about introduction sounds words structures texts references



AI Grammars
Mayan languages
Anatolia, Caucasus, Iran, Mesopotamia

about

Classical Armenian

also called Grabar, is the oldest attested form of Armenian. Written in a dedicated alphabet invented by the Christian monk Mesrop Maštoc', most early texts are translations from Greek or from Syriac (see introduction). Until the late 19th century Armenian was considered to be an Iranian dialect. It was only in 1879 that the German scholar Hübschmann was able to peel away the massive Iranian borrowings and to demonstrate that the language forms its own branch of Indo-European and is most closely related to Greek. Armenian has three sets of plosives (see sounds). Its morphology is partly fusional and partly agglutinative. The case system is rich, but gender is lost (see words). The language is SVO, albeit with a high degree of variation (see structures).

Lecturers

Ronald Kim

Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

Daniel Kölligan

University of Würzburg

introduction

Class. Armenian, intro, unit 1

XCL-INT-001

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/48959

external history of Armenian; periods: Old, Middle, Modern Armenian; sources and dates, Armenian alphabet and earlier writing

slides

Class. Armenian, intro, unit 2

XCL-INT-002

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/48958

literature, translations, historians, theologians, later authors; manuscripts; the Hellenizing school; Pre-Christian literature

slides

Class. Armenian, intro, unit 3

XCL-INT-003

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/48957

Armenian: an Iranian language? Iranian influence, position of Armenian in Indo-European, Indo-European neighbors, Near East and Caucasus

slides

sounds

Class. Armenian, sounds, unit 1

XCL-PHO-001

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/48956

segments: consonants, stops and affricates (including dialectal contrasts), consonant alternations

 slides

Class. Armenian, sounds, unit 2

XCL-PHO-002

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/48955

segments: vowels and diphthongs, vowel alternations, exceptions and rare alternations

slides

Class. Armenian, sounds, unit 3

XCL-PHO-003

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/48954

vowel alternations and stress, final stress, pronunciation, consonant clusters, schwa, syllable structure

slides

words

Class. Armenian, words, unit 1

XCL-MOR-001

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/48953

word formation: morphological devices (pre-, suffixing, reduplication, etc.), composition

slides

Class. Armenian, words, unit 2

XCL-MOR-002

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/48952

morphological type, word classes (nouns, adjectives, verbs…), case, number, inflexional classes, adjectives

slides

Class. Armenian, words, unit 3

XCL-MOR-003

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/48951

verb 1: overview, categories, two-stem system, tense and aspect, aspect and mood, voice

 slides

Class. Armenian, words, unit 4

XCL-MOR-004

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/48950

verb 2 (stems, inflection): two-stem system, present stems, strong/weak aorists, classes and paradigms

 slides

Class. Armenian, words, unit 5

XCL-MOR-005

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/48949

verb 3 (derivation, nonfinite forms): verbal derivation, productive suffixes, nonfinite forms

 slides

structures

Class. Armenian, structures, unit 1

XCL-STR-001

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/48948

basic syntactic features, complex NPs, case attraction, definiteness, adpositional structures

 slides

Class. Armenian, structures, unit 2

XCL-STR-002

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/48947

predication, grammatical/semantic roles, valency increasing and decreasing operations

 slides

Class. Armenian, structures, unit 3

XCL-STR-003

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/48946

non-verbal predication (copulas), negation, pronouns and pro-drop, verbal categories

 slides

Class. Armenian, structures, unit 4

XCL-STR-004

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/48945

modality, conditionals, possession, word order and information structure, interrogative sentences

slides

texts

Class. Armenian, texts, unit 1

XCL-TXT-001

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/48944

Movsēs Xorenac‘i

the birth of Vahagn

slides

Class. Armenian, texts, unit 2

XCL-TXT-002

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/48943

Bowzandaran Patmowt‘iwnk‘

the death of Grigoris

slides

Class. Armenian, texts, unit 3

XCL-TXT-003

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5446/48942

Bible

the birth of Jesus (Luke 2.1–3)

 slides

references

Lecturers' references

selection out of the lecturers’ references, enriched by Paulien Veenstra and project members:


general

general introductions, encyclopedias, literature, writing, history, miscellaneous


Gippert, Jost. 2005. Das Armenische - eine indogermanische Sprache im kaukasischen Areal. In Meiser, Gerhard & Hackstein, Olav (eds.), Sprachkontakt und Sprachwandel. Akten der XI. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, 17.-23. September 2000, Halle an der Saale. Wiesbaden: Reichert. 139–160.
Harutyunyan, Khachik. 2019. Brief introduction to Classical Armenian also known as Grabar. Magaghat. (Accessed 2021-06-29.)
Martirosyan, Hrach K. 2013. The place of Armenian in the Indo-European language family: The relationship with Greek and Indo-Iranian. Journal of Language Relationship/Вопросы язкового родсмба 10. 85–138.
Vidal-Goréne, Chahan & Decours-Perez, Aliénor. 2020. Languages Resources for Poorly Endowed Languages: The Case Study of Classical Armenian. Proceedings of the 12th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference. 3145–3152.


grammar

grammars, treatments of major grammatical domains


Djahukian, Geworg B. [Джаукян, Г. Б.]. 1982. Сравнимельная грамматика армянского языка [Comparative Grammar of Armenia]. Ереван: Издательство АН Армянской ССР.
Godel, Robert. 1975. An Introduction to the study of Classical Armenian. Wiesbaden; Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag.
Jensen, Hans (1959). Altarmenische Grammatik. Wiesbaden: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag.
Jungmann, Paul & Weitenberg, Joseph. J. 1993. A Reverse Analytical Dictionary of Classical Armenian (Trends in Linguistic Documentation 9). Berlin: Mounton de Gruyter.
Meillet, Antione. 1903. Esquisse d'une grammaire comparée de l'arménien classique. Vienna: Imprimerie des PP. Mékhitharistes.


lexicon

dictionaries, headword search tools, further sources of information about the lexicon


Acharian, Hrachia. 1971. Հայերեն արմատական բառարան [Dictionary of Armenian Root Words]. 4 Vols. Yerevan: Yerevan State University.
Djahukian, Guevorg. 2010. Հայերեն ստուգաբանական բառարան [Armenian Etymological Dictionary]. Yerevan: International Linguistic Academy.
Jensen, Hans (ed.). 1964. Altarmenische Chrestomathie, mit einem Glossar (Indogermanische Bibliothek, Vol. 1). Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitaetsverlag.
Martirosyan, Hrach K. 2010. Etymological dictionary of the Armenian inherited lexicon. Leiden: Brill.
Vidal-Goréne, Chahan. Enriched Dictionaries of Classical and Modern Armenian. Calfa. (Accessed 2021-06-29.)


text

text collections, corpora, treebanks


Garsoian, Nina G. 1989. The Epic Histories Attributed to Pawstos Buzand (Buzandaran Patmut'iwnk) (Harvard Armenian Texts and Studies 8). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Gippert, Jost & Martinez, Javier & Korn, Agnes. TITUS TEXTUS (Text Database). TITUS: Thesaurus Indogermanischer Text- und Sprachmaterialien. (Accessed 2021-06-29.)
Greenwood, Timothy. 2004. A corpus of Early Medieval Armenian inscriptions. Dumbartion Oaks Papers 58, 27-91.
Jensen, Hans (ed.). 1964. Altarmenische Chrestomathie, mit einem Glossar (Indogermanische Bibliothek, Vol. 1). Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitaetsverlag.

See also Classical Armenian Texts in the PROIEL Treebank (ed. by Dag T. T. Haug and Marius L. Jøhndal).


teaching material

coursebooks, exercises, materials or introductions supporting teaching


Krause, Todd B. & Slocum, Jonathan. 2004. Early Indo-European Online: Classical Armenian Online. University of Texas: Linguistics Research Centre. (Accessed 2021-06-29.)
Thomson, Robert W. 1989. An Introduction to Classical Armenian. Caravan Books.