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Problems of Armenian Phonology III

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Werner Winter
Werner Winter*
Affiliation:
University of Texas
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Extract

This is a continuation of two articles published several years ago in Language (30.197–201 [1954]; 31.4–8 [1955]). In these articles I was concerned above all with a reinterpretation of the interrelationship of the various Armenian reflexes of PIE p t k kw. My conclusions were that it was best to assume that the first result of the Proto-Armenian sound shift of Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops was a set of voiceless spirants, and that some allophones of these spirants later merged with other phonemes, while the principal allophones were affected by a further shift, as a result of which they became voiceless aspirated stops. I interpreted Greek evidence as indicating a rather late date for this second shift (about the beginning of the seventh century a.d.). This interpretation has been challenged by Hans Jensen in an article in Aus der byzantinistischen Arbeit der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik I (1957), and I now deem it possible that the date of the second shift has to be set considerably earlier than I had assumed. On the other hand, I do not find it necessary to revise my basic theory concerning the results of the first or Proto-Armenian sound shift ; only the postulation of Proto-Armenian spirants provides us with a consistent explanation of the seemingly erratic distribution of reflexes of Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 38 , Issue 3-Part1: July-September , September 1962, pp. 254 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © 1962 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 Über eine Methode zum Nachweis struktureller Relevanz von Oppositionen distinktiver Merkmale, Supplement to Phonetica 4.28–44 (Symposion Trubetzkoy, 1959). Note in particular 42–3.

2 See the unpublished dissertation by M. A. Jazayery, English loanwords in Persian: A study in language and culture, especially 171–2 (University of Texas, 1958).

2a Though probably rather late in origin, the cluster-reduction phenomena in Ossetic in particular show great resemblance to those found in Armenian.

3 Cf. H. Jensen, Altarmenische Grammatik 14–15 (Heidelberg, 1959), and A. Meillet, Esquisse d'une grammaire comparée de l'arménien classique 2 52–4 (Vienne, 1936); the latter reference is important also for some general remarks on the treatment of clusters in Armenian.

4 To avoid clumsiness in the argument to be presented, the examples are drawn, with very few exceptions, from H. Hübschmann, Armenische Grammatik I (Strassburg, 1897) and from Meillet's book listed in fn. 3, but no specific reference is given except in special cases. Further material is taken from my own articles mentioned in the introductory section.

5 The question of dialect mixture in Old Armenian, discussed several years ago in a paper read to the American Oriental Society, will be treated at length in a later article.

6 Cf. M. Mayrhofer, Kurzgefasstes etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindischen 2.424–5 (Heidelberg, 1960), for a recent discussion. In contrast to Mayrhofer, I consider it likely that Arm. bazum is a native word and not a borrowing from Iranian (note the parallel of lezu ‘tongue‘).

7 Further evidence for epenthetic *u > ǝ before -u- of the next syllable can be supplied for environments other than those under discussion here. Thus, an -a- develops at the boundary between simple stem and -ne- or -na- suffix; before -nu-, however, no -a- intervenes, and it seems necessary to explain the ǝ that occurs instead as a continuation of *u. For data cf. Jensen 108–10. Epenthetic u may have been preserved in noun forms in -umn which occur side by side with nouns in -mn derived from stems that end in -r (sermn ‘seed’; note rule [A]) ; -mn can well represent *-mun from PIE -mōn, so that the Armenian abstract nouns would pattern with Lat. sermō rather than with Lat. nōmen. For material cf. Jensen 44; for a discussion, Meillet 80–81.

8 -iws- cannot represent *-ewkw- since that would have yielded -oys-; cf. loys ‘light’ and the remarks in §4.4. and §§4.5–4.5.1.