Papers by Sona Haroutyunian
Rethinking Verb Second
Modern Eastern Armenian is a SOV language. In some sentences, the inflected verb can also occupy ... more Modern Eastern Armenian is a SOV language. In some sentences, the inflected verb can also occupy the second position, according to the well-known V2 typology. In these cases, the interpretation of the phrase preceding the verb is obligatorily a focused one. The V2 word order is found both with corrective/contrastive focus and information focus, for instance in question-answering contexts. V3, V4, etc. orders are also possible, provided that the phrases preceding the focused one are base-generated in the left periphery of the clause. This chapter also briefly discusses the properties of long-distance focus and the interaction of focus with indefinites.
Eurasiatica, 2020
1915 marked the start of a bloodier phase of the Armenian tragedy. 1915 was also the year in whic... more 1915 marked the start of a bloodier phase of the Armenian tragedy. 1915 was also the year in which Italy interrupted its diplomatic presence in Anatolia and entered the war against the Ottoman Empire. For the few Armenians then resident in Italy this coincidence of circumstances constituted a mobilising factor: being in many cases citizens of the Ottoman Empire, on the one hand, they had to demonstrate their diversity with respect to the Turks, and on the other hand, the assumption of active behaviour towards the host country aimed at enhancing their belonging and cultural prerogatives. With the aim to investigate how the Genocide was experienced by the Armenian community in Italy, the paper will focus on the magazine Armenia. Eco delle rivendicazioni armene (Armenia. Echo of Armenian Claims) born in Turin and published between 1915-18.
150 Years of Oriental Studies at Ca’ Foscari, 2018
The Armenian Studies have a very long tradition in Italy. However, the establishment of the offic... more The Armenian Studies have a very long tradition in Italy. However, the establishment of the official teaching of Armenian at Ca’ Foscari is particularly significant. It is a direct continuation of many Armenian traces present in the lagoon city for centuries, such as the birth of the first Casa Armena in Europe in 1245, the prosperous diplomatic relations between the Republic of Serenissima and the Kingdom of Armenia, the printing of the first Armenian book in 1512, the arrival of Armenian merchants from Julfa, who highly contributed to the economy of Venice, and finally the institution of the Mekhitarist Congregation of the Armenian monks on the island of San Lazzaro, recognised by Napoleon as Academia Armena Sancti Lazari. After an historical excursus, the paper will go on to detail some significant periods of Armenian Studies at Ca’ Foscari.
<p>Father Gabriēl Ayvazean (Ayvazian, Ayvazovskij), even though an important figure in the ... more <p>Father Gabriēl Ayvazean (Ayvazian, Ayvazovskij), even though an important figure in the Armenian world, is an understudied figure, especially in regards to his intense cultural activity. This is not only because the reputation of his painter brother Hovhannes Ayvazovskij has overshadowed his contributions, but also due to the controversial path of his life. Gabriēl Ayvazean was baptized in the Armenian Apostolic Church and transferred from the Crimea to Venice to join the Mechitarist Catholic Congregation, which he left after some decades to re-embrace the Armenian Apostolic Church. In this way, Ayvazean intertwined the religious denominations of his parents: his father Gevorg came from the south of Poland and belonged to the Armenian Catholic community, and his mother Hrip'sime was an Armenian Crimean of Apostolic confession. For a long time Gabriēl Ayvazean was considered as the most typical representative of clerical obscurantism, especially in the Soviet period. Instead, after Armenia's independence, this perception has changed. This paper examines the various stages of the life and activities of the religious figure, translator, editor and teacher father Gabriēl Ayvazean, with the intent to analyze his contribution to Armenian culture and to bring to light some aspects of it that are little known.</p>
It is a well-known fact that languages differ widely as far as their verbal systems are concerned... more It is a well-known fact that languages differ widely as far as their verbal systems are concerned. Some languages for instance, have very poor verbal morphology ‐like English or Chinese‐ whereas other ones overtly mark several subtle temporal and aspectual distinctions ‐like Russian and Greek, both Ancient and Modern. Temporal and aspectual properties, moreover, can combine with each other following certain patterns discussed at length in the literature. 1 In this paper we consider a verbal form of the Armenian system, the aorist, that exhibits temporal and aspectual properties not easily fitting the “canonical” descriptions. We will see that its distribution might seem at first sight incoherent and show that only by means of a finer analysis it is possible to account for its characteristics in a uniform way. To this end, we compare the Armenian aorist with the English simple past and present perfect, on one side, and with the Italian passato remoto (simple past) and passato prossim...
In this article we analyze some characteristics of word order in Modern Eastern Armenian—hencefor... more In this article we analyze some characteristics of word order in Modern Eastern Armenian—henceforth MEA—which are especially interesting from a comparative point of view; in particular, we consider the position of the auxiliary. The auxiliary is in most sentences enclitic on the participle, but in certain contexts it can cliticize on other items as well, located at a distance from it. In these cases, the auxiliary may end up in a position not adjacent to the participle at all, on the left of its normal cliticization site. The analysis of the contexts allowing this peculiar order sheds light on the syntactic properties of MEA. We show that when the auxiliary is cliticized on something other than the participle, it obligatorily signals that the phrase in question is either a contrastive focus or an interrogative element. We argue that these structures are instances of a very well-known phenomenon concerning word order, namely Verb Second—henceforth V2. V2 is a property of several languages around the world, such as for instance Germanic languages and some Indo-Aryan languages, such as Kashmiri. We compare MEA with German and English on one side, and Kashmiri on the other, and show that MEA is an intermediate case, realizing properties of both types of languages. In particular, we argue that in MEA, as in Kashmiri, and to a lesser extent in English, V2 is sensitive to the information structure of the sentence, namely to the distinction between given and new information. This analysis can be relevant both from a descriptive and typological point of view, investigating properties of MEA not fully understood before, and from a theoretical one, providing insights on the very nature of V2 phenomena. This paper is organized as follows: in section 2 we present word order issues in very general terms, comparing evidence from English, German and Italian. In section 3 we consider the position of the auxiliary in MEA; in section 4 we compare MEA with Kashmiri. In the end we draw some conclusions.
LEA : Lingue e Letterature d'Oriente e d'Occidente, 2016
In many diasporic Armenian communities around the globe, stories of the Armenian Genocide resurfa... more In many diasporic Armenian communities around the globe, stories of the Armenian Genocide resurface long after the traumatic events of 1915. This is also the case of survivors (and their descendants) who took refuge in Italy. Finding it difficult to speak at length and in depth about their profoundly painful memories and experience some waited decades to share the trauma through oral history accounts and written memoirs. This article addresses the memoirs of Armenian Genocide survivors in Italy. It explores how, despite all the trauma and difficulty, they put pen to paper and give expression to the horrors and tragedies they witnessed, documenting what the world needed to know better.
Armenian Folia Anglistika, 2014
In this research we study some syntactic and semantic properties of the Modern Eastern Armenian a... more In this research we study some syntactic and semantic properties of the Modern Eastern Armenian aorist by comparing it to similar verbal forms in English and Italian. We argue that the temporal interpretation of the aorist is not a primitive property, but derives from its main aspectual characteristic, i.e. perfectivity. This hypothesis is further supported by the analysis of the futural value expressed in certain contexts by means of the first person aorist form.
Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, 2018
In this work we consider the distribution of complementizers in Modern Eastern Armenian. There ar... more In this work we consider the distribution of complementizers in Modern Eastern Armenian. There are two complementizers: wor and t'e. They both introduce complement clauses, but t'e also expresses a dubitative value, implying that the speaker has doubts on the content following the complementizer. Moreover, t'e, when embedded under verbs of saying, shifts the anchoring of indexicals, moving the anchor from the speaker -better called utterer -to the subject of the saying predicate. On the basis of this and further evidence coming from the analysis of sequence of tense and if-clauses, we will argue that the position of t'e in the left periphery of the clause occupies a high position in the syntactic hierarchy. The aim of this work is on one hand, a better understanding of indirect reports and their syntax and, on the other, a more precise characterization of indexicals across languages.
This paper aims to underline how hidden selves rediscover their identity when they are translatin... more This paper aims to underline how hidden selves rediscover their identity when they are translating or are being translated into the language of their ethnic origin. It compares two specific instances in which translations have been the primary means through which two famous Italian women writers, both of whom received thoroughly Italian formal educations and considered themselves thoroughly Italian, or “thoroughly translated women into Italian” to recall Rushdie, rediscovered their Armenian identity. The authors are the late 19th and early 29th century Italian-Armenian poetess Vittoria Aganoor and the late 20th and early 21st century novelist Antonia Arslan.
978-88-6969-498-5-ch-07_QOXRcjd.pdf, 2021
Travel memoir-accounts created by travellers and missionaries in 1914 contain the prerequisites o... more Travel memoir-accounts created by travellers and missionaries in 1914 contain the prerequisites of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. The Buxtons, British noblemen visiting Armenia, discovered the true creative nature of the Armenians who lived on the land of their ancestors under the Turkish yoke. The Buxtons' observations of the reality the peaceful and hard-working Armenians had occurred in allowed them to understand that they were in fact eye-witnesses of the pre-genocide period of the Armenian life in Western Armenia.
Eurasiatica
Il volume raccoglie saggi di studiosi di diversa estrazione dedicati alle narrazioni che visitato... more Il volume raccoglie saggi di studiosi di diversa estrazione dedicati alle narrazioni che visitatori, mercanti, missionari e viaggiatori di varie epoche e provenienze hanno dedicato all’Armenia, alla sua storia, alla sua cultura. Attraverso l’analisi di fonti primarie e documenti inediti, il tema del viaggio in Armenia è affrontato in prospettiva storica, storico-artistica, religiosa, filologica e letteraria, coprendo un periodo di quasi mille anni.
Eurasiatica
The article focuses on the results of the research trip that Mechitarist father Nersēs Sargisean ... more The article focuses on the results of the research trip that Mechitarist father Nersēs Sargisean did between 1843-1853 in the different regions of Western Armenia with the aim of collecting Armenian manuscripts and sending them to the Congregation of San Lazzaro. Through the analysis of various archival documents and private letters, the paper will focus on the results of this long trip and on its contribution to the Armenian culture.
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Papers by Sona Haroutyunian