gasparyan
The article deals with the study of the Armenian word եղեռն (yeghern) and the semantic field of its equivalence in English. Proceeding from the well-established statement of the dialectical correlation between language and speech the author carries out the research on both the emic level (i.e. the language system) and the etic one (i.e. from the point of view of its functioning in speech). The study of the field of equivalence in the language system is based on different data registered in Armenian and English monolingual and bilingual dictionaries.
The confrontative study of these data reveals the presence of a common dominant seme (crime) in the semantic structure of the majority of them, as well as the possibility of rejecting some of the semantic equivalents offered.
By the research carried out on the etic level it is established that full equivalence is provided not only by semantic but also stylistic and pragmatic adequacy of linguistic elements. The role of the horizontal and vertical contexts, as well as the speech situation cannot be underestimated.
In the closing part of the article, the results of the investigation are summed up graphically presenting the constituent semes in the semantic globality of the word genocide the only internationally established term, equivalent to the Armenian word եղեռն (yeghern).