From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Language of the second period in written Armenian
Middle Armenian
(
Armenian
:
????? ??????? or ???????? ???????
), also called
Cilician Armenian
(although this may be confused to refer to modern dialects),
[1]
corresponds to the second period of
Armenian
which was spoken and written in between the 12th and 18th centuries. It comes after
Grabar
(Classical Armenian) and before
Ashkharhabar
(Modern Armenian).
[2]
Classical Armenian was predominantly an inflecting and synthetic language, but in Middle Armenian, during the period of Modern Armenian influence, agglutinative and analytical forms influenced the language.
[3]
In this respect, Middle Armenian is a transition stage from Old Armenian to Modern Armenian (Ashkharhabar).
[4]
Middle Armenian is notable for being the first written form of Armenian to display Western-type voicing qualities and to have introduced the letters ? and ?, which was based on the Greek letters "o" and "φ".
Additions
[
edit
]
The letter ?, based on the Greek letter o, was added during this period. It represents the IPA sound
/?/
(
open-mid back rounded vowel
). Although this is a native phoneme in Armenian, the sound that would usually represent it, ?, was used only in medial and final positions. Initially, ? represents
/v?/
. Therefore, this letter was invented to only be used in initial positions to represent the sound /?/ itself. It is still used today in the
Armenian alphabet
.
The letter ?, based on the Greek letter φ, was added during this period. It represents the IPA sound
/f/
(
voiceless labiodental fricative
), which is
not a native phoneme in Armenian.
However, it was prevalent in borrowed words, making it necessary to use a letter to write it. It is still used today in the
Armenian alphabet
.
[5]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Karst, Josef (1901).
Historische Grammatik des Kilikisch-Armenischen
(in German). E.J. Trubner.
- ^
Melkonian, Zareh (1990).
????????? ????????????? - ???? ??????? ?????? (????? ?? ?????????? ?????????)
(in Armenian) (Fourth ed.).
Los Angeles
. p. 137.
{{
cite book
}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link
)
- ^
History of the Armenian Language in the Pre-Written Period, Yerevan, 1987.
- ^
H. Acharian, History of the Armenian Language, parts I-II,
- ^
Dum-Tragut, Jasmine (2009).
Armenian: Modern Eastern Armenian
. John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 18.
ISBN
9789027238146
. Retrieved
19 May
2021
.
External links
[
edit
]
