THE DICTIONARY CREATED BY YSU LINGUISTS WILL TAKE THE ROLE OF NORMALIZING THE GRAMMAR OF LITERARY ARMENIAN. THE REPUBLICAN CONFERENCE HAS LAUNCHED

The conference, which will take place on October 22-23, aims to analyze the developments and changes taking place in the grammatical system of modern Armenian, particularly the morphological system, and to substantiate the shifts in the literary language with clear principles of normalization. The results of the discussion at the conference will help in the preparation of the educational grammar dictionary. The reports presented at the conference are followed by extensive and meaningful discussions, where prominent linguists address the grammatical parallel structures of modern Armenian, acceptable and unacceptable forms, grammatical shifts of the continuously developing and changing language, and other important issues.

YSU Rector Hovhannes Hovhannisyan's message was delivered at the beginning of the conference held at the "Writers’ house” hotel in Tsaghkadzor, where the YSU rector, expressing his gratitude for the organization of the conference, emphasized the essential role of such conferences and pointed out the importance of scientific activities in the university.

"Conferences are of great importance not only for expressing ideas and presenting research results but also for establishing new cooperative bonds and expanding the implemented programs even more. Every conference is a beginning of new ideas and implementations," said the YSU rector's message.

Referring to the importance of the dictionary under discussion, the Rector of YSU noted, "Certainly, it will be unique to refine the morphological features of the reference word, to construct the written word grammatically correctly, and most importantly, it will be equally applicable to both the teacher and the student."

The Rector of YSU considered it particularly important that the conference was organized within the framework of the theme "Educational Grammar Dictionary of Modern Eastern Armenian", which was thematically financed by the Science Committee of the Ministry of Education, science, culture, and sports of RA.

Dean of YSU Faculty of Armenian Philology, Ph.D. and Professor Artsrun Avagyan welcomed the attendees and emphasized the importance of the conference and the topics discussed within its framework, wishing the participants fruitful work.

Head of YSU Armenian Language Chair, Ph.D., Professor Yuri Avetisyan, presenting the progress of the work carried out within the scientific theme "Educational Grammatical Dictionary of Modern Eastern Armenian" and the applied and theoretical importance of the created dictionary, noted: "The dictionary will present a complete description of the word form. It is very important both from a purely practical and communicative point of view and from a theoretical one. Firstly, the ordinary reader must have a vocabulary at hand, with which one will be able to determine the literary canonical grammatical forms: inflection, plural formation, conjugation structures, etc., to ensure competent communication with the environment. Secondly, the so-called theoretical importance is that the dictionary, being such, will also have a purely philological significance. The specialists will have the opportunity to use the material recorded in the dictionary on grammatical developments at the academic level.

Yu. Avetisyan announced the launch of the conference and presented a report on "Grammatical dictionary. The principles of formation and structure", where he addressed the principles, structural features, goals, and applicability of the created dictionary. In particular, he said that the dictionary will greatly contribute to the development of the grammar of the literary Eastern Armenian language and will have practical significance for both the professional community and the public.

Referring to one of the most important features of the dictionary, contributing to the standardization of Armenian grammar, Yu. Avetisyan said, "The dictionary will record the changes in the literary language. All the inflectional forms that are active parallels will be noted. Moreover, the dictionary will have a normative significance, indicating the possible ways of language development. In this sense, the dictionary will, to a considerable extent, assume the responsible role of standardizing the grammar of literary Armenian."

Artashes Sargsyan, the vice-dean of YSU Faculty of Armenian Philology, Ph.D., associate professor, presented a report on "Disuse as a Problem of Characterization of Word Forms", where he addressed the questions of the composition and existence of grammatical forms caused by the disuse of words.

Referring to the purpose of creating the dictionary, the YSU associate professor said, "The purpose of the dictionary is to present the words with their grammatical characteristics, especially those words that can present some difficulty for the reader, the ordinary user, and also for the specialist. We try to present those words by clarifying those approaches. Difficulties occur because there are different opinions on different issues."

The linguist noted that the dictionary emphasizes the grammatical facts of the word, that is, what grammatical category the word has or does not have, and how it is expressed.

"Practically, this is important because it is possible to get information about the word from the dictionary in a direct way, and there are usually few in the dictionaries about the inflected forms (the type of inflection or the composition of the plural is indicated), but in this case, all the forms are given. Words that are both co-verbs and have some grammatical features are included. If the grammatical characteristics of the word are regular, then they are presented in a standard form so that the volume of the dictionary does not increase, and if there are deviations, for example, they are irregular verbs, then all the forms are given."

YSU Associate Professor, Ph.D. Liana Sargsyan, presenting a report on "Formal markings in modern Armenian dictionaries", emphasized that although separate grammatical dictionaries were not created, there were some markings in explanatory and orthographic dictionaries. The speaker presented how they correspond to the qualities of the modern language, how appropriate they are for use, what shortcomings there are, etc. The research once again emphasized the importance of the created dictionary and its irreplaceable role and importance.

Head of YSU Armenian Language History and General Linguistics Department, Ph.D., Professor Anna Abajyan gave a report on "The multi-functional role of conjunctions ‘that’ and ‘or’ ", referring to the application features of the mentioned conjunctions. The speaker stated that the conjunctions of modern Armenian are characterized by their frequency of use, their ability to form other parts of speech, to express different relationships, to determine the part-of-speech affiliation of words with part-of-speech differences in a given sentence, to display semantic nuances, flexibility, and speech stylization they occupy in the Armenian language.

The chairpersons of the conference sessions are Ph.D. and Professor Yu. Avetisyan and correspondent member of RA NAS, Ph.D. Lavrenti Hovhannisyan.

During the two-day conference, the linguists will also discuss some controversial issues of Armenian syntax, the morphological typology of modern Armenian, the classification of parts of speech, the historical development of verb transitions in modern Eastern Armenian, and the development of inflectional parallelisms inherited from Grabar, the manifestations of the irregularity of noun plural formation in literary Eastern Armenian, the problems of the part-of-speech affiliation of terms, the complementation of dependent verbs, as well as questions related to the features, and complementation of verbs in sentences.

 

Students of the Faculty of Armenian Philology and other guests were also present at the conference and participated in the discussions.

The financial supporters of the organization of the conference are the Yerevan State University and the Science Committee of ESCS ministry of RA.