Talk:Western Armenian language

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To-do list for Western Armenian language: edit · history · watch · refresh
  1. TO DO Combine footnotes into one per consonant, because the section is not about Orthography - an emphasis on letters - but on phonology, an emphasis on sounds. Thanks for the note.Serouj
    DONE Monophthongs.Serouj 11:09, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
  2. TO DO Move unnecessary spelling rules from phonology section to the Orthography section. The phonology section should only provide one example (and only one - not one from each way to write that phoneme). The phonology section is simply there to introduce people to the sounds of the language, not the rules and various ways a sound is written; the latter is for orthography only, and the details of which belong in its own article, Traditional Armenian Orthography. Serouj 00:31, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
    DONE Monophthongs. Serouj 05:37, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
    DONE Diphthongs. Serouj 23:06, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
    DONE Consonants. Serouj 23:06, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
  3. TO DO Provide examples of WA consonants (one per consonant sound; not one per letter) as in the Vowels section. Leave details to the Orthography article.Serouj 01:26, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
  4. TO DO Improve Morphology section.Serouj 01:26, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
  5. TO DO Provide a History section based on Oshagan's article. (Add history to Eastern Armenian language and Armenian language articles, too.)Serouj 01:30, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
  6. TO DO Provide Examples (common text) with sound-bites.Serouj 01:30, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Re: linking IPA characters

This is in regards to the following revert: 23:17, 23 November 2006 Aeusoes1 (Talk | contribs) (→Consonants - please do not link IPA characters)

I think this really helps in distinguishing between the two dialects of Armenian, Western and Eastern, one of the chief differences being letter pronunciation. The nice thing about the IPA character articles are that they include a sound bite for each character, allowing someone to hear how each dialect sounds. The underlines aren't a big deal, as they are underlined only upon a mouse-over (i.e. they're normally not underlined). I think the help that the link brings overrides the minor inconvenience (if any) of an underline appearing.Serouj 01:27, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Just read the part on forcing a non-underline but maintaining the link. Added class="nounderlines" to keep the links.Serouj 01:46, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
You bring up a good point about the sound files, however all but two or three of the sounds in the chart exist in English. I'm reverting the linking edit because your version removes the IPA template, making certain characters appear as boxes on many browsers. If you want to add the IPA template to linked characters, I won't stop you. I just don't want to do the work myself for something I'm not a big fan of. I'm also reverting your vowel chart because it implies that the front rounded vowels are phonemes when they are not. The rounding is the result of Adjarian's law (the fronting of back vowels after voiced obstruents).
If you could check your source on the ten vowels and be more clear on what each letter represents that would be appreciated. I think that a chart with IPA and letters (as you've done in the consonants chart) would work pretty well. I'm pretty sure there are five mid vowels: long e, short e, long o, short o and schwa. I haven't really taken the time to find myself a source for this.
I can get kind of nitpicky when it comes to IPA. I really am glad someone is finally taking some attention to the Armenian language articles. They're sort of stub-like in comparison to other IE languages. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 13:55, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
"If you want to add the IPA template to linked characters, I won't stop you."
Will do, thanks.Serouj 20:08, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
"I'm also reverting your vowel chart because it implies that the front rounded vowels are phonemes when they are not. The rounding is the result of Adjarian's law (the fronting of back vowels after voiced obstruents)."
Can you elaborate on Adjarian's law? I think the vowel chart is nice to have, and I took the idea from the French phonology article. Serouj 20:08, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
"If you could check your source on the ten vowels and be more clear on what each letter represents that would be appreciated."
Absolutely. My next step was to provide examples, as in the "Oral vowels" section of that article. Let me quickly provide this here, before I do: i (ի); u (ու); Y (իւ); o (o, ո); ɑ (ա); ɛ (է, ե); œ (էօ); ə (ը).Serouj 20:08, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for the changes in diction. Much appreciated.Serouj 20:08, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
The thing I don't like about that kind of vowel chart is that it implies that the vowels it shows are exactly at the cardinal vowel points when that's really not very likely. I might do something about changing the other pages that have them.
According to the notes that I've taken on The Phonology of Armenian (1998) by Bert Vaux (a book that I didn't finish reading), Adjarian's Law is the fronting of back vowels after voiced obstruents. Upon second look (and looking at your vowels) it looks like it means voiced obstruents from Classical Armenian. In many of the dialects that undergo Adjarian's Law, the original plain voiced series has become voiceless, merging with the original voiceless series. There's a comparison chart in my notes between Classical Armenian and the dialect of Van (WA):
Classical Van Gloss
bah pœχ spade
boɫk pøχk radish
bukʰ pykʲʰ snowstorm
garin kʲøʁ sheep
gund kʲynd heap
danak tœnœk knife
doɫal tøʁal tremble
durs tys outside
paɹaw paɾav old woman
port puoɾt navel
I'm not sure about the transcription of the rhotics in this table. I believe Vaux used <rr> and <r> as a convention and I'm not sure what his intention on the actual phonetic character of any rhotic was anymore.

The dialects that undergo Adjarian's law are Agulis(E), Karabagh(E), Maragha(E), Meghri(E), Salmast(Middle), Shamaxi(E), Shatax(Middle), Syria(W), Van(W), and Xoy(E). Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 22:47, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for those details. The "Western Armenian" dialect is based on the dialect of Istanbul, and developed during the mid 19th century. I don't think Adjarian's law applies to the Istanbul (Constantinople) dialect based on the list you gave above. I need to write a section on the history of the Western Armenian language (and the Armenian language in general, including Eastern Armenian) to make the points clear on dialects: particularly that what's known as Western Armenian today is based on the Istanbul dialect; and what is known as Eastern Armenian is based on the dialect of the Ararat district. (A great resource to this end that I have found is Vahe Oshagan's "Modern Armenian Literature and Intellectual History" [1]
I'd like to re-instate the top vowel chart, now that we've got an Examples table for the vowels. I like what the French phonology article has done with it, and it's a concise way to present all the vowel sounds. Thanks.Serouj 23:23, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm curious as to how Western Armenian obtained front rounded vowels if not by Adjarian's law. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 06:47, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't know as yet, but I'll definitely let you know after I read that article I was telling you about above (if it helps in this case).Serouj 07:08, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some points

There's some great work here, but I think that the tables are starting to get too complicated simply to illustrate orthographic points that should probably be made in prose rather than on tables or on the Armenian alphabet page instead.

For example, in the table on monophthongs, /o/ has three examples. Rather than have a table to illustrate this, you could have prose that says something like: [o] is denoted by <օ>, <ո>, or <յ>. When between two consonants, <ո> represents [o], as in չոր [tʃoɾ] ("dry"); otherwise it represents [vo]. Only when <ոյ> occurs at the end of the word does it represent [o]. Otherwise it denotes the diphthong [uj].
I think we can take out the "similar to the English vowel in..." notes. If people aren't sure about the vowels, they can click on the links and said notes in the diphthongs seem to analyze english as having rising diphthongs.
On the consonants table, there are four notes connected to /v/ and three connected to /j/. Since this is about the consonants and not their letters, There should be just one note each.
Also, I just noticed that aspirated /pʰ/ has been changed to /p/ in the table. Is there a reason for that? Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 21:56, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I agree. There is too much data out there and it needs to be presented better.
For /pʰ/: is this the symbol used for the English "P" as in pear? (The Western Armenian is the same pronunciation,) (I don't agree that the p's are aspirated in Western Armenian, if they're not considered so for English...) Serouj 22:24, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, English P is /pʰ/. My source also says that it's aspirated in Western Armenian. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 22:50, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Got it. Will make the change: բ and փ to /pʰ/.
Is the English T as in take also aspirated? (Western Armenian would be the same.)
What of the k in cat? (Western Armenian would be the same.)
If yes, then I think /ts/ (ց and ձ) would follow, too.
Thank you for making the review.Serouj 23:11, 25 November 2006 (UTC)


I found the following quote from the Voiceless bilabial plosive article interesting and applies to Armenian as well -
/p/ occurs at the beginning of a word or a stressed syllable, like in print, support, or potato, then it is always aspirated. When it occurs at the beginning of an unstressed syllable that isn't at the beginning of a word, like in occupant, vapid, or keeper, then it is always unaspirated.
Given this, I think it might be inaccurate to say that բ and փ /pʰ/ are always aspirated. I think leaving the IPA symbol as /p/ along with a footnote explaining when aspiration should occur might be a better way of doing it. Any thoughts? Serouj 23:19, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Ƶ§œš¹> "On the consonants table, there are four notes connected to /v/ and three connected to /j/. Since this is about the consonants and not their letters, There should be just one note each.
The notes are for the individual letters, since each letter's use for that particular consonant may depend on context. Where the note applies to all letters (e.g. for ռ and ր), we have one note.Serouj 23:24, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I understand that the notes are connected to the letters, but I think we can get the point across by combining the four notes into one and the three notes into one. Otherwise the columns get unnecessarily wide.
English P is subject to a bit of allophony but this isn't necessarily the case with Western Armenian. I distinctly recall reading an article on Western Armenian's unusual quality of having full contrastiveness in word-final laryngeal (voicing, aspiration, etc) settings. I've read in a couple places that WA contrasts its between aspirated and voiced stops and affricates and until we find something that says otherwise, we ought to keep that.
However, the resident phonologist at my university has made the claim that no language has binary aspiration/voicing pairing as described in WA and either the aspirated consonants aren't really aspirated or the voiced consonants aren't really voiced (the latter is true for English). I don't know anyone who speaks WA so I can't even conduct original research on the matter.
If you have a source that goes into detail on the allophony of WA /p(ʰ)/ then including that is fine, but don't extend a source's "like English X" to an assumption that the allophony or phonetic details are the same for the two languages. I'm fairly certain that they are not. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 23:41, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Okay. I put the aspiration in. I don't have a source other than original research (I speak WA); but I'll keep this research out until I can find a professor of linguistics to confirm. Thanks.Serouj 00:28, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References

  1. ^ (September 1997) "5", in Richard G. Hovannisian: The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times, volume II, First, New York: St. Martin's Press. 

[edit] Phonology of Eastern Armenian vs. Classical Armenian

It seems Classical Armenian phonology may not have had ejective stops and affricates at all. Hence, Classical and Eastern Armenian phonology are not exactly the same, even though they have 3 forms for stops and affricates. Specifically, the ejective sounds (i.e. պ, կ, տ, ծ, ճ) in Eastern Armenian were simple unaspirated voiceless sounds in Classical. (see Classical Armenian Online (The University of Texas at Austin)). I think this makes sense, since ejectives are popular in languages in the trans-Caucasus, and may have been picked up by Eastern Armenian speakers over the centuries. (This would also require changes to the traditional Armenian orthography article.) Serouj 02:52, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

In the coming weeks, I'll check my source out for that. That sounds right to me, though. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 03:11, 11 December 2006 (UTC)