Classical Armenian Research Articles

The Pedagogical Tipiṭaka: OER & the Three Baskets of Ancient Language Instruction

Ancient languages present a unique teaching challenge: for spoken languages, common pedagogy recommends engaging students via dialogue; for ancient languages, no speakers survive with whom to practise. This paper highlights how the Linguistics Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin has approached this challenge by creating the Early Indo-European OnLine (EIEOL) collection, an online educational resource whose lesson series present early languages directly through original, unsimplified ancient texts. Currently accessed by over 20,000 users per month, EIEOL spans 18 languages, from Greek and Latin to Old Church Slavonic, Sanskrit, and other important languages of ancient Asia such as Hittite, Classical Armenian, Avestan, and Tocharian. Each series presents extensively annotated excerpts of original texts in the target language, with accompanying modules explaining grammar and context. The text-centred approach affords learners a direct path to understanding that suits a variety of experience levels and minimises the conceptual grammatical apparatus necessary to begin interpreting original texts. This format fosters theoretical flexibility, adaptable to different approaches and grammatical descriptions of ancient languages. It is also useful for languages whose grammatical structures have shifted dramatically over their history, like Tocharian, or remain hotly debated or under-described by experts. Finally, it facilitates applications to typologically diverse languages and language families, with early Mesoamerican, Semitic, and Sino-Tibetan language series already under development. The EIEOL infrastructure therefore provides a robust platform for free, text-centred, self-paced introductions to ancient languages from a variety of language families.

Contextualising Ancient Language Teaching. The Case of Classical Armenian

Contextualising Ancient Language Teaching. The Case of Classical Armenian

The Life of Mashtots‘ by His Disciple Koriwn: Translated from the Classical Armenian with Introduction and Commentary by Abraham Terian (review)

The Life of Mashtots‘ by His Disciple Koriwn: Translated from the Classical Armenian with Introduction and Commentary by Abraham Terian (review)

Die Präfixaufnahme von z= im Altarmenischen

The phenomenon of Suffixaufnahme refers to a type of morphosyntactic agreement whereby a dependent noun phrase shows case agreement with its head in addition to its functional case marking. The phenomenon is best known from Old Georgian and Hurro-Urartian, but also occurs elsewhere (Caucasus, ancient Mesopotamia, Australia), mainly in agglutinative languages. Classical Armenian shows a very similar type of agreement: dependents of heads in the accusative marked by the direct object proclitic z= may also receive the same proclitic marking regardless of their functional case. This paper explores two dimensions of this agreement phenomenon in Classical Armenian: a classification of its usage in fifth-century texts; and an attempt at explaining its likely origin outside of Armenian.

Die Präfixaufnahme von z= im Altarmenischen

The phenomenon of Suffixaufnahme refers to a type of morphosyntactic agreement whereby a dependent noun phrase shows case agreement with its head in addition to its functional case marking. The phenomenon is best known from Old Georgian and Hurro-Urartian, but also occurs elsewhere (Caucasus, ancient Mesopotamia, Australia), mainly in agglutinative languages. Classical Armenian shows a very similar type of agreement: dependents of heads in the accusative marked by the direct object proclitic z= may also receive the same proclitic marking regardless of their functional case. This paper explores two dimensions of this agreement phenomenon in Classical Armenian: a classification of its usage in fifth-century texts; and an attempt at explaining its likely origin outside of Armenian.

On the markedness of tense-aspect stems in Classical Armenian

Abstract The paper offers a synchronic and diachronic account of markedness of the oppositional tense-aspect stems in Classical Armenian. The synchronic part explores the correspondence between markedness and productivity of verb classes as attested in the Armenian Bible translation, as well as the correspondence between markedness and token frequency of a selection of fifty most frequent verbs in the same text. The default pattern, characterized by an unmarked present and marked aorist stems, constitutes some two-thirds of the entire dataset but is less common in the most frequent verbs. By contrast, the two patterns with the unmarked aorist are significantly better represented and the token frequency of their aorist stems is typically higher for such verbs. This evidence is discussed in the context of a typological generalization predicting the lower markedness of more frequently used forms. An outlook on the historical grammar of Classical Armenian suggests that the attested system reflects a transition from aspect- to tense-oriented marking of stems.

Armenian (Yerevan Eastern Armenian and Beirut Western Armenian)

Armenian (or , /hɑjeˈɾen/, ISO 639-1 hy) comprises an independent branch of the Indo-European language family.1 Its earliest attested ancestor is Classical Armenian in the fifth century CE (see Godel 1975; Thomson 1989; DeLisi 2015; Macak 2016). Modern Armenian is classified into two dialect families: Eastern Armenian (ISO 639-3 hye) and Western Armenian (ISO 639-3 hyw). Eastern Armenian is spoken in modern-day Armenia, and large speaker communities also exist in Georgia, Russia and Iran (shown in Figure 1). Western Armenian was historically spoken in the Ottoman Empire, but now includes varieties spoken throughout the Armenian diaspora in the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas (Donabédian 2018). There are substantial Western Armenian speaker communities in Turkey (Istanbul), Lebanon (Beirut), Syria (Aleppo, Damascus), California (Fresno, Los Angeles County), France (Marseilles), Australia (Sydney) and Argentina (Buenos Aires). There are also recent diaspora communities of Eastern Armenian speakers in California (Karapetian 2014), as well as communities of Western Armenian speakers in Armenia who escaped the Armenian genocide during World War I, who repatriated after World War II, or who fled the ongoing Syrian civil war. UNESCO lists Western Armenian as an endangered language in Turkey, and there are significant language promotion efforts in many diaspora communities that are intended to combat declining use by speaker generations born in the Americas and Europe (Al-Bataineh 2015; Chahinian & Bakalian 2016).

Vocative strategies and accent in Armenian: synchrony and diachrony

Abstract The vocative, the case of direct address, is a form used for calling out and attracting or maintaining the addressee’s attention. It is not represented in Classical Armenian as an independent case category (§ 1b). At different stages of Armenian the vocative is often characterized by initial accentuation, which is comparable to other Indo-European traditions (§ 2). Accented vocative particles are used both in Classical Armenian and dialects (§ 3). Mostly in dialects, several words, particularly kinship terms and anthroponyms, take endings, one or a few of which may be regarded as relics of older vocative case endings (§ 4). In the Armenian dialects of Syria, one finds a few kinship terms the vocatives of which are compounds with ayr ‘man’ or tikin ‘mistress, lady’ (§ 5)

Causatives in Classical Armenian

Abstract This paper presents the results of a study of the five causative formations of Classical Armenian. It focuses on the correspondence between the morphosyntactic complexity of causatives and the autonomy of the causee, which is specified based on the semantic type of the noncausal base verb. The correspondence proves to be incomplete as witnessed by areas of overlap in the lexical distribution of base verbs. While the competing lexical and synthetic causatives reflect the patientive and non-patientive readings of the first argument of the noncausal verb, respectively, the competing synthetic and analytic causatives rather express the contrast in the degree of affectedness of the causee, which does not fully depend on the semantic properties of the noncausal predicate. The semantic types of causation better correlate with morphosyntactic complexity than with segmental length in Classical Armenian.

Constructions clivées en arménien moderne

As in French or English, cleft constructions in Modern Armenian are biclausal constructions with a matrix clause and a relative-like clause, with an identificational clause as a matrix clause headed by a copula (in present or past), while in the relative-like clause introduced by the main subordinator, the relativised argument is coindexed with the argument of the copula. Typologically, cleft constructions are considered typical of languages with rigid word order; however, they are common in Modern Armenian, a language with flexible word order. It is argued that the intensity of focalisation depends on the strategy used, with simple prosody marking associated with the lowest level of intensity, and preverbal position and clefts associated with intermediate and high-intensity focalisation respectively. The existence of cleft-like constructions in Classical Armenian and both Modern Armenian standards is argued to be evidence of diachronic continuity and a possible grammaticalization path from cleft constructions to the auxiliary movement focus strategy.

The mixed aorist subjunctive in Classical Armenian

Abstract The paper is dedicated to the pattern of voice marking found in the aorist subjunctive of Classical Armenian that combines the mediopassive ending of the 1st person singular with active and labile endings in the remaining forms of the paradigm. The pattern forms a stable inflectional type in verbs with the i-stem aorist but is also marginally attested in other verbal classes. The goal of the present paper is to describe the distribution of the mixed subjunctive in the early Classical Armenian texts and clarify its origin.

Anticausatives in Classical Armenian

Abstract The present study contributes to the description of the coding of anticausatives and causative-anticausative alternation in Classical Armenian based on conventional typologically-oriented questionnaires and a dataset of verbs attested in the Armenian translation of the Bible. The synchronic evidence is then analyzed from a diachronic perspective with an outlook on modern varieties of Armenian and the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction. It is argued that discriminating between the derivational and inflectional tiers allows for a better explanation of the morphological links between the patterns used to code causative-anticausative alternation in verbs of different semantic types. According to preliminary quantitative estimations, the overall valency orientation of Classical Armenian is dominated by a nondirected equipollent coding strategy. Altogether, when coded by transitivizing pairs, causative-anticausative alternation shows preference for noncausal verbs of the a-conjugation, the paradigm of which typically combines equipollent perfective forms with labile imperfective ones. An improved descriptive model enables a better cross-linguistic alignment of coding patterns as illustrated by comparing Classical Armenian to other cognate languages. Classical Armenian provides additional evidence on the typologically common split in the coding of causative-anticausative pairs. Whereas the transitivizing and equipollent (and marginally suppletive) patterns are diachronically stable within the prehistory of Armenian, the labile strategy constitutes a major innovation typical for the imperfective part of the verbal paradigm.

The Northern kʻustak administrative units of the Sasanian Iran in 6th century CE

In the 6th century CE, the Sasanian empire was divided into four administrative units already during the second reign of Kavad I, however, it was during the time of Khosrov Anushirvan that these regions were transformed into the military-administrative units – kʻustaks, where the administrative power belonged to the padgospan and the military to the spahbed. The northern kʻustak or kʻust-i-Kapkoh was included the marzpanates: Armenia (divided into the three military-administrative units – Tanutirakan gund, Vaspurakan gund, Syunikʻ), Georgia, Albania and the šahrs: Adharbādhakān, Gīlān, Dlmunkʻ, Zanjān, Ghazvīn, Ṭabaristān and Ray. This paper reviews the administrative of the northern kʻustak based on the Classical Armenian, Arabic and Persian primary sources.

Medz Yeghern, the Silenced Name: Language, Politics, and the Armenian Genocide

This study overviews some of the issues surrounding the use, abuse, and misuse of Medz Yeghern, the most common proper name for the genocide of the Armenian, tracing the genealogy of the term yeghern and the evolution of its primary meaning from “evil” to “(heinous) crime,” “massacre,” and “genocide” over the past century and half. An erudite conflation of the Classical Armenian homophone words yeghern (եղեռն, “evil, crime”) and yegher (եղեր, “lamentation”) in the nineteenth century resulted in the secondary meaning “tragedy, calamity, catastrophe.” It also marked the conflation of cause and consequence in a single word, despite the use of yeghern accompanied by active verbs only, which indicates cause. The use of Medz Yeghern, therefore, point out to the central role of the perpetrator; the word yeghern has been used to translate “cultural genocide” and “genocide recognition” as synonym to tseghasbanutiun (ցեղասպանութիւն). This ambiguity was exploited during the first two decades of the current century, especially in Turkey and the United States. Interpretive denial adopted the name Medz Yeghern to avoid the use of “genocide,” choosing the meanings “Great Catastrophe” and “Great Calamity” and turning the cause into consequence. The article offers a reconsideration of the semantic and political issues behind the use of Medz Yeghern and suggests, on the basis of linguistic evidence, that the literal translation of the proper name, according to context and time of use, should be “Great (Heinous) Crime” or “Great Genocide.”

Adversative Conjunction and Neighboring Discourse Features in Old Church Slavic (Codex Marianus), with Comparative Notes on the Same Phenomena in Greek, Gothic and Classical Armenian*

AbstractThe system of adversative conjunction in the Old Church Slavic Gospels is characterized by two pure adversatives, nŭ and the much less frequent obače, together with two other forms, a and že, which are employed with equal or greater frequency in non‐adversative conjunctive roles. The relationship between nŭ and a is complex. The role of the former is primarily corrective following a negated constituent, while the latter signals a change of topic. The relationship of a and že is primarily one of scope, with the latter serving as the outermost discourse articulator of the language. The purpose of this article is to determine explicitly and in detail the relationships among nŭ, a, and že and to state the syntactic and discourse conditions under which each occurs. However, because the last two appear in non‐adversative value, they infringe upon the domain of i, the basic ‘and’‐word of Old Church Slavic, necessitating also, an analysis of this latter item, which signals a neighbouring discourse category. The final adversative is tŭk(ŭ) mo, which stands on the borderline between an adverb and a conjunction and is best considered a polarity item with both delimitative and liminal semantics.

Cleft constructions and focus strategies in Modern Armenian

Abstract Cleft constructions are one of the possible focus strategies available in Modern Armenian alongside prosody and specific syntactic constructions. Cleft constructions in Modern Armenian are biclausal constructions with a matrix clause and a relative-like clause, with an identificational clause as a matrix clause headed by a copula (in present or past), while in the relative-like clause introduced by the main subordinator, the relativized argument is coindexed with the argument of the copula. Though typologically cleft constructions are considered typical of languages with rigid word order, they are common in Modern Armenian, a language with flexible word order. It is argued that the intensity of focalization depends on the strategy used, with simple prosody marking associated with the lowest level of intensity, and preverbal position and clefts associated with intermediate and high-intensity focalization respectively. The corpus-based data show an unequal distribution of clefted pronouns as predicate clefts (impersonal with no agreement) and subject clefts (copular verb coindexed with personal pronouns as a subject) depending on the person and the polarity. The existence of cleft-like constructions in Classical Armenian and both Modern Armenian standards is argued to be evidence of diachronic continuity and a possible grammaticalization path from cleft constructions to the auxiliary movement focus strategy.

Fusional and agglutinative features in declension system in the Russian and Armenian languages (a diachronic aspect)

The subject of this research is the typological characteristics of declension system in the Russian and Armenian languages and their diachronic changes. The author compares the modern Armenian and Grabar (classical Armenian) language, as well as Old East Slavic and modern Russian language. The goal of this article is to determine typological peculiarities of grammatical case systems of the Russian and Armenian languages in their current state, taking into account the vectors of evolutionary development of these systems in the history of the two languages. Research methodology leans on the traditional concepts of morphological typology and systemic analysis of language types proposed by G. P. Melnikov. It is established that unlike the Russian language, the Armenian declension system contains certain agglutinative and analytical features. Emphasis is placed on the detailed analysis of these phenomena and explanation of their consistent nature. The acquired results are valuable for typological description of the Russian and Armenian languages, as well as for teaching these languages to non-native speakers. The presented materials broaden scientific representations on multifacetedness of development of fusional declension on the example of two quite different languages within the same language family.

Digitalization and Enrichment of the Նոր Բառգիրք Հայկազեան Լեզուի: Work in Progress for Armenian Lexicography

Abstract The Nor Baṙgirk‘ Haykazean Lezui (1836–1837) is an unilingual dictionary of Classical Armenian, considered as the work of reference in the field of Armenian lexicography. In this paper, we introduce an ongoing project of digitization and enhancement of this work, in order to build a comprehensive and multilingual database for Classical Armenian. Our paper is focused on the methodology applied to update the content and the different process of “Character Recognition”, “Text Analysis” and the crowdsourcing of works. We define our work and outline the challenges we had to overcome to continue the work of erudition in Armenian lexicography.

The Relevance of Typology for Pattern Replication

Structuralists and generativists have insisted for a long time that the elements and structures one language could borrow from another are constrained by typological compatibility, naturalness, and other factors (cf. Thomason and Kaufman 1988: 13–34). Such constraints are still thought to apply to structural interference, or pattern replication in the terms of Matras and Sakel (2007), and the often concomitant contact-induced grammaticalisation of non-native structures. This paper suggests that a priori there are no typological constraints against pattern replication in general. It is proposed that typological differences between model and replica pattern are only of relevance during the grammaticalisation and maintenance of such patterns in the replica language; in other words, typological constraints do not apply at the stage of pattern replication. It will be argued that typology, in the form of system pressure, interacts with pattern frequency and socio-historical factors, which together determine retention, adaptation, or loss of a replicated pattern. This argument is illustrated on the basis of three short studies of partial alignment change in Old Aramaic, Classical Armenian, and North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic, all of which have been in contact with Iranian languages for extended periods. In each case, Iranian ergative alignment patterns have been replicated, adapted, grammaticalised to varying degrees, and finally ousted in favour of nominative-accusative alignment. The loss of the replica pattern in each case is shown to be dependent on both typology, extent of bilingualism, and pattern frequency.

Minas Bżyszkian i jego relacja o Ormianach Lwowa

Minas Bzhyshkyan and His Report on Armenians in LwówMinas Bzhyshkyan, an armenologist, philologist, pedagogue, historian, ethnographer, and musicologist was a member of the Armenian Catholic Mechitarists order. He travelled widely and took scrupulous notes of his journeys, which aided writing his monograph A Journey to Poland and other countries where exiles from Ani live. His work, crucial for research on Armenians in old Poland, was originally published in 1830 in Venice. It was written in classical Armenian, an ancient language of a highly ornate quality. The book is a valuable source of information on geography, architecture, and epigraphy of peoples living on territories travelled by Bzhyshkyan, as well as on the past and present of the Armenian diasporas in the Central Europe and the Black Sea Basin countries. The author presents data on the Armenian community of Lwów and evaluates it against information from other sources.