Dissertation

Studies in Armenian Etymology with Special Emphasis on Dialects and Culture

This dissertation provides an up to date description of the Indo European lexical stock of Armenian (ca. 500 entries) with systematic inclusion of unused data that are found in Armenian dialects.

Author: Hrach Martirosyan
Date: 13 February 2008
Links: Full text in Leiden University Repository

As an Indo European language, Armenian has been the subject of etymological research for over a hundred years. There are many valuable systematic handbooks, studies and surveys on comparative Armenian linguistics. Almost all of these works, with the exception of Acharyan's fundamental studies and Jahukyan 1972 and 1987, mostly concentrate on Classical Armenian and touch the dialects only sporadically.

This research incorporates the lexical, phonetic, and morphological material in the Armenian dialects into the etymological treatment of the Indo European lexicon. In this respect it is completely new. Non literary data taken from Armenian dialects have largely remained outside of the scope of Indo European etymological considerations.

This research uses the material that is available in extant systematic descriptions and systematically incorporates data that are provided in Acharyan's etymological dictionary (HAB). Furthermore, there is a considerable number of dialectal words in folklore texts and anthropological descriptions, that mostly, being written in Armenian, remain unavailable or inaccessible to the scholars outside Armenia. I have built up expertise on the linguistic evaluation of these materials. This dissertation extensively includes such ethnographic and cultural data.