2nd Pers Sing Possessive In Eastern Armenian

[nairi]

[i think this will be the last in the series of Nairi's rants for the next 6 months. So bear with me]

 

If we go by the Mashtotsian spelling system, as many of the residents here would want us to, then we should spell words according to their pronunciation, right?

 

So what's up with this?

 

We have adopted the inflectional suffix -d to indicate the second person singular possesive, like in "girqd" (your book). However, we frequently pronounce this -d as a /t/, other times as a /d/ and yet sometimes as something in between a /d/ and /t/. So really we need one more character in our alphabet to depict this last sound, and we should definitely come to a conclusion as to whether to always use a -d, or sometimes a -t and other times this new to-be-invented character in spelling.

 

Is this all too far-fetched?? I guess it depends on how fanatic you are...

 

So when do we say /d/, when /t/ and when something in between?

 

Easy question, difficult answer. I haven't figured it out yet although I'm pretty sure there's loads of literature out there... Until then, this is what I've got so far as a more or less simplified hypothesis (I'm leaving out devoicing, because it's getting way too complicated for a short essay on the net):

 

- we say /d/ with words that end in vowels and voiced consonants (b, g, d, z, zh, l, dz, gh, m, y, n, j, r, v, r). Like: tsav - tsavd; badi - badid

 

- we say /t/ with words that end in voiceless consonants (t, x, ts, k, h, tch, sh, ch, p, t, c, p, q, f). Like: mot - motd

 

Let's put it to the test:

 

- mord (your mother)

 

Yes! I say /mor@d/, but ONLY if the following word begins with a voiced consonant:

 

- mord mot; mord dur@; mord zang@ etc.

 

I say /mor@t/, if it's followed by a word beginning with a vowel or voiceless consonant:

 

- mord em tesel /mor@t em tesel/

- mord kerakur@ /mor@t kerakur@/

 

"mord em tesel" is strange. Logically it should be a /d/!!!! since the /d/ is surrounded by voice! Think of Americans saying "butter". It sounds like /budder/, doesn't it?? This is no coincidence! So it's strange that the Eastern Armenian becomes a /t/ (at least when I speak!) in this context... Maybe I've been doing it "wrong" all this time. But I'm having serious trouble assimilating d with the vowel em, like /dem/ - /mor@dem tesel/. I sound like a Western Armenian when I do that...

 

Okay. Next:

 

- mord

 

We haven't had isolated "mord" yet How would I pronounce it on its own? /mor@t/!! Again, a /t/.

 

Let's try another word:

 

- bakid (of your garden)

 

In isolation, I say /bakit/!! For sure. No doubt. It's a pretty clear /t/. If it precedes a word with a vowel, it's /t/. If it precedes a voiced consonant, it's /d/. If it precedes a voiceless consonant, it's /t/.

 

Next word:

 

- badid (of your bath )

 

In isolation, again I say /badit/! If it precedes a vowel, it's /t/. If it precedes a voiced consonant, it's /d/. If it precedes a voiceless consonant, it's /t/.

 

Hmm.. Do you see the same pattern that I see? ...

 

One last:

 

- katd (your milk)

 

In isolation, I say /kat@t/. If it precedes a vowel, /t/. If it precedes a voiced consonant, it's /d/. If it precedes a voiceless consonant, it's a /t/.

 

Revision:

 

- we say /d/ if the word is followed by a voiced consonant.

 

- we say /t/ if the word is followed by a vowel or voiceless consonant.

 

- we say /t/ in isolated words.

 

 

This final statement is really the most interesting. If in isolation, we always say /t/, why do we write -d?

 

Take it a step further: if our pronunciation of this -d depends on the environment it is in, shouldn't we adapt our spelling accordingly? Of course I know your answer already! We should take Mesrop's spelling, go back in time 1500 years and pronounce words the way He pronounced them. Why do I even ask...

 

Anyway, feel free to share your pronunciation experiments as well

[Stormig]

I say stick with the D and pronounce it the way it flows out - convenience is the rule of the day.

[nairi]

You know I agree with you Storms

[Harut]

i think, and this is just a guess, that the reason we write -d is that possessive form of the word has evolved from the second person singular pronoun, 'du'.

[nairi]

Smart thinking Maybe Arpa can help us out on that one.

[Harut]

because if you look at the pattern...

for example...

 

gluxs = glux + yes

gluxd = glux + du

gluxn = glux + na (althought, currently we use glux@, it is gluxn in Grapar)

[nairi]

Harut, you should become a linguist! You'd do a great job, plus I think you really enjoy it!

 

I did actually think of that once when I was trying to come up with glux (or something) + mer and couldn't come up with anything. That's when I realized we only had possessive suffixes for the singular pronouns.. And yes, the yes, du and na did cross my mind too. Although shouldn't it have been im, qo, ir?

 

Btw, this thread is not to be taken all too seriously in terms of morphology (what you did), but more in terms of how even in Armenian, spelling can deceive pronunciation And I'll bet you a million that even Mashtots wasn't consistent

[Arpa]

i think, and this is just a guess, that the reason we write -d is that possessive form of the word has evolved from the second person singular pronoun, 'du'.

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Good point Harut.

 

I had a classmate who had an even more weird sense of humor. We used to play silly word games. His main passion was; "Why do we say 'inch pes es'? Is not that supposed to be in the first person as 'es/yes/I/,me". It should be 'inchpes yes/me' for the first person, for the second person it should be 'inchpes dun', and for the third person it should be "inchpes inq/na' "??

 

From Daniel Varuzhan's Hayr Orhne!

Stanza 5;

 

Hayr es k'ertham ayd jampayen or jermak

Mazeroud- zis k@ tani,

Vastakabek oskorneroud, dzer s@rtid

Ev sererud kendani...

 

Stanza 7;

 

Im aryun@s goyatsadz e q@rtinqed,

Jognutean@d dziln em t@khur,

Jogid kaghni, erb kourdzq kou tar m@rrikin

Es shuqin tak , hangist, lur.

 

I must translate the last one to make better sense. It may not make sense but I will keep it literal to preserve the sequence of words .

 

My blood has formed of your sweat,

Of your fatigue sprout, I am sad,

Your soul oaken, when your chest given to the storm

I, under the shade , rested, silent.

 

They all end in D.

Whether we actually sound them differently depending on the preceeding letter/sound?

I'll have to read Nairi's original more closely to comment more intelligently.

Edited September 24, 2004 by Arpa

[Harut]

Harut, you should become a linguist! You'd do a great job, plus I think you really enjoy it!

 

believe it or not that's what my 4th grade teacher of Armenian language told me years ago.

 

Although shouldn't it have been im, qo, ir?

 

well, i guess, sometime thousands of years ago, when the language was still under the first stages of development, the possessive nouns came before possessive pronouns.

 

btw, իր [ir] is a pretty modern word. another interesting word that is missing from that list, յուր [yur] has been slowly kicked out of your language. even though it had a unique and more abstract meaning, like 'son' in French.

 

And I'll bet you a million that even Mashtots wasn't consistent

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yah, but the man must have had some strong nervs to be able to go through all this ginggly-minggly of the Armenian language.

[nairi]

And your teacher was right! What the hell are you doing studying computers and whatnot?? I said some other time that we should exchange our majors I suck at languages in reality..

 

Anyway, this phenomenon of pronouncing things differently than how they are spelled doesn't end with d/t. It extends to b/p, g/k, x/gh, ch/j. For instance, I say yexpayr, or axper in my dialect, but we spell it yeghbayr.

[nairi]

Whether we actually sound them differently depending  on the preceeding  letter/sound?

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We sure do. Depending on the following sound (not preceding apparently, although I have a feeling the preceding "hidden" shwa /@/ plays a role too).

 

In fact, when I read that passage out loud by Varoujan, I do exactly the same as I described in my first post. My revision still stands (in simplified form of course. There's much more to say about this, but I won't go into it now. Think of the revision as a general/broad generalization that leaves out all nuances etc. but still stands in context).

Edited September 24, 2004 by nairi

[Harut]

This is one the most commonly made grammatical errors in Armenian language: using the short and long possessive forms together, such as իմ սերս [im sers], where it should be either իմ սեր(ն/ը) [im ser(n/@)] or սերս [sers].

 

 

btw, nairi, sorry for drifting away from the topic. it's just that i didn't have time to think about it much.

[nairi]

Harut, it's correct in Western Armenian apparently...

 

Interesting observation. On a recent thread I found these two quotes (I'll refrain from mentioning who):

 

"het@t ber"

 

"gal@t bari"

 

This totally contradicts my revision:

 

- we say /d/ if the word is followed by a voiced consonant.

 

/b/ is a voiced consonant!

 

And I had trouble with this one. I spoke about nuances. Well this is one. I too "devoice" my /d/ before voiced consonants so that it sounds like I'm saying something closer to a /t/ than /d/. In fact, sometimes it is a clear /t/! So here's my final revision:

 

- We ALWAYS say /t/!

 

How fascinating!

[Harut]

So here's my final revision:

 

- We ALWAYS say /t/!

 

How fascinating!

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nairi, one thing that i learned for sure from studying armenian language is that for every rule there is at least one exception.

 

yerku dzaynavorneri mijev lsvogh y hnchyun@ chi grvum, batsarutyamb a-its yev vo-its hevo.

baraskzbum, s, sh tarerits araj lsvogh @ hnchyun@ chi grvum, batsarutyamb @st bari.

hayots lezvum, shesht, hartsakan, batsakanchakan ketadrakan nshanner@ drvum en bari verjin vanki dzaynavori vra, batsarutyamb mite bari.

baraskzbum vo tar@ kardatsvum e vo, batsarutyamb ov, ovqer barerum.

etc

etc

etc

[nairi]

Thanks Harut! Remember this post?

 

http://hyeforum.com/index.php?showtopic=79...indpost&p=90344

 

But it goes to show once again that Armenian spelling does not always correspond with pronunciation. In this thread I looked at "devoicing" more than anything. Devoicing as in, voiced consonants losing voice in certain environment.

 

We say /b/ (voice consonant) in isolation and at the beginning of word. But at the end of a word we say /p/ (voiceless consonant, or in this case a /b/ that has lost voice, i.e. is "devoiced).

 

So /b/ in a sense starts out life as /b/, but changes to /p/ at the end of a word. For instance in a suffix like -tyamb, pronounced as /tyamp/.

 

Like that the same applies to all the other pairs I mentioned earlier. Funnily however, this does not just occur at the end of a word, but also in the middle. /axper/ is a good example of this. The question is: what triggers this? Why do we devoice voiced consonants in certain environment? What environments are these? And how does it all happen?

 

This is the field of phonology btw, in case you're interested The study of sounds in a language.

[nairi]

You know what else is fascinating? Dutch has a tendency to so this too. /d/ at the end of word becomes a /t/. For instance "dood" is pronounced as /doot/.

 

I tried to find a good intro to voiced and voiceless consonants, but I can't They're all way too advanced and I'm afraid you'll be more confused in the end than you are now..

 

Anyway, just a quick, simple, explanation:

 

Put your fingers on your throat, near your vocal chords or Adam's apple. Now say /z/, and you should feel some sort of vibration there. That's voice Now say /s/ and you shouldn't feel a vibration. In fact, you could just whisper /s/, but if you try to whisper /z/ it comes out as /s/, doesn't it?

 

This is the main difference in voice. To pronounce /z/ you need voice. /s/ is voiceless because you don't need voice. This may all sound a bit confusing now, but if you get the basis of it, you'll know the difference between voice and voiceless without trouble.

 

Another thing. Let's stick with /z/ and /s/ for now. Do you notice that the shape of your mouth and tongue position don't change when you say them? That's what makes them pairs.

 

Try the same with /d/ and /t/. Again, your mouth and tongue are in the same position, but with /d/ you need voice, with /t/ you don't.

 

The same applies to gh/x, j/ch, c/dz, v/f.

 

Maybe now you can also see why it's these "sounds" (minus v/f) that have been alternated between East and West Armenian, and not others.

 

For a complete table of consonants, see here:

 

http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/li...pter1/ipa3.html

 

You'll notice that they pronounce all these consonants with /a/; so they say /ata/, /aba/ etc.

 

This is a fascinating site. I've been looking for something like this for while now. It also makes me realize that Armenians have been falsely accused of having ejectives. I always thought there was something strange about this, but now that I actually hear it, I know they're wrong. Armenians simply either aspirate these consonants or don't. That's the only difference, as far as I can see. Same for ts/c and &/ch. That was my little internal monologue.. Never mind.

Edited October 20, 2004 by nairi

[Gor-Gor]

I don't have any of the knowledge of linguistics or history of the language as any of you do, but I'd like to add my 2 cents.

 

One of my best friends is Hayastanci, and so I've often been confused as to why she seemed to just randomly change the pronounciation of letters from word to word. Sometimes she sounded just like me (a Western speaker) and sometimes not. One of our constant quarrels was why she pronounced "yeghounk" (fingernail) the way I did (ie, with a hard k sound instead of a g sound).

 

I always thought it was because she learned WA in school and was always surrounded by WA speakers, hence just mixing up the two forms of pronunciation. That is, until I heard her parents speak! Needless to say, they all make the "shift" between p/k, t/d, k/g.

 

So part 1 of my post is a 'thank you!' as I finally begin to understand the reasons behind this.

 

Part 2 is a question I pose, though I think this question is probably already inherently answered in all of your minds anyway: Is the fact that sometimes it's easier to pronounce b as p, g as k, d as t, etc one of the main reasons WA pronounciation developed the way it did? It seems to me that WA, having acknowledged that many of the consonants were being given more than 1 sound in speech, there was an effort to just go with the "easier" of the multiple sounds and make that sound the universal sound of the consonant letter. I don't mean to say it was a completely conscious decision. But it seems like this "easier off the tongue" reason and some other external factor(s) together is why WA evolved its pronunciation. What do you guys think? [Also, as you can see, I don't quite know the generally-accepted reasons that WA evolved its pronunciation system -- so I'd appreciate if someone could point me in the right direction. This has been bugging me for years!!]

 

And a final note: I'm not sure if any of you had realized (or had any way to realize), but I've noticed that in some instances, WA reverts to EA pronunciation. I used to have a list of a few examples, but I can't remember them now. Except for one!

 

The number "five"

 

In WA, we *should* say "hink" -- but instead, we say "hing"

 

Person 1: Jham@ kani eh?

Person 2: Jham@ hing eh.

 

This "incorrect" pronunciation also carries through when you say "hingin" (at five o'clock) or "hing ankam" (five times) or "hing oto" (five cars -- I know "oto" is not Armenian, but we use it anyway; on second thought, "hing inknasharjh" works here too lol). Point being, it seems whenever "hing" precedes a vowel sound, we pronounce it as "hing."

 

However, the pronunciation "corrects" itself when we say "hink had." At first look, this makes sense because "h" is not a vowel. But, in reality, we don't pronounce the "h" in regular speech -- it simply becomes "hink-ad." So then why the change to the "k" sound?? [Note: even when I say it slowly, it's still "hink had."] Interesting stuff!

 

There aren't very many of these "shifts" in WA -- but it sure is interesting that they exist. I'll try to think of some others...

[Gor-Gor]

Okay, I thought of another one.

 

To bathe, to shower. (loKanal -- the 3rd letter here is the 3rd letter of the alphabet)

 

Although the correct form is "lokanal," we generally shorten it to "loknal." Most, often, however, I hear it pronounced as "lognal," which is incorrect in WA (but correct in EA, I presume).

 

But when the noun is pronounced, it is correctly pronounced as with a K sound for the third letter, as "lokank."

 

Have I hijacked this thread enough?

[nairi]

Fascinating stuff Kor-Kor!! Really! Great observations and I think a great area for research. I'm sure a lot has already been written on everything that has already been said. I just need to find those books and papers...

 

Anyway, I don't have a straight out answer. All I can do is speculate.

 

Is the fact that sometimes it's easier to pronounce b as p, g as k, d as t, etc one of the main reasons WA pronounciation developed the way it did?

 

This is a great observation, but I think faulty. If that was the case then WA wouldn't have any voiced consonants, would it? In fact, it still does have b/g/d, so clearly there's something else at play here. What I don't know (yet ).

 

As for your "hing" observation, that is very interesting as well. I think one way to check this, is by changing at least 4 things and testing it out: 1. change the vowel and see what happens; 2. change the /h/ and see what happens; 3. put it before another word beginning with any of the letters of the alphabet and see what happens; 4. combine all the previous steps and see what happens.

 

Yes, it's a bit of work to go through the whole alphabet to try to see what's happening, but it is one way to find out what's going on.

 

Also, /h/ is generally closely related to /r/ and /l/. What I mean is that they tend to act in similar ways. Try replacing /h/ with /r/ (as YeRevan; the last /r/ in the alphabet) and /l/ and see what happens. If the same thing happens, then there's obviously a pattern...

[nairi]

Btw, in EA it's loghanal

 

Well, seems like there is a pattern after all. As I said: /l/ tends to act in the same way as /h/ Test it out and see what happens. Do post your results here. I'm fascinated to see what happened!

[Arpa]

Btw, in EA it's loghanal

 

Well, seems like there is a pattern after all. As I said: /l/ tends to act in the same way as /h/ Test it out and see what happens. Do post your results here. I'm fascinated to see what happened!

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Even if I was born and raised in the WA, I am not ashamed to confess to being a born-again adherent to EA linguistics. Not really. I am an unabashed follower of the School/Cult of Mashtots.

However, I must state thet in this case the westerners have it.

We do distinguish between "loghal/loghanal" and "lognal/loganal".

Whereas the latter is used to describe the act of "washing/bathing", the former is exclusivley used to describe the act of "swimming/floating".

There is no convincing explanation about the latter except that it may be from "ghughel"(the L interchanged with GH)or even "souzel", to sink/float. Some have even tried to explain it by "dzoukel" (fish).The former is plainly explained to be from the Greek "luvo" and the Latin "lave", to wash, to bathe.

How did the the Greek W and the Latin V end up as the Armenian G ?

Don't ask me!!!

Ask our resident expert of physical/physiological phonetics.

Now, who may that be??!!

Both "lvanal" and "loghanal" hail back to proto-IE origin defying both hellenization and latinization.

In the meantime, "logna/loganal/loganq/lval/lvanal" is "bathe/wash" and "loghal/loghel/loghanal" is "swim".

 

Note the G(im) and GH(at).

 

Too close for comfort, a comfortable immersion the bath-tub?

 

No matter what; Don't "throw away the baby out with the bathwater"!!!

[Harut]

However, I must state thet in this case the westerners have it.

We do distinguish between "loghal/loghanal" and "lognal/loganal".

Whereas the latter is used to describe the act of  "washing/bathing", the former is exclusivley used to describe the act of "swimming/floating".

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the destinction exists in EA too, but in 'loganq'/'loganq @ndunel' (take a bath) form. however, it is probably only used on tv by 'culturakan' people and in school essays.