Category Archives: LINGUISTICS

Summary

Vardan Z. Petrosyan

Key Words ռ Pre-Armenian, liquid sonorant, Velar sound, fricative sound, sub-phoneme.

The ղ(ł) and լ(l)­ sonorants ­of ­Old­ Armenian­ were ­the ­main­ speech­ variations ­of ­the pre-Armenian ­sonorant­ phoneme­ <*l> ­and­ were­ in­ a ­sub-phoneme ­relation ­with­ each other. In the 5th­ century,­ at­ the­ initial­ stage ­of ­Classical ­Armenian, ­ղ(ł)-լ(l)­ contrast­ appearse specially ­at ­the­ending­ position­ of ­the ­word. ­It ­had ­a ­function ­of ­semantic ­distinction (phonological). ­However,­ in­native ­Armenian­ it ­was ­excluded­ for ­ղ(ł) ­to­appear­ at­ the beginning­ of­ a­word.­ This ­means ­that ­here, ­in ­this­ position, ­they ­were­ in­ an ­additional relation ­of­ distribution­ (sub-phonological).­ Most­ apparently, ­the­ phonemicization ­of­ ղ(ł) as­ a­ velar­ sound ­is­ the­r esult­ of­ divergent ­developments.

Summary 

Yuri S. Avetisyan

Key words – Formative structures, Singular plural formation, Variation in structure, Preference Development, Lexical pronunciation, Exact pronunciation, Economy of energy in oral expression, Statistic.

In modern literary Armenian, the shifts in derivational bases with or without sound interchanges and the emergence of these forms are definitely connected with sound interchange regularities and are conditioned by them. Words of frequent usage have the variations of derivational bases. And, as supposed, it is mostly manifested in the word-building bases. Generally, variational manifestations do not have foreign words and terms, which, as we saw, undergo sound interchanges in form-building nor in word-building.

Attempt of an asynchronous study

Summary

Vardan Z. Petrosyan

Key words – triphthongoid, borrowing, native Indo-European, Urartian, Shumerian, Iranian, interbreeding, substrate reality

The article is an attempt to analyze the origin of the two of triphtongoid constructions of Old Armenian-ԵԱՅ and ԵԱՒ. This main issue is attractive particularly from the point of view that in the proto Indo-European language, Armenian being one of its “daughter languages”, the triphthongoids are not restored. Old Indo-European languages also lack them. Moreover, in the main part of the latter even the composition of the diphthongs is shortened, but they can be restored for Indo-European proto-language. The survey in the given article discovers that the triphthongoids եայ and եաւ have various applications and quite a different origin; they are native, borrowed (they are borrowings from various languages-Old Iranian, Assyrian, Urartian and Shumerian) and are even a synthesis of native and borrowed constituents as a result of word-formation processes.

Summary

Ashot S. Abrahamyan

Key words – Text, variant, interpretation, space, author, reader, abridgment, addition, sequence, set.

Alongside with a multitude of merely semantic interpretations, the text’s space characteristics – volume and sequence of the read text parts, act as important factors favoring the emergence of alternative versions of the text. Abridgement and addition are the two main text volume changes. Replacement is not an elementary procedure; it is a local combination of abridgement and addition. Additions can be classified by a number of criteria: by their author, level of their closeness to the original text and by their content correlation with it. The author’s text bears the opportunity of creating an infinite number of reader variants. Hence, it can be characterized as a macrotext, on the basis of which individual manifestations – reader microtexts can be formed. The text appears as a variety of diverse texts, and thus can be called polytext. There arises a situation like the one in Russell’s paradox. However, if the logical and mathematical solutions to Russell’s paradox lead to its elimination, the theory of text can take a different approach, recognizing the text’s paradoxicality as one of its characteristic features.

Summary

Ashot S. Abrahamyan

Key words – text, space, structure, sequence, sender (author), recipient (reader), hermeneutics, post-structuralism.

Spatiality often lays foundation for text characteristics. It is fostered by text structuality (regardless of its interpretation), as well as by the fact that reasonings on text are, in the first place, based on written text, which, due to its materiality (a page, a book), occupies part of the space. Textual space is managed by the sender (author) and the recipient (reader). There exists a great variety of recipient perceptions of the original text to which evaluation criteria, accepted in pragmatics for a single utterance, are not applicable. In classical hermeneutics all the meaning-making rights in the text are granted to the author: the role of the reader is reduced to the revelation of the author’s idea. Post-structuralism, on the contrary, enunciates the “death of the author” and entrusts absolute textual space organization freedom to the reader. Optimal is the cooperation model, in which the reader, to some extent, becomes a coauthor, and the author becomes a co-reader.

And their names in the Holy Bible

Summary

Parandzem G. Maetikhanyan

Key words – God, not God, idol, pagan gods, Supreme idols, title, idolatry, translation and semantic options, biblical usage.

The Old Testament contains a vast amount of material on the idolatry, different manifestations of paganism are displayed through their names, which are manifold and have different shades of meaning. Considering the different testimonies of the Holy Bible it could be implied that the names կուռք (idol), դիք (pagan gods), չաստված (not gad) or աստված (pagan god) have not only common semantic characteristics, but also certain outlined distinctions.

The names of supreme idols are introduced with various interpretations and translated versions, e.g. Աստարտ (Astarte), Բահաղ, (Vaal), Բեեղզեբուղ (Beeghzebugh) and Բելիար (Belial), the examination of which we have touched upon in this article, comparing the rich material of the Old Armenian, Eastern and Western Armenian languages, as well as the Greek and Russian originals of biblical texts.

Diachronic- Typological Attempt

Summary

Vardan Z. Petrosyan

Key Words – diphthong and a like-diphthong, systematic correspondence, Proto-Indo-European Language, diachronic typology, phonemic- phonetic status of ու.

The system of Old Armenian diphtongs has been studied mainly from the synchronic point of view, while the diachronic studies have only been restricted to pointing out the origin or,in other words, the Indo-European prototypes of the diphtongs, without comprehensive investigation. The investigation of the given matter on the one hand reveals a reliable image of the correspondence between Old Armenian and Indo- European diphtongs and on the other hand provides an opportunty to explain the deviations of Old Armenian system of diphtongs from that of the Indo-European diphtongs. According to this, there are the following correspondences between the diphtongal systems of Old Armenian and Indo-European languages: au/*āu>աւ(aw/aṷ),*ai>այ (ay/ai̭), *eu>եւ(ew), *eu/*ou>ոյ(oy/ oi̭),*eu> (եւ/ew/>)>իւ (iw/ iṷ): Եա (ea) is the only pure Old Armenian diphtong, an Armenian new formation, which doesn’t have its Indo-European prototype. Among the Old Indo-European languages only Old English had the diphtong եա (ea)- (comp. bearn [bæa̭rn] “child”, ēare [ˊǣare] “ear”), but taking into consideration the fact that neither the Proto-Language, nor any other old Indo-European languge had the mentioned diphtong, there is no reason to think about genetic similarities between Old Armenian and Old English եա∼ea diphtongs.

The phonemic status of Old Armenian ու is to some extent arguable; the question is whether the phoneme ու was a like-diphtong or just a simple vowel. The typological studies give us reason to think that the phoneme ու had also been a diphtong-like, so it should be transcribed as ow/oṷ, rather than u.

On the way from heaven to hell and back to heaven

Summary

Narineh A. Dilbaryan

Key words – Arakel Syunetsi, XIV-XV century, poem “Adam’s book”, vocabulary, new words, borrowed root, 10 nouns, 13 verbs, 30 adjectives and 2 adverbs.

Arakel Syunetsi was an Armenian religious famous figure, a poet, a grammarian, a musician, a philosopher and a theologian XIV-XV century. In this article we analyzed the new words in the poem “Adam’s book”, which is not in the dictionaries of the Old and Middle Armenian languages. This poem is about the exile of Adam and Eva from Paradise, the first sin and of Repentance. Syunetsi created 57 newly formed words. These words he created on the basis of Armenian and borrowed roots: 11 nouns, 13 verbs, 31 adjectives and 2 adverbs. Most of these words are used in the vocabulary of the modern Armenian, that is an evidence of the brilliant talent of Arakel Syunetsi.

Linguistic reflections of the eminent critic

Summary

Vardan Z. Petrosyan

N. Aghbalyan is known to the Armenian community as a famous critic, public and state figure. This article is the first attempt to identify Aghbalyan as armenologist-linguist. There are two main directions in his linguistic heritage that stand out – questions about theory and the etymology of the Armenian language. If in the first direction he is adjacent the theory of Ghapantsyan about the Armenian language being bilayer, in the matter of language-specific material, i.e. – separate theoretical excitations and lexical analysis, he is very independent and original. Especially the works of his second direction are characterized by special insight of thought and academic scientific content, which is very typical for the diversified written heritage of Aghbalyan thinker. His armenological observations would bring honor to any famous Armenian linguist.

Summary

Ruzan H. Virabyan

Stylistic significance, emotionally-expressive coloring of indeclinable parts of speech is quite limited compared to the previous group of parts of speech. However, these parts of speech have a very interesting and peculiar application in writer’s works.
The most typical use of adverbs is the designation of temporal, spatial, qualitative, quantitative, and other signs of action.
Expressive possibilities of prepositions are rather poor. They are reflected in structure of the sentence by their repetition, by means of connection with a particle and its parallel usage.
The role of conjunctions is syntactical and morphological which are expressed both by words and sentences.
Modal words that express the speaker’s attitude to the above, also define the meaning of any part of speech, giving it a distinctive color.
The interjections differ from other parts of speech by their pronunciation, by stress, interjection.
Thus, observation of the stylistic value of Norayr Adalyan’s works shows that parts of speech, such as adverb, conjunction, particles, modal words, interjection also have expressive means and affect the writer’s works with their bright colours.