Abstract
After presenting some basic genetic, historical and typological information about Western Armenian this chapter outlines the quantification patterns it expresses. It illustrates various semantic types of quantifiers, such as generalized existential, generalized universal, proportional, definite and partitive which are defined in the Quantifier Questionnaire in Chapter 1. It partitions the expression of the semantic types into morpho-syntactic classes: Adverbial type quantifiers and Nominal (or Determiner) type quantifiers. For the various semantic and morpho-syntactic types of quantifiers it also distinguishes syntactically simple and syntactically complex quantifiers, as well as issues of distributivity and scope interaction, classifiers and measure expressions, and existential constructions. The chapter describes structural properties of determiners and quantified noun phrases in Western Armenian, both in terms of internal structure (morphological or syntactic) and distribution.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
IPA symbols used throughout: y = high front round vowel, j = high front glide, dÊ’ = postalveolar affricate. Voiceless stops and affricates in WA are aspirated. Aspiration and affricate tie bar diacritics are omitted for simplicity.
- 2.
For convenience most examples are verb final. Other word orders are possible, which are only discussed if relevant.
- 3.
For a thorough discussion of definiteness in WA see Sigler (1997).
- 4.
nom-nominative, acc-accusative, gen-genitive, dat-dative, abl-ablative, inst-instrumental.
- 5.
In glosses if a verb is not specified for tense then it is non-past.
- 6.
I denote obligatory as *( ) and not possible as (* ) and optional as ( )
- 7.
kani can also combine with ‘that’ resulting in a conjunction corresponding to ‘because,’ even though a lexical item vor(ovhe)dev already exists for this function:
(i)
Aram-É™
dun
kəna-ts,
kani-vor
hokn-adz
e-r
 Aram-def home go-past.3S, how.many-that tired-perf be-past.3S
 ‘Aram went home, because he was tired.’
- 8.
ʃad can also be used to express ‘very’ or ‘excessive’ as can the lexical item tʃapazants:
(ii)
Aram-É™
ʃad/tʃapazants
uʃ
dun
kəna-ts
 Aram-def
very/excessive
late
home
go-past.3S
 ‘Aram went home very late.’
- 9.
Capitalized words or syllables indicate sentential focus, which distinguishes a declarative from a yes/no question.
- 10.
-a-, glossed as conn in pazm-a-tiv is a connector between either two roots or a root and an affix.
- 11.
More discussion about negative words and NPIs in the following sections.
- 12.
Thanks to a reviewer who points out the usage of hents.
- 13.
Thank you to a reviewer for pointing these two quantifiers out.
- 14.
Thank you to a reviewer for observing this construction, which is also present in Eastern Armenian.
- 15.
A way to express ‘both’ would be to use the complex quantifier jerguk-(ə)n al ‘two of them.’ This quantifier differs from ‘both’ in that other numerals can be used in this phrase, as in jerek-(ə)n al ‘the three of them.’
- 16.
The exact meaning or use of this morpheme is very unclear. There are many contexts where te is used in WA, gardzes-te, ipər-te, votʃ-te, haziv-te, mi-te, te-jev, te-guz, te-ov… .
- 17.
Thanks to a review for observing this more complex construction. Another complex comparative quantifier that is formed with the quantifier hents ‘just’ in Eastern Armenian is hents ajnkan aʃakert kan usutsitʃ ‘just as many students as teachers.’
- 18.
Comparatives can also be formed without a comparative quantifier, using the ablative marker.
- 19.
Discussed by Sakayan (2000:121)
- 20.
This suffix is mainly used as an adjectivizer, attaching to nouns.
- 21.
This verb is marked for tense and number like most verbs.
- 22.
Existence can also be expressed with the lexical entry kojutjun unena-l ‘existence have-inf.’ However as is the case for the English item to exist, this string is pragmatically restricted to concepts or technical jargon.
- 23.
For some speakers some universal quantifiers, namely amen, polor, and ləman which usually surface before the noun phrase, can surface after the noun phrase as well parallel to ‘most.’
- 24.
This has been ingrained in some speakers who express strong dissatisfaction and insist on using pənav.
- 25.
Prescriptively there are two lexical items vojeve- and voreve- that correspond to ‘any.’ vojeve- is prescriptively supposed to be used with ‘one’ and voreve- with ‘thing’ or ‘place.’ However in the present day language almost all WA speakers use these two variants interchangeably.
References
Adjarian, Hrachea. 1957. Liakatar K’erakanut’yun Hayoc’ Lezvin [Comprehensive Grammar of the Language of the Armenians]. Yerevan: Erevan State University Press.
Bale, Alan and Hrayr Khanjian. 2009. Classifiers and number marking. In Proceedings of semantics and linguistic theory (SALT 18) at The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, edited by Tova Friedman and Satoshi Ito.
Bale, Alan, Michaél Gagnon, and Hrayr Khanjian. 2010. Cross-linguistic representations of numerals and number marking. In Proceedings of semantics and linguistic theory (SALT 20) in Vancouver, British Colombia, edited by Nan Li and David Lutz.
Bale, Alan, Michaél Gagnon, and Hrayr Khanjian. 2011. On the relationship between morphological and semantic markedness: The case of plural morphology. Journal of Morphology. 21:197–221.
Bobaljik, Jonathan. 2011. Universals in Comparative Morphology: Suppletion, superlatives, and the structure of words. MIT Press.
Donabédian, Anaïd. 1993. Le pluriel en arménien moderne. In Faits de Langues 2. pp. 179–188.
Donabédian, Anaïd. 1999. Négation analytique et médiatif en arménien occidental : un lien systémique?. In Cahiers de Linguistique de l’INALCO 1. pp. 23–41.
Dum-Tragut, Jasmine. 2009. Armenian. London oriental and African language library 14. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Gil, David. 1993. Nominal and verbal quantification. In Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung, Berlin 46.4:275–317.
Göksel, Asli and Celia Kerslake. 2005. Turkish: A comprehensive grammar. London: Routledge.
Keenan, Edward. 2008. Quantifiers. To appear (with revisions) in The handbook of semantics IX. 46, 2nd edition, eds. Klaus von Heusinger, Claudia Maienborn, and Paul Portner. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Kelepir, Meltem. 2001. Topics in Turkish syntax: Clausal structure and scope. PhD thesis, MIT, Cambridge, MA.
Khanjian, Hrayr. 2010. Western Armenian negative concord. In Proceedings of the 36th annual meeting of the Berkeley linguistics society (BLS 36) Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.
Ladusaw, William. 1979. Polarity Sensitivity as Inherent Scope Relations. Ph.D. thesis, University of Texas, Austin.
Penka, Doris. 2007. Negative indefinites. PhD thesis, University of Tübingen, Tübingen.
Sakayan, Dora. 2000. Modern Western Armenian for the English-speaking world: A contrastive approach. Montreal: Arod Books.
Sigler, Michele. 1997. Specificity and agreement in Modern Western Armenian. PhD thesis, MIT, Cambridge, MA.
Sigler, Michele. 2003. A note on the classifier in Western Armenian: Had. In Annual of Armenian Linguistics. Vol. 22–23, pp. 41–53. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland State University.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Khanjian, H. (2012). Quantification in Western Armenian. In: Keenan, E., Paperno, D. (eds) Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 90. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2681-9_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2681-9_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-2680-2
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-2681-9
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)