Meyer, Robin: Alignment change and changing alignments: Armenian syntax and the first ‘death’ of Parthian. In: Bianconi, Michele; Capano, Marta; Romagno, Domenica; Rovai, Francesco (Ed.): Ancient Indo-European Languages between Linguistics and Philology: Contact, Variation, and Reconstruction, pp. 211–233, Brill, Leiden, 2022. @incollection{Meyer2022a,
title = {Alignment change and changing alignments: Armenian syntax and the first ‘death’ of Parthian},
author = {Robin Meyer},
editor = {Michele Bianconi and Marta Capano and Domenica Romagno and Francesco Rovai},
doi = {10.1163/9789004508828_010},
year = {2022},
date = {2022-03-31},
urldate = {2022-03-31},
booktitle = {Ancient Indo-European Languages between Linguistics and Philology: Contact, Variation, and Reconstruction},
pages = {211–233},
publisher = {Brill},
address = {Leiden},
abstract = {This paper seeks to combine the insights gathered in a corpus study of the periphrastic perfect in Classical Armenian texts from the 5th century CE and research into the socio-historical and political interactions of the Armenians and their Iranian neighbours in the same time period.
It is argued that the construction of the Classical Armenian perfect, which consists of a participle in -eal (< PIE *-lo-) and an optional form of the copula, is most accurately described as tripartite morphosyntactic alignment:
•intransitive and transitive passive verbs construe with a NOM subject under subject agreement of the copula;
• transitive active verbs take GEN agents, ACC objects, and the copula is an invariant 3.SG.
This pattern shows some diachronic variation and by the 8th century CE has given way to NOM– ACC alignment under pressure from the rest of the verbal system. Based on observations in the corpus and typological data, this alignment pattern can be explained as a case of pattern replication and pivot matching of a Middle Iranian, specifically Parthian, ERG–ABS model in pre-literary times and subsequent adaptation to Armenian requirements cf. MEYER (2016; 2017).
This explanation is lent further credence by the existence of both a great wealth of Iranian loanwords in Armenian, as well as a small number of other syntactic patterns that have clear Iranian parallels. Furthermore, the prevalence of political quarrels between the Parthian rulers of Armenia and other Iranians, their adoption of Christianity in c. 301 CE, frequent intermarriage with Armenians, and the lack of any Parthian language documents in the area suggest that the existence of Iranian syntactic patterns in Armenian is due not only to language contact, but indeed to language shift of the Parthian ruling class to Armenian. This, in turn, may provide a partial explanation of the first ‘death’ of Parthian, a significant attestation gap between Arsacid inscriptions and later religious documents.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {incollection}
}
This paper seeks to combine the insights gathered in a corpus study of the periphrastic perfect in Classical Armenian texts from the 5th century CE and research into the socio-historical and political interactions of the Armenians and their Iranian neighbours in the same time period.
It is argued that the construction of the Classical Armenian perfect, which consists of a participle in -eal (< PIE *-lo-) and an optional form of the copula, is most accurately described as tripartite morphosyntactic alignment:
•intransitive and transitive passive verbs construe with a NOM subject under subject agreement of the copula;
• transitive active verbs take GEN agents, ACC objects, and the copula is an invariant 3.SG.
This pattern shows some diachronic variation and by the 8th century CE has given way to NOM– ACC alignment under pressure from the rest of the verbal system. Based on observations in the corpus and typological data, this alignment pattern can be explained as a case of pattern replication and pivot matching of a Middle Iranian, specifically Parthian, ERG–ABS model in pre-literary times and subsequent adaptation to Armenian requirements cf. MEYER (2016; 2017).
This explanation is lent further credence by the existence of both a great wealth of Iranian loanwords in Armenian, as well as a small number of other syntactic patterns that have clear Iranian parallels. Furthermore, the prevalence of political quarrels between the Parthian rulers of Armenia and other Iranians, their adoption of Christianity in c. 301 CE, frequent intermarriage with Armenians, and the lack of any Parthian language documents in the area suggest that the existence of Iranian syntactic patterns in Armenian is due not only to language contact, but indeed to language shift of the Parthian ruling class to Armenian. This, in turn, may provide a partial explanation of the first ‘death’ of Parthian, a significant attestation gap between Arsacid inscriptions and later religious documents. |
Alpi, Federico; Meyer, Robin; Tinti, Irene; Zakarian, David: Armenia through the Lens of Time: A 360° View. In: Alpi, Federico; Meyer, Robin; Tinti, Irene; Zakarian, David (Ed.): Armenia through the Lens of Time, Brill, Leiden, 2022. @incollection{AlpiMeyerTintiZakarian,
title = {Armenia through the Lens of Time: A 360° View},
author = {Federico Alpi and Robin Meyer and Irene Tinti and David Zakarian},
editor = {Federico Alpi and Robin Meyer and Irene Tinti and David Zakarian},
year = {2022},
date = {2022-01-01},
urldate = {2022-01-01},
booktitle = {Armenia through the Lens of Time},
publisher = {Brill},
address = {Leiden},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {incollection}
}
|
Meyer, Robin: Multilingualism in Poetry: How to Translate Sayat`-Nova. In: Alpi, Federico; Meyer, Robin; Tinti, Irene; Zakarian, David (Ed.): Armenia through the Lens of Time, Brill, Leiden, 2022. @incollection{Meyer2022,
title = {Multilingualism in Poetry: How to Translate Sayat`-Nova},
author = {Robin Meyer},
editor = {Federico Alpi and Robin Meyer and Irene Tinti and David Zakarian},
year = {2022},
date = {2022-01-01},
urldate = {2022-01-01},
booktitle = {Armenia through the Lens of Time},
publisher = {Brill},
address = {Leiden},
abstract = {The 18th-century Georgian-Armenian poet and bard Sayat‘-Nova is well known amongst scholars of Armenian language and literature as the author of numerous poems composed in the Tiflis-dialect of Armenian. Next to the idiosyncrasies of this dialect, however, the language used in Sayat‘-Nova’s poetry is replete with lexical material from many other languages widely spoken in the Caucasus and its environment, particularly Georgian, Azeri Turkish, and Farsi. This is unsurprising: the Caucasus is a highly multilingual region and Sayat‘-Nova a multilingual poet.
Next to the work of Charles Dowsett (1997), which treats mainly of the life, poetic topics, and style of Sayat‘-Nova, little further literature is available as concerns his language; even an English translation of his poetry is as yet a desideratum.
This paper addresses the lack of a modern translation that does justice to Sayat‘-Nova’s language. It proposes two manners in which his multilingual poetry can be translated without losing entirely the richness and expressiveness of his language: a multilingual approach to the target language environment (combining English as the matrix language with French elements); and a rendition by materilingual estrangement, using typographical means to translate originally non-Armenian elements.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {incollection}
}
The 18th-century Georgian-Armenian poet and bard Sayat‘-Nova is well known amongst scholars of Armenian language and literature as the author of numerous poems composed in the Tiflis-dialect of Armenian. Next to the idiosyncrasies of this dialect, however, the language used in Sayat‘-Nova’s poetry is replete with lexical material from many other languages widely spoken in the Caucasus and its environment, particularly Georgian, Azeri Turkish, and Farsi. This is unsurprising: the Caucasus is a highly multilingual region and Sayat‘-Nova a multilingual poet.
Next to the work of Charles Dowsett (1997), which treats mainly of the life, poetic topics, and style of Sayat‘-Nova, little further literature is available as concerns his language; even an English translation of his poetry is as yet a desideratum.
This paper addresses the lack of a modern translation that does justice to Sayat‘-Nova’s language. It proposes two manners in which his multilingual poetry can be translated without losing entirely the richness and expressiveness of his language: a multilingual approach to the target language environment (combining English as the matrix language with French elements); and a rendition by materilingual estrangement, using typographical means to translate originally non-Armenian elements. |
Meyer, Robin: The Relevance of Typology for Pattern Replication. In: Journal of Language Contact, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 569–608, 2019. @article{Meyer2019,
title = {The Relevance of Typology for Pattern Replication},
author = {Robin Meyer},
doi = {10.1163/19552629-01203002},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-01-01},
urldate = {2019-01-01},
journal = {Journal of Language Contact},
volume = {12},
number = {3},
pages = {569--608},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
|
Meyer, Robin: Syntactical Peculiarities of Relative Clauses in the Armenian New Testament. In: Revue des Études Arméniennes, vol. 38, pp. 35–83, 2018. @article{Meyer2018,
title = {Syntactical Peculiarities of Relative Clauses in the Armenian New Testament},
author = {Robin Meyer},
doi = {10.2143/REA.38.0.3285778},
year = {2018},
date = {2018-01-01},
urldate = {2018-01-01},
journal = {Revue des Études Arméniennes},
volume = {38},
pages = {35--83},
abstract = {This paper endeavours to show that, at least as far as the syntax of relative clauses is concerned, the form of the Armenian language employed in the Bible translation does not fully correspond to that found in non-translated Armenian literature. It will be shown that, as argued by Lafontaine and Coulie (1983), next to Classical and Hellenising Armenian, we must construe a pre-Hellenising layer of the language. This layer, it is argued, is not to be separated from the Yunaban Dproc‘; instead, both form part of a continuum of Greek influence on Armenian. This is evident in the applicability of different case matching restrictions in Biblical texts compared to the works of Agat‘angełos, Eznik, and Ełišē, specifically in free and light-headed relative clauses. The case of the relative pronoun in Greek relative clauses can be determined by the matrix clause in Biblical Armenian, whereas in non-translated literature such structures do generally not occur. It will further be argued that cases of Armenian ‘relative attraction’ present almost exclusively in free relative clauses; taking as its basis patterns put forward by Grosu (1994) and Keenan and Comrie (1977), these cases of attraction, together with evidence from Greek, will be taken as indication for the existence of what may be called Discourse Accessibility Hierarchy.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
This paper endeavours to show that, at least as far as the syntax of relative clauses is concerned, the form of the Armenian language employed in the Bible translation does not fully correspond to that found in non-translated Armenian literature. It will be shown that, as argued by Lafontaine and Coulie (1983), next to Classical and Hellenising Armenian, we must construe a pre-Hellenising layer of the language. This layer, it is argued, is not to be separated from the Yunaban Dproc‘; instead, both form part of a continuum of Greek influence on Armenian. This is evident in the applicability of different case matching restrictions in Biblical texts compared to the works of Agat‘angełos, Eznik, and Ełišē, specifically in free and light-headed relative clauses. The case of the relative pronoun in Greek relative clauses can be determined by the matrix clause in Biblical Armenian, whereas in non-translated literature such structures do generally not occur. It will further be argued that cases of Armenian ‘relative attraction’ present almost exclusively in free relative clauses; taking as its basis patterns put forward by Grosu (1994) and Keenan and Comrie (1977), these cases of attraction, together with evidence from Greek, will be taken as indication for the existence of what may be called Discourse Accessibility Hierarchy. |
Meyer, Robin: Morphosyntactic Alignment and the Classical Armenian Periphrastic Perfect. In: Jamison, Stephanie W.; Melchert, Craig H.; Vine, Brent (Ed.): Proceedings of the 26th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference : Los Angeles, October 24th and 25th, 2014, pp. 117–133, Hempen, Bremen, 2016. @incollection{Meyer2016,
title = {Morphosyntactic Alignment and the Classical Armenian Periphrastic Perfect},
author = {Robin Meyer},
editor = {Stephanie W. Jamison and Craig H. Melchert and Brent Vine},
url = {https://rbnmyr.eu/wp-content/uploads/pdf/meyer_ucla_2016.pdf},
year = {2016},
date = {2016-01-01},
urldate = {2016-01-01},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 26th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference : Los Angeles, October 24th and 25th, 2014},
pages = {117--133},
publisher = {Hempen},
address = {Bremen},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {incollection}
}
|
Meyer, Robin: Remodelling the Historical Morphology of the Classical Armenian -eal participle. In: Banber Matenadarani, vol. 21, pp. 385–398, 2014. @article{meyer2014a,
title = {Remodelling the Historical Morphology of the Classical Armenian -eal participle},
author = {Robin Meyer},
url = {https://rbnmyr.eu/wp-content/uploads/pdf/meyer_banber_2014.pdf},
year = {2014},
date = {2014-01-01},
urldate = {2014-01-01},
journal = {Banber Matenadarani},
volume = {21},
pages = {385--398},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
|
Meyer, Robin: Armeno-Iranian Structural Interaction: The Case of Parthian wxd, Armenian ink‘n. In: Iran and the Caucasus, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 401-425, 2013. @article{Meyer2013b,
title = {Armeno-Iranian Structural Interaction: The Case of Parthian wxd, Armenian ink‘n},
author = {Robin Meyer},
doi = {10.1163/1573384X-20130406},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-01-01},
urldate = {2013-01-01},
journal = {Iran and the Caucasus},
volume = {17},
number = {4},
pages = {401-425},
publisher = {Brill},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
|
Meyer, Robin: Armenian Morphosyntactic Alignment in Diachrony. In: Dahl, Eystein (Ed.): Alignment and Alignment Change in the Indo-European family, Oxford University Press, Oxford, Forthcoming. @incollection{Meyerforthd,
title = {Armenian Morphosyntactic Alignment in Diachrony},
author = {Robin Meyer},
editor = {Eystein Dahl},
booktitle = {Alignment and Alignment Change in the Indo-European family},
publisher = {Oxford University Press},
address = {Oxford},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {forthcoming},
tppubtype = {incollection}
}
|
Meyer, Robin: Language-based dating in Classical Armenian: the case of Vrt‘anēs K‘ert‘oł. In: Lint, Theo Maarten; Elsner, Jaś; Mathews, Thomas F.; Maranci, C. (Ed.): Vrtʽan=es Kʽertoł's Treatise `Concerning Iconoclasm', Brill, Leiden, Forthcoming. @incollection{Meyerforthe,
title = {Language-based dating in Classical Armenian: the case of Vrt‘anēs K‘ert‘oł},
author = {Robin Meyer},
editor = {Theo Maarten Lint and Jaś Elsner and Thomas F. Mathews and C. Maranci},
booktitle = {Vrtʽan=es Kʽertoł's Treatise `Concerning Iconoclasm'},
publisher = {Brill},
address = {Leiden},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {forthcoming},
tppubtype = {incollection}
}
|
Meyer, Robin: Languages in Contact: Armenian and Iranian. In: Orengo, Alessandro; Tinti, Irene (Ed.): Armenian Linguistics, vol. 23/2, Brill, Leiden, Forthcoming. @incollection{meyerfortha,
title = {Languages in Contact: Armenian and Iranian},
author = {Robin Meyer},
editor = {Alessandro Orengo and Irene Tinti},
booktitle = {Armenian Linguistics},
volume = {23/2},
publisher = {Brill},
address = {Leiden},
series = {Handbuch der Orientalistik},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {forthcoming},
tppubtype = {incollection}
}
|
Meyer, Robin: The Armenian Version of the Τέχνη γραμματική: A Linguistically Uncomfortable Compromise. In: Bonfiglio, E.; Rapp, Claudia (Ed.): Armenia & Byzantium without Borders, Forthcoming. @incollection{Meyerforthb,
title = {The Armenian Version of the Τέχνη γραμματική: A Linguistically Uncomfortable Compromise},
author = {Robin Meyer},
editor = {E. Bonfiglio and Claudia Rapp},
booktitle = {Armenia & Byzantium without Borders},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {forthcoming},
tppubtype = {incollection}
}
|