User talk:Ocg~enwiki

Here we will provide a summary of what we have learnt about Eastern Armenian in the first part of the course in the fall term of 2005, and what we plan to further investigate in the second part in the spring term of 2006.

Vowel inventory

 * We ascertained the phonemic status of the schwa, e.g. in the definite suffix, mətʼnel 'enter' and matʼnel 'betray'


 * The absence of diphthongs is noteworthy. (Note: examples like ei 'I was' are just two consectutive monophthongs belonging to different syllables.)


 * Also no distinctive vowel length. (Note: In cases such as vozniin 'to the hedgehog' it can be pronounced either as a phonetically long vowel or with hiatus.)

Consonant inventory

 * We found out that there are some patterns of neutralisations. While a lot of it is still unclear,  it can tentatively be noted (which is all based on statements by our consultant) that the rhotics ɺ and r, on the one hand, and the unaspirated voiceless stops and the aspirated voiceless stops, on the other hand, seem to be neutralised before stops. So in a pair such as martʰ 'man' and maɺtʼ 'March', the contrast seems to be neutralised.

Stress
The stress rule in Eastern Armenian is very regular and stable. The stress usually falls on the last syllable, unless it is a schwa, which will push it to the first syllable. So in mekʰena 'car' and mekʼenajum 'in the car', the stress falls on the last syllable irrespective of morphological structure, while in giɺkʼə 'the book' the stress falls on the first syllable.

Syntax / Typology
Armenian is an Indo-European language with a rich inflectional system that can be characterized with the following word-order correlates


 * SVO (most unmarked)
 * Poss + N
 * Adj + N
 * Det + N
 * Num + N
 * N + RelCl
 * N + Postposition
 * Adv + V
 * Modifier + Adjective

Verbs
We hypothesize a root to which one of three different stem-suffixes can attach generating verb forms we categorized in the classes. To these verb forms suffixes attach forming the ....

Adjectives
All gradable adjectives without exception (according to our consultant) form the comparative with the preposition amena and the superlative with the prefix aveli-. We assume that he bases the preposition vs. prefix distinction mainly on orthographic conventions (i.e. comparative written as two words and the superlative as one). One way to test this would be listening for stress differences, as a preposition would very likely attract heavier stress than a prefix.

Adverbs
To express adverbial meaning, Armenian follows two strategies. It is possible to suffix the adjective with -oɺen (heʃtʼ 'easy' > heʃtʼ 'easily') or (depending on semantic or pragmatic factors unknown so far) to employ a periphrastic construction 'with N' can be employed: heʃtʼuʦʰjampʰ 'easily, [lit.] with ease'.

Adjectives used in a nominal sense @#@

Determiners, Demonstratives, Numerals

 * There are proximal and distal demonstratives, ajs 'this' and ajtʰ 'that'. Plural forms?
 * As far as numerals are concerned, there are cardinal and ordinal numerals which precede the noun. With cardinal numbers, the modified noun usually appears in the singular form, as in hing martʰ 'five men'.
 * Possessives: there are two ways to mark possession, synthetic and analytic. Until now, we only have evidence for the first and second person singular. E.g. im zerkʰə/zerkʰəs 'my hand', kʰo tʼunə/tʼunətʼ 'your house'.

Syntax
Armenian is a relatively free word-order head-marking Nominative-Accusative language.

Phonology
While the primary stress rule (final stress unless final-syllable schwa pushes it to the penultimate syllable) is a very robust one, secondary stress is more difficult to perceive and (due to the lack of more extensive vocabulary) it was difficult to test.

The /ɺ/~/r/, aspirated-unaspirated, voiced-voiceless neutralization processes before stops and word finally could be investigated either with measurements, or perceptual tests involving natural or (re-)synthesized tokens. /ɺ/~/r/: @#@ aspirated-unaspirated: /ʃapʰatʼ/ + /i/ > [ʃapʼ|pʰtʼi] voiced-voiceless: [ajtʼ] ~ [ajd]

While there seems to be a general consensus in the class that Armenian has both phonemic schwa (e.g. ənkʼeɺ), it is also involved in vowel epenthesis, the exact rules of which needs further testing.

The systematic analysis of vowel reduction [tʼuχtʼ] [i] > [tʼəχtʼi] [mukʰ] [i] > [məkʰi]

and the proposed "no three open syllables" rule [gəluχ] + [i] > [gləχi] [ʃapʰatʼ] + [i] > [ʃapʼ|pʰtʼi]

should be further checked.

Morphology

 * The analysis of the stems and the thematic vowels needs to be subjected to further scrutiny.


 * Modal verbs: until now we have only found kaɺoʁanal 'be able', which uses two stems in the present tense, kaɺoʁanum and kaɺoʁ. The latter also seems to be an adjective with the meaning of 'able'. We would need to understand more about this, and also find other modal verbs in Armenian. One way to do this is to ask for the translation equivalents of deontic modal verbs in English, such as 'must' or 'may/can' (permission rather than ability). Later on, we could extend this to epistemically used modal verbs. Of course, these are not one-to-one correspondences, e.g. where English uses the modal verb 'should', Armenian seems to use the present subjunctive.


 * Periphrastic tenses: they are formed with a nonfinite participle and a finite form of the auxiliary linel. While with tenses so far, we only find present and past forms of that auxiliary, we should investigate, if future forms of that can be used as well? E.g., along with geɺum em 'I'm writing', geɺum ei 'I was writing', could there be something like geɺum kʼəlinem 'I will be writing'.


 * Conjugation classes: in addition to the five classes discovered so far, there was a verb, kʼoɺel 'disappear', which formed its preterite form kʼoɺa, unlike any other verb with that ending (e.g. beɺel, beɺeʦʰi 'bring, brought'). We would have to determine if this is a mistake, an irregular verb or another conjugation class overlooked so far.


 * Participles: the participles used for forming the periphrastic tenses seem to be highly productive. They do not seem to be used outside of this context. There are other deverbal forms that are used attributively and predicatively, however. A form with more 'agentive meaning' in -oʁ (ʦʼiʦʼaʁoʁ 'laughing') and a more 'patientive meaning' in -aʦʼ (nəstʼaʦʼ 'sitting' and imaʦʰaʦʼ 'known'). We would need to find out how productive these are (which is ultimately tied to the question if these forms are derivational or inflectional) and if there are others. For one, it seems so far that there are no future participles in this context.


 * Voice: the question of productivity pertains to the voice suffixes as well. The passive/reflexive suffix -vel and the causative suffix -ʦʰnel cannot be attached to all verbs. The question here would be again, if these gaps are systematic or not, which could be another indicator if these forms are derivational or inflectional.

Syntax
With the little syntactic elicitation done, scope issues such as the scope of negation and the scope of pronoun binding have not been dealt with so far. Issues treated but without conclusive result like negative concord, relative clauses, the middle contruction (reflexive and passive), causatives are planned to be investigated further. Word order restrictions in embedded causes, imperatives and questions are scheduled to be examined too.


 * scope of negation
 * scope of pronoun binding
 * relative clauses
 * middle constructions (passive / reflexive)
 * causatives, both synthetic (using the suffix -ʦʰnel) and analytic (using darʦʰnel 'make' or stʼipʼel 'make, force')
 * word order in general seems to be relatively free, but there could be underlying pragmatic factors such as given and new information governing the particulars. Another question would be the word order in embedded clauses and other sentence types such as questions and commands.

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