Issues in the Study of Armenian Dialects: The Case of the Artsakh-Syunik Region

Throughout its 5,000–6,000 years of development, Armenian has always exhibited dialectal diversity—from the Indo-European period, when it was one of the proto-language dialects (positioned near the Indo-Iranian and Greek branches), through its pre-literary and literary stages, and finally to the modern dialects, which number over 50, though most are no longer extant. The lecture will begin with a brief overview of the phonetic (reflexes of the consonantal system), morphological (formation of the indicative mood), and multi-feature classifications of Armenian dialects, followed by an overview of the methods of isoglosses and shared innovations. Early isoglosses reveal a certain proximity between the southeastern periphery (Artsakh-Syunik-Agulis) and the Van-Urmia region, in contrast to central and western areas. In this context, the complex and multilayered issue of defining dialectal boundaries will also be addressed. The following sections will be devoted to the remarkable linguistic and cultural archaisms of the Artsakh-Syunik region. These dialects preserve Classical Armenian (Grabar) features that have been lost in neighboring dialects, while also presenting forms missing from Grabar or even more archaic than the Grabar forms. Thus, they significantly contribute to reconstructing a comprehensive picture of Armenian linguistic and cultural history. The final section will examine the continuous presence of the Armenian language in the Artsakh-Syunik region based on toponymic evidence. The lecture will be delivered by linguist Hrach Martirosyan, a specialist in Armenian studies and comparative linguistics (PhD, Leiden University). He is the author of more than 50 academic articles and several influential monographs. He has lectured at leading universities worldwide, including Oxford, Paris, Pavia, Milan, Moscow, Hokkaido, Berlin, Würzburg, and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He is currently the head of the project “The Armenian Language, Land, and Culture in the Context of the Armenian Highland.”