Deciphering the Deciphering the pronunciation of a prepronunciation of a pre--

modern language: modern language: the case of Armenian the case of Armenian

Bert Vaux, University of CambridgeSeminar i teoretisk lingvistikk, UIO

15 April 2009

How can we tell how a How can we tell how a language was pronounced?language was pronounced?

This may appear easy at first:look at their writing systemlook at how the language is pronounced today

But closer inspection reveals many problems:conservative spelling (knight)inappropriate orthographies (Linear B, Pahlavi, Hittite)phonemic vs phonetic vs morphemic vs logographic orthographyinherent underdetermination of symbols

Plan: survey these problems and see how they can be dealt with for Armenian.

Central Armenian QsCentral Armenian Qs

Was the <D> series aspirated?Was the <T> series voiced?When did the dialects and their consonant shifts develop?What were the mid vowels? (e:ē, o:ō)What were <w>, <y>, and <ł>?

Evidence to be consideredEvidence to be considered

Phonological and orthographic structurePasts and futures of sounds and graphemesErrors in inscriptions and manuscriptsArmenian in other languages/scripts and vice versa

Phonological and orthographic Phonological and orthographic structurestructure

Alternations<i> ~ <y> ‘in’: <i dratshn> ‘from the door’ : <yerekoyi> ‘on the eve’

though <y> here could be relic, as in modern lg<ē> → <i> in unstressed syllable

evidence consistent with <ē> = /ei/ in full and zero gradeactually ambiguous; /e/ can also reduce to [i] in lgs

Inventoriescf Jakobson on IEe.g. if Armenian had no <L>, it wouldn’t makes sense to say that [= /ł/.having e.g. two e symbols suggests they were separate phonemes in the creator’s dialect

Grapheme historiesGrapheme histories

B < Greek β [b/v], G < Γ [g/γ]K < Greek Κ [k]?J < Greek θ ([th] or [θ]?)Q < Χ(Ρ) ([kh] or [χ]?)" < Φ ([ph] or [f]?)

NB ph vs. f in Karabagh and ArtvinArtvin zaiph ‘thin, skinny’

SoundsSounds’’ historieshistoriesWe know that <bdg> came from IE voiced aspirates. (We also know that modern dialects such as Mush and New Julfa have voiced aspirates for this series.) Can we infer from this that <bdg> = /bh dh gh/? (Benveniste, Garrett)

plausible that Mesrob wouldn’t notice aspiration diff. wrt Greek.also unlikely that voiced asps would develop independently twice.Many empirical problems with this observed by Pisowicz 1976.

<ē> < *e(t)i in e.g. b;rh ‘carries’ < *bheretiappears to support reduction evidence mentioned earlier, but thediphthongization facts suggest something else…

SoundsSounds’’ futuresfutures

Outcomes of the mid vowels in the modern dialectse > ie while ē > ε; o > vo, uo while ō > ɔsuggests that <e> was tense [e] and the latter lax [ε]

this doesn't rule out the possibility that the former may have been long before that, as Meillet etc. seem to have thought

Does it matter that only one modern dialect has <w> > [w] and the rest have [v]?

Manuscript errorsManuscript errors

The Moscow Gospel, 887 ADThe Moscow Gospel, 887 AD

copied in Vanand

Mark 1:6Mark 1:6

Ew/ēr/sgets’eal/Yovhannēs/stew/ułtu

And John was clothedWith camel’s hair

A manuscript in Ankara A manuscript in Ankara dialectdialectMs Laud Or 202, Oriental Library, Oxford

6.5 x 4 3/8”“Polyglot vocabulary, 16th century. 83 folios, in a notergir hand of formless and clumsy style.”Conybeare then observes that MS Marsh 187, a 17th century polyglot glossary, “is written by a tyro, in the same clumsy style as in Ms Laud Or 202. Nor is the writer better acquainted with the language; his spelling is full of faults, and many of his words are Turkish. It would seem as if he had only picked up the language by ear.”This attitude has led to 202 and 187 being ignored since then.

No reason given for dating to 16th century. The manuscript itself bears the inscription “Liber Guilielmi Laud Archiepi Cantuar et Cancellarij Vniuersitatis Oxon. 1634”, ensuring that this manuscript was already in Laud’s possession by 1634.Contains a trilingual list of some 1500 lemmata in Armenian, Turkish, and French, together with a number of phrases, several lengthy dialogues, a Creed, and a version of the Lord’s Prayer.

Provenance (60)Provenance (60)salut a uous mes freresbien uenumonsieurdou uenes uos

Je vens de la francede que leu estes vousd’anguora

parev tsyezi aghbarsparov egiraghavoru gükas

frengistann gukaminch deghatsis tünengürtsi em

Hello to you, my brother(s).Welcome, sir.Where do you come from?

I come from France.What place are you from?From Ankara.

Spellings reflect pronunciation, not Spellings reflect pronunciation, not traditional orthographytraditional orthography

hazar

akřay

hivand

mitkh

hreštak

Std orthogAnkara

1000

tooth

sick

thought

angel

gloss

millehazař

dentakra

maladehivant

pencéemidk

Angehrēšthak

Frenchtranscription

Turkish influence

Linguistic features (35v)Linguistic features (35v)

diphthongization

Group 3 C shift

uncensored

Western ay > a

Consonant shiftsConsonant shiftsGroup 3

*D > Th

*T > D

Were the <T> series voiced?Were the <T> series voiced?

The Ankara facts might initially appear to be supported by Pahlavi cognates:

dayeak ‘wet nurse’, namak ‘letter’, -akan, etc.dayeak ‘wet nurse’ : Pahlavi d’yk' [dāyag]

problems: Pahlavi writes k but interpreted as g (Mackenzie)Pahlavi or Parthian?

NJ Certified statement, 1745NJ Certified statement, 1745

im khštin pho“ čhk[a]y talm[a]n čhem‘I have no money to hand; I will not pay.’

χm[a]r a“[a]rkir

also gman • Tigranakert, Urfa, Hadjin• Khömürĵean 1684, e.g. Ast goy ew

mer ayazmay, i Pslå˚lién é golman

Other languages in Other languages in Armenian script and Armenian script and

languagelanguage

The GrecoThe Greco--Armenian papyrusArmenian papyrus

Greek papyrus in Armenian characters5th-7th century ADHermeneumata (school exercises)oldest known manuscript in Armenian letters

Clackson, James. 2000. A Greek papyrus in Armenian script. Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 129:223-258.

The GrecoThe Greco--Armenian papyrusArmenian papyrus

Loans: what was <Loans: what was <łł>?>?In all of the modern dialects it is [ʁ].Loanwords show two behaviors:

early: renders (some) LPersian pil : Armenian p‘iłLoukas → <Łowkas>

later (Arab period, MidArm +): renders [ʁ]

Inference: ł > ʁ after early loans but before 7th CProblem:

every single dialect has [ʁ], suggesting that this change had already happened in Common Armenian, but Common Armenian should predate 5th C AD

7thC mosaic, Jerusalem

CalquesCalques

De Lamberterie thinks apa-thartsh provides evidence for early C-shift, because a) it shows up in Thrax (early) and b) it’s clearly a calque on apo-stropheProblem: it could be a spelling that was only introduced in late mss.

LomavrenLomavren

ArabicArabic

bsm ahllah ilrahmnlrahimbismillaah il-raħmaan il-raħiim

TurkishTurkish

gospel in “Armenian”, 1884

ArmenoArmeno--KipchakKipchak

ItalianItalian

from the Smyrna Petition, 1658

‘To the highest and most powerful lord, lord of the central government of the Confederation of Provinces of Belgium’

Armenian in foreign Armenian in foreign scripts and languagesscripts and languages

Byzantine sourcesByzantine sourcesmost Greek sources in Hübschmann’s Die Altarmensiche Ortsnamen show Type 6Same with Byzantine renditions of Armenian names (from Roman and Byzantine prosopographies)

Tiranes, Bithynia, 5th-6th CValarsaces, king of Armenia 378-386Tiridates III, king of Armenia 287-330Papa, Vardan, Artavasdos…Arsaces, king of Armenia 369-374Tigranes VII, king 339-350 or 327-335Elisaeus—NB gh still rendered as lPhilippicus Bardanes (or Vardanes) (emperor 711-713)

Sources that DO show shifts (typically *D > T):Sabatius (Smbat), early 9th CGarritte, Narratio de rebus armeniae (7th C, but Gk translation is later, 1200 at latest)Constantine Porphyrogenetes 952 De Administrando section on Armenia and Georgia

The The Autun Autun GlossaryGlossaryLast 2pp. of a manuscript containing the letters of St. JeromeDiscovered in the library of Autun, France in 1882Copied in late 9th-early 10th century AD

barba facies auris colla gula guttur

Muruc Eriesc aganch visc puelc Kcerchac

Hungarian?Hungarian?NJ note written by a Venice-based Julfan merchant, Amirbek di Vartan in the 1690sdiscovered by Sebouh Aslanian in Venice 2002

gloss

Std

NJ IPA

fiveI sent

hingu“a®gEtsHi

XingHa“a®giEtsHi

Roman scriptRoman script

GeorgianGeorgian

Sayath-Nova 18th Cms in Tiflis dialect of Armeniannote frequent alternations between Georgian and Armenian characters

Arabic scriptArabic scriptGolden, Peter, ed. 2000. The king’s dictionary: the Rasulid Hexaglot--fourteenth century vocabularies in Arabic, Persian, Turkic, Greek, Armenian, and Mongol. Leiden: Brill.Western consonant outcomes

desir ‘see!’grta ‘read!’cagad ‘forehead’orti ‘child’tegin ‘yellow’

ConclusionsConclusions

even though SWA is more like IE in its consonants in some ways, Armenian first went through an SEA-type systemthe consonant shifts appeared quite early, and they (and the dialects) may well have been in existence already by the 5th centurya wealth of “new” material exists that has yet to be properly considered by Armenologists and Indo-Europeanists

Linear BLinear BLinear B seems to have been designed for a CV language.Some Linear B renditions of Mycenean Greek:

U qe [kwe] ‘and’YcMt qa-si-re-u [gwasileus] ‘king’yZn ~ yZ wa-na(-ka) [wanaks] ‘king’q.> a-ko-ro [agros] ‘field’ vs q/> a-ku-ro [arguros] ‘silver’

HeterographyHeterographyBeginning of Arda Wiraz Nāmag ‘Book of the Righteous Viraz’, ms K20Transcription (R→L)

PWN ŠM y yzd’n' ∴’ytwn' YMRNd A[Y?]K ’ywb’l ’hlwb' zltwhštdyn' y MKBLnt BYN gyh’n lwb’k BRA krt'

Readingpad nām ī yazdān ‘in the name of the gods’ēdōn gōwēnd kū ēw-bār ahlaw zardušt ‘thus they said that once righteous Zoroaster’dēn ī padīrift, andar gēhān rawāg be kard ‘received the religion, he made it current in the world.’

BRA used for be by rebus principle based on be ‘except’(Syriac bra)

3 different values: w-n-Ø

PWN [pad] (unknown source)ŠM [nām] < Aramaic šem

Voiced aspiratesVoiced aspirates