Armenian

Last Updated: 2020-06-29

Background

Language Family: Indo-European / Armenian

• Where Armenian dialects diverge, I will be preferring Eastern Armenian, since it is the most widely spoken variant of the language.
• Speakers of Armenian reside in a multitude of places. They include Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia, the United States, France, Argentina, and many more countries.

Phonology

Consonants

• The plain voiceless stops glottalize in some dialects, but these are generally considered to be nonstandard realizations (Dum-Tragut 2009, 17–18).
• Minimal pairs of the phonemes below can be found in Dum-Tragut (2009) (pp. 18-20).

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stops	p pʰ b	t tʰ d			k kʰ ɡ
Affricates		ts tsʰ dz	tʃ tʃʰ dʒ
Fricatives	f v	s z	ʃ ʒ			χ ʁ	h
Nasals	m	n
Flaps		ɾ
Trills		r
Approximants		l		j
Note: Where two phonemes share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced. Where three phonemes share a cell, they are ordered voiceless, aspirated, and voiced.

Vowels

• Armenian does not have diphthongs, but it does have pseudo-diphthongs through vowel-glide combinations (Dum-Tragut 2009, 21).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	ɛ	ə	ɔ
Low			ɑ

Alphabet

• Older forms of the orthography used to include ⟨ւ⟩ as a standalone character representing /w/, but that has fallen out of usage; the sound has diverged, with different realizations of it merging with either ⟨վ⟩ /v/ or ⟨ու⟩ /u/ (Dum-Tragut 2009, 12).

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
ա	/ɑ/
բ	/b/
գ	/ɡ/
դ	/d/
ե	/ɛ/
զ	/z/
է	/ɛ/
ը	/ə/
թ	/tʰ/
ժ	/ʒ/
ի	/i/
լ	/l/
խ	/χ/
ծ	/ts/
կ	/k/
հ	/h/
ձ	/dz/
ղ	/ʁ/
ճ	/tʃ/
մ	/m/
յ	/j/
ն	/n/
շ	/ʃ/
ո	/ɔ/
չ	/tʃʰ/
պ	/p/
ջ	/dʒ/
ռ	/r/
ս	/s/
վ; ւ	/v/	⟨ւ⟩: rare, normally existing in combination with ⟨ո⟩
տ	/t/
ր	/ɾ/
ց	/tsʰ/
ու	/u/
փ	/pʰ/
ք	/kʰ/
և	/ɛv/
օ	/ɔ/
ֆ	/f/

Lenition Rules

• The /ɛv/ cluster typically approximantizes to [ɛʋ] [Dum-Tragut (2009), p. 20].
• In a few specific words, /h/ deletes after /ɾ/ (Dum-Tragut 2009, 28).
• In colloquial speech, /ɾ/ deletes in the coda of closed syllables (ibid.).

Misc. Rules

• /u/ centralizes to [ʉ] after /j/ (Dum-Tragut 2009, 14).
• [j] is inserted before /ɛ/ when it follows /ɑ/ or is word-initial (Dum-Tragut 2009, 14–15).
• [ʋ] is inserted before /ɔ/ in the same circumstances (Dum-Tragut 2009, 16).
• [j] is inserted before /ɛv/ word-initially (Dum-Tragut 2009, 20).
• Stops devoice and aspirate in the following circumstances (Dum-Tragut 2009, 22–23; Sakayan 2007, 37, 60, 83):
  • After /ɾ/, usually
  • In postvocalic final or intervocalic positions, occasionally
  • Following nasals with the same place of articulation
• Voiceless stops sometimes devoice when followed by sibilants (ibid.).
• In consonant clusters, fricatives undergo voicing assimilation, and affricates undergo both voicing and aspiration assimilation (Dum-Tragut 2009, 24).
• /ɾ/ trills to [r] before /n/ (Dum-Tragut 2009, 27).
• /n/ assimilates to the place of following stops or affricates (Dum-Tragut 2009, 19, 27).
• Final flaps palatalize in some dialects, especially in the east (Dum-Tragut 2009, 28).
• Alveolar stops palatalize before front vowels or /j/ (Dum-Tragut 2009, 29).
• /l/ palatalizes preconsonantally (ibid.).
• During the inflection process, non-high back vowels delete in some circumstances (Dum-Tragut 2009, 39).
• Initial /i/ reduces to [ə] in monosyllabic words (Dum-Tragut 2009, 41).
• Unstressed high vowels reduce to [ə] or delete during word formation and inflection (Dum-Tragut 2009, 41–42; Kozintseva 1995, 6).
• Schwas are frequently inserted to syllabify consonant clusters (Dum-Tragut 2009, 30).
• Medial /e/ raises to [i] in inflected forms of monosyllabic roots (Dum-Tragut 2009, 40).

References

Dum-Tragut, Jasmine. 2009. Armenian: Modern Eastern Armenian. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Kozintseva, Natalia. 1995. Modern Eastern Armenian. Lincom Europa.

Sakayan, Dora. 2007. Eastern Armenian for the English-Speaking World: A Contrastive Approach. Yerevan State University Press.