Classical Armenian – Morphosyntactic structures, Part 3
Kim, Ronald I.
Kölligan, Daniel
The topics of this lecture are the usage of copulas and pronouns, negation, and the verbal categories of tense, aspect, and mood.
 Hello, my name is Daniel Kulligan. Welcome to this third lecture on classical Armenian syntax. Here's a roadmap of what we will see in this section. We will take a look at nonverbal predication, the various copular verbs that Armenian has, the types of negation, the use of pronouns and the basic functions of its verbal categories. So first let's have a look at copular verbs. There is a defective verb go, the only verb with a present stem suffix o in Armenian that forms various present tense forms like go, the third singular, go on the third plural and there's an imperfect go-yoo, go-yin and an infinitive goll and a subjunctive gootsee which goes back to go-e-t-ee with the subjunctive morphium it's that has been laxicalized to perhaps it could be. In the indicative and infinitive it is used as a verbum substantivum so it predicates existence there is there are. So here's an example from Jeznik go, henar, torutian, apashcharutiam so there exists there is a means of forgiveness namely by repentance. Go is a combinable with locative predication here's an example from Luke, dev go in a ma, there's a devil inside him and it is combinable with a genitive for possessive predication so in Matthew 820 arh ve sots vords agon so the foxes have holes to hide in so literally there are there exist holes of foxes. The other verb em that is the first singular present is em is used for predications of properties so with adjectives and nouns for possession, location and existence. Its arist is applied by the verb linim to become so let's have a look at how this works we have property for example yesem gabriel so I am Gabriel quite simply we have possession with the genitive as in the following example barnen voce em so this is the possessive the second first person singular of the personal pronoun so and here is our copular verb and here we have hor that is the genitive of the word for father so this word is not mine but my fathers. It can also occur that the possessor is marked for dative in Armenian we find this for example in the Bible translation we have vorum anun e nazaret so a city whose name was Nazareth and here we have the dative of the relative pronoun vorum and note that this is of course similar to what we have in the Greek so once more the question arises if this is a calc of Greek syntax but things are not that easy because there are mismatches both ways so I'll just give an example here for an Armenian dative corresponding to a Greek genitive this is mark 14 gyurun vorum anun e ge semani so a place called ge semani and in the Greek so here we have the Armenian dative and in the Greek we have a genitive so and there are also examples for mismatches the other way around in his fabulous book on the Armenian Bible his edition and dictionary Künstler in 1984 points out the difference the different translations of the Greek Tinos estai will be and Tinos guinatai becomes with the genitive and the dative respectively in parallel passages have a look at these examples here so in Luke we have um inutane linitii kin so Tinos auton guinatai yune so in the resurrection therefore whose wife will the woman be so who had been married to seven subsequent husbands and in Matthew we have yutane yuritane kin with the genitive so this seems to correspond to Tinos guinatai and Tinos estai in the Greek version probably of course the dative can be understood as marking the recipient to whom will she be given and the genitive is marking the possessor whose will she be and for this we can compare of course dative marking the experiencer with the copula verb in other passages so for example usti inz ice so why is this granted to me or why does this happen to me translating simply the Greek potan moitutor for location with this copula verb there are many examples of course like in Mark 2 2 yutane he's in the house or existence which can also be expressed with this verb iskizbani eir banan so the beginning of the Gospel of John in or from the beginning was the word so here with an interesting ablative in the Armenian version perhaps since M is so frequent it is interesting to note where it is omitted and this is the case on the one hand in relative clauses frequently not always but it does occur here's an example from acts of the apostles jikon khanayapetan jevvvorundne maa so relative vorund with and ne maa the dative locative of the third person pronoun so those who were with him but were is not present in the sentence itself and also in negated clauses we frequently find lack of the copula so in yesnik so the first Armenian theologian we have a chevurik vodimiji not yet is there in brackets anywhere a son present so this is simply a nominal clause as it were so these are two positions where this very frequent verb is actually missing in Armenian in many instances the third verb which is relevant here is come which as a lexical verb means stand originally so we can see this still in the Bible translation vor is no vav kain so those who were standing around him so this translates the Greek ton pares de coton but it tends to be desamanticized and then indicates location more generally for example it can also translate a verb like sit the Greek catissas in the second example on this slide kaya Jesus and the name guns anakin so Jesus was sitting opposite the Treasury so kaya for the Greek catissas and so there are other instances where it can even translate lie so ur kaya marminen Jesus see so where Jesus body was lying so in the Greek word a cater and in Armenian we have kaya so the verb that originally means stand and then finally it can also be used as a copula denoting existence possession location and as a copula in the stricter sense so we have car jeves terry there is still room at the top of the steam in that meaning that there is something present possession this is quite a nice example where we have both the verb em which we've just seen and the verb come to stand next to each other so we're it's in so this is the subjunctive of em be we're it's in hand edzik you have a little kite say kada cool and here we have other verb stand literally and both are used to translate as we can see the Greek echo the participle of to have so he who has due to nix and who has some food should give it to those who have nothing so two different verbs translating the same Greek element with similar meanings here in the Armenian it is also used of course for location so war e geres amanns kites in so those who were in the graves hoy entoys men in it mei ois in the Greek and simply as a copula verb so this is the last example here go for cherry horse car as jens moses there's one who is your prosecutor Moses so we have all the functions that we see in the other verbs also in come again it is interesting to see perhaps where we don't have copula verbs where we might expect them from other languages so this is the case in the negation of existence which can be expressed by a simple nominal clause with the proclitic negative particle cheer and the indefinite pronoun ick anything so this is the example here in Luke 817 chick inch tzatzuk vorvoch jait litzi so there is nothing hidden that will not be made manifest so here we have a form chick there is nothing and we will see this word again when we talk about nominal derivation because that is also the basis for some derivatives interestingly if you compare the parallel text in mark 422 there the translator uses the copula verb which is of course is always a possibility so cheer that is the negative particle and a the present of the verb to be in a similar sentence nothing is hidden except to be made manifest and we've just seen that there are basically two particles for factual negation that is watch and the proclitic cheer so chickamim I do not want of watch ki take zorren you do not know the day so these are the two basic forms of factual negation for prohibitions there is me used together with the subjunctive or the imperative presently prohibitive that you've already heard about in the section on verbal morphology in the latter case so with the imperative forms only the present imperative is used positive imperatives always occur in the heiress so here are two examples me yirkin cheer do not fear so this is yirkin chim to be afraid and the imperative form of that and importantly the subjunctive is also used as a future tense so there are instances where we can differentiate between the texts the temporal and the modal use of the subjunctive by looking at the negation so watch and me of course and differentiate between the two so we're having Luke 16 for example watch Havanist sin which is most likely a factual negation they will not be convinced so even if someone should rise from the dead they won't believe it they won't be convinced which would be different if this were me which would mean they shall not they should not believe this or should not be convinced I mean it has negative concord so when we talk about negation it doesn't cancel negative meanings if you add more negative particles so if you look at the Busan run which uses this feature quite frequently for emphasis of course watch me walk watch a pretzuz on air so nobody survived so not one anyone not survived now so nobody survived at all or watch menats eat not sunny yeah watch me which is a very formulaic phrase that we find frequently in this text so not remained of them not even one and here's an example where we have a kind of addition of negative particles to some extent and the whole phrase of course is simply negative so this is about a missionary who's not very successful and so he tries to evangelize people but not one of them could keep in mind a single thing of what he had heard not a word not half a word not a minimal racket not a trace and here we have watch walk so this is nobody this is reinforced with watch me watch not even one watch me but not a word watch case bunny not half a word watch do isn't he shut up inch so not a minimal record watch Nishmarans watch carrain inch on a committee they could not keep it on a committee in their mind so this simply reiterates and emphasizes the negative meaning at all Armenian is a pro-drop language so marking person on the verb and the nominative of personal pronouns is used for problematic purposes so for example when they are in focus position when they're emphasized so he had two examples do get Luis Ashari so you are the light of the world or in contrast contrasting a context nah air truck so he was a burning lamb and Duke Kamitseruk Tsenshal and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light so that is the usual way to use the pronouns the nominative forms of the pronouns in Armenian and coreferential pronouns of course may be dropped in coordinated predicates so here's an example artain halatain as no sayevs bananaein and here is no sa is our object pronoun and that of course is the object of all three verbs predicates that we have in this sentence now let's have a look at grammatical categories of the verb we've heard this already in the section on the verbal morphology so just as a short repetition we have a basically distinction between a present and an heiress stem and from the former the present and the imperfect tense I derived and from the latter the heiress so the perfective past and the perfect and the blue perfect there is no future transformation we've just mentioned this so usually for future time reference either the present indicative but mostly more frequently the subjunctive is used and mostly the heiress subjunctive which in traditional Armenian grammatical terminology is simply called the future for that reason because this is its most frequent function the heiress indicative is always a past tense so the a spectral opposition perfective as against imperfective is pertinent as the relation between heiress imperfect in the indicative and present heiress in the subjunctive there is an infinitive which is a spectrally neutral although it is derived usually from the present stem but it does not contrast with any other infinitive formation as it does for example in Greek where you have a present infinitive leuane and an heiress infinitive leusae so this is different in Armenian so let's have a look at the basic functions of these categories the present tense can of course refer to the moment of speech to general states of affairs and as I've just said also to the future so in example or examples for the letter cases are given here on this slide so there is somebody coming after me so he will come after me who is mightier than I am or from yes Nick your room of war utes and put a lot of ruin in him in a word meranis so on that day that you eat from the fruit of the street that day you will die and here we simply have present tense forms referring to future events the present tense is rather rare in past contexts so what's in grammars is called a historical present sometimes in the Gospels they are often translated by imperfect or heiress if they are interpreted as perfected by the translators and not as presence so here's an example of a Greek present our fiasin translated as an heiress in Armenian so we have our fiasin out on the diabolos that have left him and apa yet or is not satana in the Armenian version so present translated as heiress in this case this is another example where in contrast to the one we've just seen the Greek presence are translated as imperfect forms so this of course always depends on the interpretation that the Armenian translator makes of the aspectual distinctions in his language and in the Greek original text so here we have a lot of I ferontes twice present tense forms translated as Gaia Arnau Berein so they came and brought a paralytic to him so both options are of course possible as an exception to what I've just said there are two verbs that occur with some frequency as historical presence and these are our sem and gum so the word for say and the word for come our sem in the first case when our same is used as a speech introduction there's a strong tendency to coordinate an heiress of a preceding verb with a present tense of a sem while it occurs in the imperfect if the preceding verb is also an imperfect so let's look at two examples for this we have pataschani et yev a sé so answer gave so this is a typical light verb construction that is so frequent in Armenian we'll see that later again and then here we have the present a sem say of the verb in the third person singular in this case so this is one frequent combination and the other instance is with the imperfect in Jose and your board come you have a ser so he was talking to your brother and he said and so this is a kind of 90% rule one might say where most frequently these two combinations occur so what we actually don't find or just very very rarely find our cases with an imperfect and then a present tense of a sem so that doesn't seem to be very frequent the other verb the historical present of gum mostly occurs in sentence initial position frequently introducing new reference into the discourse so it acts as a kind of stage direction which is a bit outside the narrative itself and once more we've mentioned this already Moises chorena Tsy is an author who uses the historical present more frequently generally not just with these two verbs this may be due to his preference for Greek historiography as a stylistic model where this use of the present is of course common okay we have here one example for this gun and word sentence initial position gun you parking of my know r so his brothers and his mother came wishing to see him so here we have our present form of this verb introducing new reference into the discourse okay the arist now coming to the spectral distinction in the past the arist usually depicts an event as located as a specific at a specific point in the past whereas the imperfect is neutral with regard to this so it allows the attribution of an event to one or more points in the past the imperfective thus frequently describes a past event coinciding with another event in the arist so there are some examples for this here on the slide so Minch der Anzaneer and ein Jesus set here and Nora Kourgirku Agar hakein jev asain so and as Jesus passed on from there to Blemann followed him crying aloud so here we have passing along and crying and saying coinciding with this and also with the event of following it is of course used for describing habitual events so as in this example Ararakir an imperfect of Ararakim to shout in a context night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out so here we have our imperfect marking a habitual or repeated event in the past so as you would expect it from a well-behaved imperfective aspect in an aspectual system and of course it may describe continued events so this is the next example here mark 10 48 so he began to cry out and say have mercy on me and people rebuked him telling him to be silent but he cried out all the more and said the same thing once again so here we have the same form again describing something that goes on for some time more and is not finished in contrast to this the errors described in event as located at a specific point in the past so for example Githem to know and the errors this Githat see I knew at that moment or I realized so in Luke 8 46 for example I see Jesus Oman merdits of yes can see Githat see he is a routine alien so Jesus said someone touched me for I perceived at that moment in the past that power has gone out from me so here this coincides with the Greek heiress egg known so in this instance both languages actually have the same aspect form but this is not always the case we've already seen this I mean it is of course independent of what Greek does with its a spectral system in contrast to this we can look at this example with Githain an imperfect you have no care what you take in his bun and but they didn't understand the saying and were afraid to ask him so this is something that of course is a state of affairs that lasts for a longer time or is not located at a specific moment so because they didn't understand this for quite some time now finally let's have a look at the Armenian perfect the Armenian perfect do you know it's a state which results from a previous action or event and obtains a reference time that is the present in the perfect and the past in the plural perfect one may describe it in the terminology of Nadia Kov and by be as a resultative let's have some examples for the perfect and how it typically works so the verb to come near is derived from Mards near so Mards annam to come close and the perfect means to have come near that is to be near so in the first example merzi alle arke et jun jegnitz to approach this is our participle this is our copula verb and this forms the perfect tense and the overall meaning of this construction is the kingdom of heaven is close by it has approached it is near now and in Luke this is the story of the prodigal son of course ice for the in merriall air so this son of mine was dead so this is the participle of Meranim to die and this is the imperfect of to be so this together forms the plural perfect tense and it has a meaning of a state in the past and you know from the story of course but he came alive again he is alive now so this need not imply that the state still holds it at the moment of speaking in the case of the plural perfect now Leonie in his treatment of the Armenian perfect has discussed the use of heiress and perfect forms with some nice examples that I would like to show so for example when Saint Paul talks about the death and resurrection of Christ when talking about the former the Armenian translator uses the heiress to report an event at some point in the past without making any implication about the state of affairs at the moment of speech so we have Christos was in Merrav so Christ died for us at some specific point in the past closed event and one may assume that the perfect would not be a good choice in this instance as it would imply that the subject is still dead at the moment of speech which would be contrary of course to the speaker's intention in this case who is preaching after the resurrection of Christ and in contrast to this the translator uses the perfect when he talks about the resurrected Christ to indicate that he is alive at the moment of speech note that the Greek version has an airstear just as in the preceding example so again the Armenian use is independent of course from the Greek it does not copy simply the choice of aspect stamps that we find in the Greek text so here in this example we have Christos Harutsiale so Christ has risen from the dead and the implication is is alive now at the moment of speaking now a special feature of the Armenian perfect is that it uses genitive subjects we have already heard about this in the section on verbal morphology in the case of transitive verbs of course then this may highlight if we have a transitive verb either the state of the logical subject or the object or both so let's have a look at some examples for this in the first case the state of the subject seems to be implied or highlighted Vojicee and Tertial there so here is our participle for the verb to read and her name and here we have our genitive subjects so the logical subject of the clause mark for genitive because read is a transitive verb and the discussion is about haven't you read that is don't you know because you have read it what David did when he was hungry etc and so on so the important point here is that are you not well informed about this story because you have read it at some point in the past so this is about the mental state as it were of the people Jesus is discussing with at this moment of course the other way is possible too to indicate the state of the object and we find this on this slide mark 16 Tavalli tzuciall er esveemann i gerismaneen so here we have an unexpressed agent and simply the object is highlighted of course present in the sentence so es veemann is our object the stone and this is the verb to roll away so somebody had rolled away the stone from the grave and the agent here doesn't have anything to do with this state of affairs which focuses the state of the stone outside the Bible translation the participle frequently occurs without the copula and is used as a simple narrative verb form usually obeying the same principles of case marking which we have already seen an example for this is with the intransitive verb to appear from Agatangalos tesil yehreviall yas tu tsoh ivra kerta gavurin so a vision from God appear to the king's sister and that is the complete sentence so there is no copula or anything else anywhere so then we get a new sentence and this is something we find quite frequently in especially Armenian historians telling stories just by using the participle right and here we have an example with an intransitive verb and a genitive subject i gerov havonution zekyal amenetsun so here we have the participle of kam ekyal and here we have amenetsun our subject in the genitive although this is an intransitive verb this is not the most frequent type that we find as I said the regular type is to have a transitive verb and a genitive subject but that also occurs already in classical Armenian just for comparison let's have a short look finally at modern eastern Armenian the resultant function of the participle in Iyal that we've just seen is taken over by different form namely the participle in atz so there are forms like basnel separate bashnats separated garel right gharats written it goes back to a form in atz in classical Armenian already which served mainly as a verbal noun so for example there is kotorel to slaughter and kotorats slaughter or it formed denominal adjectives like yerkjur fear and yerkjurats fearful so here two examples with this form the participle with resultant function girkögeratse the book is written oh yes nestatsem I am sitting so two forms with atz derived from the respective verbs gerem and nestim that we've already come across together with the participle in L which developed out of the classical form in Iyal by regular sound change modern Armenian modern eastern Armenian forms the perfect tense together with a copula and this denotes an action in the past with current relevance so for example yes I'd girkögeratselem I have read this book the classical perfect in Iyal which in most cases has a resultative meaning has thus developed into a perfect tense its original function is being taken over by the participle in atz these two examples taken from Nijalkov show that the temporal adverb der still is incompatible with the terminative verb to fall in the perfect as the letter does not express duration up to the present but it is compatible with the resultative in atz expressing a continuing state so it is okay to say nadir and katse so he is one nadir and katse he is still fallen still lying on the ground but it's not okay to say nadir and kele with this form he has still fallen so we see a difference here between the classical and the modern language okay in this session we have seen nonverbal predication the copula verbs that Armenian has the various forms of negation the use of pronouns and the basic functions of its verbal categories including the aspecial opposition in the past and the use of the perfect thank you for your attention
 Hello, my name is Daniel Kulligan. Welcome to this third lecture on classical  Armenian syntax. Here's a roadmap of what we will see in this section. We will  take a look at nonverbal predication, the various copular verbs that Armenian  has, the types of negation, the use of pronouns and the basic functions of its  verbal categories. So first let's have a look at copular verbs. There is a  defective verb go, the only verb with a present stem suffix o in Armenian that  forms various present tense forms like go, the third singular, go on the third  plural and there's an imperfect go-yoo, go-yin and an infinitive goll and a  subjunctive gootsee which goes back to go-e-t-ee with the subjunctive morphium  it's that has been laxicalized to perhaps it could be. In the indicative and  infinitive it is used as a verbum substantivum so it predicates existence  there is there are. So here's an example from Jeznik go, henar, torutian,  apashcharutiam so there exists there is a means of forgiveness namely by  repentance. Go is a combinable with locative predication here's an example  from Luke, dev go in a ma, there's a devil inside him and it is combinable  with a genitive for possessive predication so in Matthew 820  arh ve sots vords agon so the foxes have holes to hide in so literally there are  there exist holes of foxes. The other verb em that is the first singular  present is em is used for predications of properties so with adjectives  and nouns for possession, location and existence. Its arist is applied by the  verb linim to become so let's have a look at how this works we have property  for example yesem gabriel so I am Gabriel quite simply we have possession  with the genitive as in the following example barnen voce em so this is the  possessive the second first person singular of the personal pronoun so and  here is our copular verb and here we have hor that is the genitive of the word  for father so this word is not mine but my fathers. It can also occur that the  possessor is marked for dative in Armenian we find this for example in the  Bible translation we have vorum anun e nazaret so a city whose name was Nazareth  and here we have the dative of the relative pronoun vorum and note that  this is of course similar to what we have in the Greek so once more the  question arises if this is a calc of Greek syntax but things are not that  easy because there are mismatches both ways so I'll just give an example here  for an Armenian dative corresponding to a Greek genitive this is mark 14  gyurun vorum anun e ge semani so a place called ge semani and in the Greek so  here we have the Armenian dative and in the Greek we have a genitive so and  there are also examples for mismatches the other way around in his fabulous  book on the Armenian Bible his edition and dictionary Künstler in 1984 points  out the difference the different translations of the Greek Tinos estai  will be and Tinos guinatai becomes with the genitive and the dative  respectively in parallel passages have a look at these examples here so in Luke  we have um inutane linitii kin so Tinos auton guinatai yune so in the  resurrection therefore whose wife will the woman be so who had been married to  seven subsequent husbands and in Matthew we have  yutane yuritane kin with the genitive so this seems to correspond to Tinos  guinatai and Tinos estai in the Greek version probably of course the dative  can be understood as marking the recipient to whom will she be given and  the genitive is marking the possessor whose will she be and for this we can  compare of course dative marking the experiencer with the copula verb in other  passages so for example usti inz ice so why is this granted to me or why does  this happen to me translating simply the Greek potan moitutor  for location with this copula verb there are many examples of course like in  Mark 2 2 yutane he's in the house or existence which can also be expressed  with this verb iskizbani eir banan so the beginning of the Gospel of John in or  from the beginning was the word so here with an interesting  ablative in the Armenian version perhaps since M is so frequent it is  interesting to note where it is omitted and this is the case on the one hand in  relative clauses frequently not always but it does occur here's an example from  acts of the apostles jikon khanayapetan jevvvorundne maa so relative  vorund with and ne maa the dative locative of the third person pronoun so  those who were with him but were is not present in the sentence itself and also  in negated clauses we frequently find lack of the copula so in yesnik so the  first Armenian theologian we have a chevurik vodimiji not yet is there in  brackets anywhere a son present so this is simply a nominal clause as it were so  these are two positions where this very frequent verb is actually missing in  Armenian in many instances the third verb which is relevant here is come which  as a lexical verb means stand originally so we can see this still in the Bible  translation vor is no vav kain so those who were standing around him so this  translates the Greek ton pares de coton but it tends to be  desamanticized and then indicates location more generally for example it  can also translate a verb like sit the Greek catissas in the second example on  this slide kaya Jesus and the name guns anakin so Jesus was sitting opposite the  Treasury so kaya for the Greek catissas and so there are other instances where  it can even translate lie so ur kaya marminen Jesus see so where Jesus body  was lying so in the Greek word a cater and in Armenian we have kaya so the  verb that originally means stand and then finally it can also be used as a  copula denoting existence possession location and as a copula in the  stricter sense so we have car jeves terry there is still room at the top of  the steam in that meaning that there is something present possession this is  quite a nice example where we have both the verb em which we've just seen and  the verb come to stand next to each other so we're it's in so this is the  subjunctive of em be we're it's in hand edzik you have a little kite say  kada cool and here we have other verb stand literally and both are used to  translate as we can see the Greek echo the participle of to have so he who has  due to nix and who has some food should give it to those who have nothing so  two different verbs translating the same Greek element with similar meanings  here in the Armenian it is also used of course for location so war e  geres amanns kites in so those who were in the graves hoy entoys men in it  mei ois in the Greek and simply as a copula verb so this is the last example  here go for cherry horse car as jens moses there's one who is your  prosecutor Moses so we have all the functions that we see in the other  verbs also in come again it is interesting to see perhaps where we  don't have copula verbs where we might expect them from other languages so this  is the case in the negation of existence which can be expressed by a simple  nominal clause with the proclitic negative particle cheer and the  indefinite pronoun ick anything so this is the example here in Luke 817  chick inch tzatzuk vorvoch jait litzi so there is nothing hidden that will not  be made manifest so here we have a form chick there is nothing and we will see  this word again when we talk about nominal derivation because that is also  the basis for some derivatives interestingly if you compare the  parallel text in mark 422 there the translator uses the copula verb which is  of course is always a possibility so cheer that is the negative particle and  a the present of the verb to be in a similar sentence nothing is hidden  except to be made manifest and we've just seen that there are basically two  particles for factual negation that is watch and the proclitic cheer so  chickamim I do not want of watch ki take zorren you do not know the day so these  are the two basic forms of factual negation for prohibitions there is me  used together with the subjunctive or the imperative presently prohibitive  that you've already heard about in the section on verbal morphology in the  latter case so with the imperative forms only the present imperative is used  positive imperatives always occur in the heiress so here are two examples me  yirkin cheer do not fear so this is yirkin chim to be afraid and the  imperative form of that and importantly the subjunctive is also used as a  future tense so there are instances where we can differentiate between the  texts the temporal and the modal use of the subjunctive by looking at the  negation so watch and me of course and differentiate between the two so we're  having Luke 16 for example watch Havanist sin which is most likely a  factual negation they will not be convinced so even if someone should rise  from the dead they won't believe it they won't be convinced which would be  different if this were me which would mean they shall not they should not  believe this or should not be convinced I mean it has negative concord so when we  talk about negation it doesn't cancel negative meanings if you add more  negative particles so if you look at the Busan run which uses this feature  quite frequently for emphasis of course watch me walk watch a pretzuz on air so  nobody survived so not one anyone not survived now so nobody survived at all  or watch menats eat not sunny yeah watch me which is a very formulaic phrase  that we find frequently in this text so not remained of them not even one and  here's an example where we have a kind of addition of negative particles to some  extent and the whole phrase of course is simply negative so this is about a  missionary who's not very successful and so he tries to evangelize people but  not one of them could keep in mind a single thing of what he had heard not a  word not half a word not a minimal racket not a trace and here we have  watch walk so this is nobody this is reinforced with watch me watch not even  one watch me but not a word watch case bunny not half a word watch do isn't  he shut up inch so not a minimal record watch  Nishmarans watch carrain inch on a committee they could not keep it  on a committee in their mind so this simply reiterates and emphasizes the  negative meaning at all Armenian is a pro-drop language so marking person on  the verb and the nominative of personal pronouns is used for problematic  purposes so for example when they are in focus position when they're emphasized  so he had two examples do get Luis Ashari so you are the light of the world or in  contrast contrasting a context nah air truck so he was a burning lamb and Duke  Kamitseruk Tsenshal and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light so  that is the usual way to use the pronouns the nominative forms of the  pronouns in Armenian and coreferential pronouns of course may be dropped in  coordinated predicates so here's an example  artain halatain as no sayevs bananaein and here is no sa is our object pronoun  and that of course is the object of all three verbs predicates that we have in  this sentence now let's have a look at grammatical categories of the verb  we've heard this already in the section on the verbal morphology so just as a  short repetition we have a basically distinction between a present and an  heiress stem and from the former the present and the imperfect tense I  derived and from the latter the heiress so the perfective past and the perfect  and the blue perfect there is no future transformation we've just mentioned this  so usually for future time reference either the present indicative but mostly  more frequently the subjunctive is used and mostly the heiress subjunctive which  in traditional Armenian grammatical terminology is simply called the future  for that reason because this is its most frequent function the heiress  indicative is always a past tense so the a spectral opposition perfective as  against imperfective is pertinent as the relation between heiress imperfect in  the indicative and present heiress in the subjunctive there is an infinitive  which is a spectrally neutral although it is derived usually from the present  stem but it does not contrast with any other infinitive formation as it does  for example in Greek where you have a present infinitive leuane and an  heiress infinitive leusae so this is different in Armenian so let's have a  look at the basic functions of these categories the present tense can of  course refer to the moment of speech to general states of affairs and as I've  just said also to the future so in example or examples for the letter cases  are given here on this slide so there is somebody coming after me so he will  come after me who is mightier than I am or from yes Nick your room of war  utes and put a lot of ruin in him in a word meranis so on that day that you eat  from the fruit of the street that day you will die and here we simply have  present tense forms referring to future events the present tense is rather rare  in past contexts so what's in grammars is called a historical present sometimes  in the Gospels they are often translated by imperfect or heiress if  they are interpreted as perfected by the translators and not as presence so  here's an example of a Greek present our fiasin translated as an heiress in  Armenian so we have our fiasin out on the diabolos that have left him and  apa yet or is not satana in the Armenian version so present translated as heiress  in this case this is another example where in contrast to the one we've just  seen the Greek presence are translated as imperfect forms so this of course  always depends on the interpretation that the Armenian translator makes of  the aspectual distinctions in his language and in the Greek original  text so here we have a lot of I ferontes twice present tense forms  translated as Gaia Arnau Berein so they came and brought a paralytic to him so  both options are of course possible as an exception to what I've just said there  are two verbs that occur with some frequency as historical presence and  these are our sem and gum so the word for say and the word for come our sem in  the first case when our same is used as a speech introduction there's a strong  tendency to coordinate an heiress of a preceding verb with a present tense of  a sem while it occurs in the imperfect if the preceding verb is also an imperfect  so let's look at two examples for this we have pataschani et yev a sé so  answer gave so this is a typical light verb construction that is so frequent in  Armenian we'll see that later again and then here we have the present a sem say  of the verb in the third person singular in this case so this is one frequent  combination and the other instance is with the imperfect in Jose and your  board come you have a ser so he was talking to your brother and he said and  so this is a kind of 90% rule one might say where most frequently these two  combinations occur so what we actually don't find or just very very rarely  find our cases with an imperfect and then a present tense of a sem so that  doesn't seem to be very frequent the other verb the historical present of gum  mostly occurs in sentence initial position frequently introducing new  reference into the discourse so it acts as a kind of stage direction which is a  bit outside the narrative itself and once more we've mentioned this already  Moises chorena Tsy is an author who uses the historical present more frequently  generally not just with these two verbs this may be due to his preference for  Greek historiography as a stylistic model where this use of the present is of  course common okay we have here one example for this gun and word sentence  initial position gun you parking of my know r so his brothers and his mother  came wishing to see him so here we have our present form of this verb introducing  new reference into the discourse okay the arist now coming to the  spectral distinction in the past the arist usually depicts an event as  located as a specific at a specific point in the past whereas the imperfect  is neutral with regard to this so it allows the attribution of an event to  one or more points in the past the imperfective thus frequently describes a  past event coinciding with another event in the arist so there are some  examples for this here on the slide so Minch der Anzaneer and ein Jesus  set here and Nora Kourgirku Agar hakein jev asain so and as Jesus passed on from  there to Blemann followed him crying aloud so here we have passing along and  crying and saying coinciding with this and also with the event of following it  is of course used for describing habitual events so as in this example  Ararakir an imperfect of Ararakim to shout in a context night and day among  the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out so here we have our  imperfect marking a habitual or repeated event in the past so as you would  expect it from a well-behaved imperfective aspect in an aspectual system  and of course it may describe continued events so this is the next example here  mark 10 48 so he began to cry out and say have mercy on me and people rebuked  him telling him to be silent but he cried out all the more and said the same  thing once again so here we have the same form again describing something that  goes on for some time more and is not finished in contrast to this the errors  described in event as located at a specific point in the past so for  example Githem to know and the errors this Githat see I knew at that moment or  I realized so in Luke 8 46 for example I see Jesus Oman merdits of yes  can see Githat see he is a routine alien so Jesus said someone touched me for I  perceived at that moment in the past that power has gone out from me so here  this coincides with the Greek heiress egg known so in this instance both  languages actually have the same aspect form but this is not always the case  we've already seen this I mean it is of course independent of what Greek does  with its a spectral system in contrast to this we can look at this example with  Githain an imperfect you have no care what you take in his bun and but they  didn't understand the saying and were afraid to ask him so this is something  that of course is a state of affairs that lasts for a longer time or is not  located at a specific moment so because they didn't understand this for quite  some time now finally let's have a look at the Armenian perfect the Armenian  perfect do you know it's a state which results from a previous action or event  and obtains a reference time that is the present in the perfect and the past in  the plural perfect one may describe it in the terminology of Nadia Kov and by be  as a resultative let's have some examples for the perfect and how it typically  works so the verb to come near is derived from Mards near so Mards annam to  come close and the perfect means to have come near that is to be near so in the  first example merzi alle arke et jun jegnitz to approach this is our  participle this is our copula verb and this forms the perfect tense and the  overall meaning of this construction is the kingdom of heaven is close by it has  approached it is near now and in Luke this is the story of the prodigal son  of course ice for the in merriall air so this son of mine was dead so this is the  participle of Meranim to die and this is the imperfect of to be so this together  forms the plural perfect tense and it has a meaning of a state in the past and  you know from the story of course but he came alive again he is alive now so  this need not imply that the state still holds it at the moment of speaking in  the case of the plural perfect now Leonie in his treatment of the Armenian  perfect has discussed the use of heiress and perfect forms with some nice  examples that I would like to show so for example when Saint Paul talks about  the death and resurrection of Christ when talking about the former the  Armenian translator uses the heiress to report an event at some point in the  past without making any implication about the state of affairs at the moment  of speech so we have Christos was in Merrav so Christ died for us at some  specific point in the past closed event and one may assume that the perfect  would not be a good choice in this instance as it would imply that the  subject is still dead at the moment of speech which would be contrary of course  to the speaker's intention in this case who is preaching after the resurrection  of Christ and in contrast to this the translator uses the perfect when he  talks about the resurrected Christ to indicate that he is alive at the moment  of speech note that the Greek version has an airstear just as in the preceding  example so again the Armenian use is independent of course from the Greek it  does not copy simply the choice of aspect stamps that we find in the Greek text  so here in this example we have Christos Harutsiale so Christ has risen from the  dead and the implication is is alive now at the moment of speaking now a  special feature of the Armenian perfect is that it uses genitive subjects we  have already heard about this in the section on verbal morphology in the  case of transitive verbs of course then this may highlight if we have a  transitive verb either the state of the logical subject or the object or both so  let's have a look at some examples for this in the first case the state of the  subject seems to be implied or highlighted Vojicee  and Tertial there so here is our participle for the verb to read and  her name and here we have our genitive subjects so the logical subject of the  clause mark for genitive because read is a transitive verb and the discussion is  about haven't you read that is don't you know because you have read it what  David did when he was hungry etc and so on so the important point here is that  are you not well informed about this story because you have read it at some  point in the past so this is about the mental state as it were of the people  Jesus is discussing with at this moment of course the other way is possible too  to indicate the state of the object and we find this on this slide mark 16  Tavalli tzuciall er esveemann i gerismaneen so here we have an unexpressed agent  and simply the object is highlighted of course present in the sentence so es  veemann is our object the stone and this is the verb to roll away so somebody  had rolled away the stone from the grave and the agent here doesn't have  anything to do with this state of affairs which focuses the state of the  stone outside the Bible translation the participle frequently occurs without  the copula and is used as a simple narrative verb form usually obeying  the same principles of case marking which we have already seen an example for  this is with the intransitive verb to appear from Agatangalos  tesil yehreviall yas tu tsoh ivra kerta gavurin so a vision from God appear to  the king's sister and that is the complete sentence so there is no copula  or anything else anywhere so then we get a new sentence and this is something  we find quite frequently in especially Armenian historians telling stories just  by using the participle right and here we have an example with an  intransitive verb and a genitive subject i gerov havonution zekyal amenetsun  so here we have the participle of kam ekyal and here we have amenetsun our  subject in the genitive although this is an intransitive verb this is not the  most frequent type that we find as I said the regular type is to have a  transitive verb and a genitive subject but that also occurs already in  classical Armenian just for comparison let's have a short look finally at modern  eastern Armenian the resultant function of the participle in Iyal that we've  just seen is taken over by different form namely the participle in atz so  there are forms like basnel separate bashnats separated garel right gharats  written it goes back to a form in atz in classical Armenian already which served  mainly as a verbal noun so for example there is kotorel to slaughter and  kotorats slaughter or it formed denominal adjectives like yerkjur fear and  yerkjurats fearful so here two examples with this form the participle with  resultant function girkögeratse the book is written oh yes nestatsem I am sitting  so two forms with atz derived from the respective verbs gerem and nestim that  we've already come across together with the participle in L which developed out  of the classical form in Iyal by regular sound change modern Armenian  modern eastern Armenian forms the perfect tense together with a copula and  this denotes an action in the past with current relevance so for example yes  I'd girkögeratselem I have read this book the classical perfect in Iyal which in  most cases has a resultative meaning has thus developed into a perfect tense  its original function is being taken over by the participle in atz these two  examples taken from Nijalkov show that the temporal adverb der still is  incompatible with the terminative verb to fall in the perfect as the letter does  not express duration up to the present but it is compatible with the  resultative in atz expressing a continuing state so it is okay to say  nadir and katse so he is one nadir and katse he is still fallen still lying on  the ground but it's not okay to say nadir and kele with this form he has  still fallen so we see a difference here between the classical and the modern  language okay in this session we have seen nonverbal predication the copula  verbs that Armenian has the various forms of negation the use of pronouns  and the basic functions of its verbal categories including the aspecial  opposition in the past and the use of the perfect  thank you for your attention
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Hello, my name is Daniel Kulligan. Welcome to this third lecture on classical Armenian syntax. Here's a roadmap of what we will see in this section. We will take a look at nonverbal predication, the various copular verbs that Armenian has, the types of negation, the use of pronouns and the basic functions of its verbal categories. So first let's have a look at copular verbs. There is a defective verb go, the only verb with a present stem suffix o in Armenian that forms various present tense forms like go, the third singular, go on the third plural and there's an imperfect go-yoo, go-yin and an infinitive goll and a subjunctive gootsee which goes back to go-e-t-ee with the subjunctive morphium it's that has been laxicalized to perhaps it could be. In the indicative and infinitive it is used as a verbum substantivum so it predicates existence there is there are. So here's an example from Jeznik go, henar, torutian, apashcharutiam so there exists there is a means of forgiveness namely by repentance. Go is a combinable with locative predication here's an example from Luke, dev go in a ma, there's a devil inside him and it is combinable with a genitive for possessive predication so in Matthew 820 arh ve sots vords agon so the foxes have holes to hide in so literally there are there exist holes of foxes. The other verb em that is the first singular present is em is used for predications of properties so with adjectives and nouns for possession, location and existence. Its arist is applied by the verb linim to become so let's have a look at how this works we have property for example yesem gabriel so I am Gabriel quite simply we have possession with the genitive as in the following example barnen voce em so this is the possessive the second first person singular of the personal pronoun so and here is our copular verb and here we have hor that is the genitive of the word for father so this word is not mine but my fathers. It can also occur that the possessor is marked for dative in Armenian we find this for example in the Bible translation we have vorum anun e nazaret so a city whose name was Nazareth and here we have the dative of the relative pronoun vorum and note that this is of course similar to what we have in the Greek so once more the question arises if this is a calc of Greek syntax but things are not that easy because there are mismatches both ways so I'll just give an example here for an Armenian dative corresponding to a Greek genitive this is mark 14 gyurun vorum anun e ge semani so a place called ge semani and in the Greek so here we have the Armenian dative and in the Greek we have a genitive so and there are also examples for mismatches the other way around in his fabulous book on the Armenian Bible his edition and dictionary Künstler in 1984 points out the difference the different translations of the Greek Tinos estai will be and Tinos guinatai becomes with the genitive and the dative respectively in parallel passages have a look at these examples here so in Luke we have um inutane linitii kin so Tinos auton guinatai yune so in the resurrection therefore whose wife will the woman be so who had been married to seven subsequent husbands and in Matthew we have yutane yuritane kin with the genitive so this seems to correspond to Tinos guinatai and Tinos estai in the Greek version probably of course the dative can be understood as marking the recipient to whom will she be given and the genitive is marking the possessor whose will she be and for this we can compare of course dative marking the experiencer with the copula verb in other passages so for example usti inz ice so why is this granted to me or why does this happen to me translating simply the Greek potan moitutor for location with this copula verb there are many examples of course like in Mark 2 2 yutane he's in the house or existence which can also be expressed with this verb iskizbani eir banan so the beginning of the Gospel of John in or from the beginning was the word so here with an interesting ablative in the Armenian version perhaps since M is so frequent it is interesting to note where it is omitted and this is the case on the one hand in relative clauses frequently not always but it does occur here's an example from acts of the apostles jikon khanayapetan jevvvorundne maa so relative vorund with and ne maa the dative locative of the third person pronoun so those who were with him but were is not present in the sentence itself and also in negated clauses we frequently find lack of the copula so in yesnik so the first Armenian theologian we have a chevurik vodimiji not yet is there in brackets anywhere a son present so this is simply a nominal clause as it were so these are two positions where this very frequent verb is actually missing in Armenian in many instances the third verb which is relevant here is come which as a lexical verb means stand originally so we can see this still in the Bible translation vor is no vav kain so those who were standing around him so this translates the Greek ton pares de coton but it tends to be desamanticized and then indicates location more generally for example it can also translate a verb like sit the Greek catissas in the second example on this slide kaya Jesus and the name guns anakin so Jesus was sitting opposite the Treasury so kaya for the Greek catissas and so there are other instances where it can even translate lie so ur kaya marminen Jesus see so where Jesus body was lying so in the Greek word a cater and in Armenian we have kaya so the verb that originally means stand and then finally it can also be used as a copula denoting existence possession location and as a copula in the stricter sense so we have car jeves terry there is still room at the top of the steam in that meaning that there is something present possession this is quite a nice example where we have both the verb em which we've just seen and the verb come to stand next to each other so we're it's in so this is the subjunctive of em be we're it's in hand edzik you have a little kite say kada cool and here we have other verb stand literally and both are used to translate as we can see the Greek echo the participle of to have so he who has due to nix and who has some food should give it to those who have nothing so two different verbs translating the same Greek element with similar meanings here in the Armenian it is also used of course for location so war e geres amanns kites in so those who were in the graves hoy entoys men in it mei ois in the Greek and simply as a copula verb so this is the last example here go for cherry horse car as jens moses there's one who is your prosecutor Moses so we have all the functions that we see in the other verbs also in come again it is interesting to see perhaps where we don't have copula verbs where we might expect them from other languages so this is the case in the negation of existence which can be expressed by a simple nominal clause with the proclitic negative particle cheer and the indefinite pronoun ick anything so this is the example here in Luke 817 chick inch tzatzuk vorvoch jait litzi so there is nothing hidden that will not be made manifest so here we have a form chick there is nothing and we will see this word again when we talk about nominal derivation because that is also the basis for some derivatives interestingly if you compare the parallel text in mark 422 there the translator uses the copula verb which is of course is always a possibility so cheer that is the negative particle and a the present of the verb to be in a similar sentence nothing is hidden except to be made manifest and we've just seen that there are basically two particles for factual negation that is watch and the proclitic cheer so chickamim I do not want of watch ki take zorren you do not know the day so these are the two basic forms of factual negation for prohibitions there is me used together with the subjunctive or the imperative presently prohibitive that you've already heard about in the section on verbal morphology in the latter case so with the imperative forms only the present imperative is used positive imperatives always occur in the heiress so here are two examples me yirkin cheer do not fear so this is yirkin chim to be afraid and the imperative form of that and importantly the subjunctive is also used as a future tense so there are instances where we can differentiate between the texts the temporal and the modal use of the subjunctive by looking at the negation so watch and me of course and differentiate between the two so we're having Luke 16 for example watch Havanist sin which is most likely a factual negation they will not be convinced so even if someone should rise from the dead they won't believe it they won't be convinced which would be different if this were me which would mean they shall not they should not believe this or should not be convinced I mean it has negative concord so when we talk about negation it doesn't cancel negative meanings if you add more negative particles so if you look at the Busan run which uses this feature quite frequently for emphasis of course watch me walk watch a pretzuz on air so nobody survived so not one anyone not survived now so nobody survived at all or watch menats eat not sunny yeah watch me which is a very formulaic phrase that we find frequently in this text so not remained of them not even one and here's an example where we have a kind of addition of negative particles to some extent and the whole phrase of course is simply negative so this is about a missionary who's not very successful and so he tries to evangelize people but not one of them could keep in mind a single thing of what he had heard not a word not half a word not a minimal racket not a trace and here we have watch walk so this is nobody this is reinforced with watch me watch not even one watch me but not a word watch case bunny not half a word watch do isn't he shut up inch so not a minimal record watch Nishmarans watch carrain inch on a committee they could not keep it on a committee in their mind so this simply reiterates and emphasizes the negative meaning at all Armenian is a pro-drop language so marking person on the verb and the nominative of personal pronouns is used for problematic purposes so for example when they are in focus position when they're emphasized so he had two examples do get Luis Ashari so you are the light of the world or in contrast contrasting a context nah air truck so he was a burning lamb and Duke Kamitseruk Tsenshal and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light so that is the usual way to use the pronouns the nominative forms of the pronouns in Armenian and coreferential pronouns of course may be dropped in coordinated predicates so here's an example artain halatain as no sayevs bananaein and here is no sa is our object pronoun and that of course is the object of all three verbs predicates that we have in this sentence now let's have a look at grammatical categories of the verb we've heard this already in the section on the verbal morphology so just as a short repetition we have a basically distinction between a present and an heiress stem and from the former the present and the imperfect tense I derived and from the latter the heiress so the perfective past and the perfect and the blue perfect there is no future transformation we've just mentioned this so usually for future time reference either the present indicative but mostly more frequently the subjunctive is used and mostly the heiress subjunctive which in traditional Armenian grammatical terminology is simply called the future for that reason because this is its most frequent function the heiress indicative is always a past tense so the a spectral opposition perfective as against imperfective is pertinent as the relation between heiress imperfect in the indicative and present heiress in the subjunctive there is an infinitive which is a spectrally neutral although it is derived usually from the present stem but it does not contrast with any other infinitive formation as it does for example in Greek where you have a present infinitive leuane and an heiress infinitive leusae so this is different in Armenian so let's have a look at the basic functions of these categories the present tense can of course refer to the moment of speech to general states of affairs and as I've just said also to the future so in example or examples for the letter cases are given here on this slide so there is somebody coming after me so he will come after me who is mightier than I am or from yes Nick your room of war utes and put a lot of ruin in him in a word meranis so on that day that you eat from the fruit of the street that day you will die and here we simply have present tense forms referring to future events the present tense is rather rare in past contexts so what's in grammars is called a historical present sometimes in the Gospels they are often translated by imperfect or heiress if they are interpreted as perfected by the translators and not as presence so here's an example of a Greek present our fiasin translated as an heiress in Armenian so we have our fiasin out on the diabolos that have left him and apa yet or is not satana in the Armenian version so present translated as heiress in this case this is another example where in contrast to the one we've just seen the Greek presence are translated as imperfect forms so this of course always depends on the interpretation that the Armenian translator makes of the aspectual distinctions in his language and in the Greek original text so here we have a lot of I ferontes twice present tense forms translated as Gaia Arnau Berein so they came and brought a paralytic to him so both options are of course possible as an exception to what I've just said there are two verbs that occur with some frequency as historical presence and these are our sem and gum so the word for say and the word for come our sem in the first case when our same is used as a speech introduction there's a strong tendency to coordinate an heiress of a preceding verb with a present tense of a sem while it occurs in the imperfect if the preceding verb is also an imperfect so let's look at two examples for this we have pataschani et yev a sé so answer gave so this is a typical light verb construction that is so frequent in Armenian we'll see that later again and then here we have the present a sem say of the verb in the third person singular in this case so this is one frequent combination and the other instance is with the imperfect in Jose and your board come you have a ser so he was talking to your brother and he said and so this is a kind of 90% rule one might say where most frequently these two combinations occur so what we actually don't find or just very very rarely find our cases with an imperfect and then a present tense of a sem so that doesn't seem to be very frequent the other verb the historical present of gum mostly occurs in sentence initial position frequently introducing new reference into the discourse so it acts as a kind of stage direction which is a bit outside the narrative itself and once more we've mentioned this already Moises chorena Tsy is an author who uses the historical present more frequently generally not just with these two verbs this may be due to his preference for Greek historiography as a stylistic model where this use of the present is of course common okay we have here one example for this gun and word sentence initial position gun you parking of my know r so his brothers and his mother came wishing to see him so here we have our present form of this verb introducing new reference into the discourse okay the arist now coming to the spectral distinction in the past the arist usually depicts an event as located as a specific at a specific point in the past whereas the imperfect is neutral with regard to this so it allows the attribution of an event to one or more points in the past the imperfective thus frequently describes a past event coinciding with another event in the arist so there are some examples for this here on the slide so Minch der Anzaneer and ein Jesus set here and Nora Kourgirku Agar hakein jev asain so and as Jesus passed on from there to Blemann followed him crying aloud so here we have passing along and crying and saying coinciding with this and also with the event of following it is of course used for describing habitual events so as in this example Ararakir an imperfect of Ararakim to shout in a context night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out so here we have our imperfect marking a habitual or repeated event in the past so as you would expect it from a well-behaved imperfective aspect in an aspectual system and of course it may describe continued events so this is the next example here mark 10 48 so he began to cry out and say have mercy on me and people rebuked him telling him to be silent but he cried out all the more and said the same thing once again so here we have the same form again describing something that goes on for some time more and is not finished in contrast to this the errors described in event as located at a specific point in the past so for example Githem to know and the errors this Githat see I knew at that moment or I realized so in Luke 8 46 for example I see Jesus Oman merdits of yes can see Githat see he is a routine alien so Jesus said someone touched me for I perceived at that moment in the past that power has gone out from me so here this coincides with the Greek heiress egg known so in this instance both languages actually have the same aspect form but this is not always the case we've already seen this I mean it is of course independent of what Greek does with its a spectral system in contrast to this we can look at this example with Githain an imperfect you have no care what you take in his bun and but they didn't understand the saying and were afraid to ask him so this is something that of course is a state of affairs that lasts for a longer time or is not located at a specific moment so because they didn't understand this for quite some time now finally let's have a look at the Armenian perfect the Armenian perfect do you know it's a state which results from a previous action or event and obtains a reference time that is the present in the perfect and the past in the plural perfect one may describe it in the terminology of Nadia Kov and by be as a resultative let's have some examples for the perfect and how it typically works so the verb to come near is derived from Mards near so Mards annam to come close and the perfect means to have come near that is to be near so in the first example merzi alle arke et jun jegnitz to approach this is our participle this is our copula verb and this forms the perfect tense and the overall meaning of this construction is the kingdom of heaven is close by it has approached it is near now and in Luke this is the story of the prodigal son of course ice for the in merriall air so this son of mine was dead so this is the participle of Meranim to die and this is the imperfect of to be so this together forms the plural perfect tense and it has a meaning of a state in the past and you know from the story of course but he came alive again he is alive now so this need not imply that the state still holds it at the moment of speaking in the case of the plural perfect now Leonie in his treatment of the Armenian perfect has discussed the use of heiress and perfect forms with some nice examples that I would like to show so for example when Saint Paul talks about the death and resurrection of Christ when talking about the former the Armenian translator uses the heiress to report an event at some point in the past without making any implication about the state of affairs at the moment of speech so we have Christos was in Merrav so Christ died for us at some specific point in the past closed event and one may assume that the perfect would not be a good choice in this instance as it would imply that the subject is still dead at the moment of speech which would be contrary of course to the speaker's intention in this case who is preaching after the resurrection of Christ and in contrast to this the translator uses the perfect when he talks about the resurrected Christ to indicate that he is alive at the moment of speech note that the Greek version has an airstear just as in the preceding example so again the Armenian use is independent of course from the Greek it does not copy simply the choice of aspect stamps that we find in the Greek text so here in this example we have Christos Harutsiale so Christ has risen from the dead and the implication is is alive now at the moment of speaking now a special feature of the Armenian perfect is that it uses genitive subjects we have already heard about this in the section on verbal morphology in the case of transitive verbs of course then this may highlight if we have a transitive verb either the state of the logical subject or the object or both so let's have a look at some examples for this in the first case the state of the subject seems to be implied or highlighted Vojicee and Tertial there so here is our participle for the verb to read and her name and here we have our genitive subjects so the logical subject of the clause mark for genitive because read is a transitive verb and the discussion is about haven't you read that is don't you know because you have read it what David did when he was hungry etc and so on so the important point here is that are you not well informed about this story because you have read it at some point in the past so this is about the mental state as it were of the people Jesus is discussing with at this moment of course the other way is possible too to indicate the state of the object and we find this on this slide mark 16 Tavalli tzuciall er esveemann i gerismaneen so here we have an unexpressed agent and simply the object is highlighted of course present in the sentence so es veemann is our object the stone and this is the verb to roll away so somebody had rolled away the stone from the grave and the agent here doesn't have anything to do with this state of affairs which focuses the state of the stone outside the Bible translation the participle frequently occurs without the copula and is used as a simple narrative verb form usually obeying the same principles of case marking which we have already seen an example for this is with the intransitive verb to appear from Agatangalos tesil yehreviall yas tu tsoh ivra kerta gavurin so a vision from God appear to the king's sister and that is the complete sentence so there is no copula or anything else anywhere so then we get a new sentence and this is something we find quite frequently in especially Armenian historians telling stories just by using the participle right and here we have an example with an intransitive verb and a genitive subject i gerov havonution zekyal amenetsun so here we have the participle of kam ekyal and here we have amenetsun our subject in the genitive although this is an intransitive verb this is not the most frequent type that we find as I said the regular type is to have a transitive verb and a genitive subject but that also occurs already in classical Armenian just for comparison let's have a short look finally at modern eastern Armenian the resultant function of the participle in Iyal that we've just seen is taken over by different form namely the participle in atz so there are forms like basnel separate bashnats separated garel right gharats written it goes back to a form in atz in classical Armenian already which served mainly as a verbal noun so for example there is kotorel to slaughter and kotorats slaughter or it formed denominal adjectives like yerkjur fear and yerkjurats fearful so here two examples with this form the participle with resultant function girkögeratse the book is written oh yes nestatsem I am sitting so two forms with atz derived from the respective verbs gerem and nestim that we've already come across together with the participle in L which developed out of the classical form in Iyal by regular sound change modern Armenian modern eastern Armenian forms the perfect tense together with a copula and this denotes an action in the past with current relevance so for example yes I'd girkögeratselem I have read this book the classical perfect in Iyal which in most cases has a resultative meaning has thus developed into a perfect tense its original function is being taken over by the participle in atz these two examples taken from Nijalkov show that the temporal adverb der still is incompatible with the terminative verb to fall in the perfect as the letter does not express duration up to the present but it is compatible with the resultative in atz expressing a continuing state so it is okay to say nadir and katse so he is one nadir and katse he is still fallen still lying on the ground but it's not okay to say nadir and kele with this form he has still fallen so we see a difference here between the classical and the modern language okay in this session we have seen nonverbal predication the copula verbs that Armenian has the various forms of negation the use of pronouns and the basic functions of its verbal categories including the aspecial opposition in the past and the use of the perfect thank you for your attention
pronouns and the basic functions of its verbal this already in the section on the verbal verbal categories including the aspecial