Category Archives: LINGUISTICS

Summary

Davit S. Gyurjinyan

Key words – the semantic group “foreign Armenian / Diasporan Armenian”, the word-formation model “country name+ հայ “Armenian”, պարսկահայ “Armenian living in Persia”, իրանահայ “Armenian, living in Iran”, Armenian lexicography.

The words that were created as a result of historical events, generating the concept of “Armenian living in Persia (in Iran)”, are being studied in this article. These are lexical units of Modern Armenian language, formed according to the following models: “country name+ հայ “Armenian” (պարսկահայ “Armenian, living in Persia”, իրանահայ “Armenian, living in Iran”), “name of a city populated by Armenians+հայ” (թեհրանահայ “Armenian living in Tehran”, թավրիզահայ “Armenian living in Tabriz”), “name of a province populated by Armenians+հայ” (փերիահայ “Armenian living in Peria Province”, սալմաստահայ “Armenian living in Salmas”).

The historical foundations of word formation, the structural and semantic features of these words, their morphological values, the spheres and frequency of usage, the lexical semantic links to the analogous words are revealed.

Special attention is paid to the lexicographical processing of the units of the studied group of words in monolingual and translation dictionaries of the Armenian language.

Summary

Bagrat S. Nersisyan, Karine Zh. Sahakyan

Key words – syntagma, paradigm, abstract grammatical meaning, morpheme, grammatical synonymy, homonymy, absoluteness, accusativity, possessiveness, being dative, initiality, accompanying.

In this article, we attempt to single out seven cases in the literary Eastern Armenian language on the basis of the abstracted grammatical meanings of the cases, which are expressed by the corresponding morphemes. We believe that the paradigm and the syntagma need to be compared and not opposed, as a result of which it turns out that the case wordform is not only a morphological but also a syntactic category.

In our opinion, the accusative is a separate, independent case, since it cannot be characterized by the grammatical meaning of unlimitedness, absoluteness, which are inherent only in the nominative case. The accusative case of inanimate objects depends on the semantics of the transitive verb and is therefore characterized by accusativity. Nominative and accusative cases of the inanimate objects are grammatical homonyms.

The genitive and the dative are also independent cases: the genitive is characterized by being possessive, and the dative – by being dative. These are incompatible grammatical meanings. Therefore, despite the fact that these cases are formed by the same morphemes, they are not polysemantic wordforms, but homonymous different wordforms. Using the abstracted grammatical meanings inherent in the corresponding case forms put forward by E. Aghayan and G. Jahukyan, we come to the conclusion that each case is characterized by its inherent grammatical meaning. These are: nominative – unlimitedness, absoluteness, accusative – being accusative, genitive – possessiveness, dative – being dative, initial case – being initial, instrumental case – accompanying, local case – being at.

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.