Archaisms and Innovations in the Armenian Dialects of Artsakh and Syunik

Abstract The dialectal areas of Artsakh (Ɫarabaɫ/Nagorno-Karabakh), Syunik, and surroundings abound in native Armenian designations in the semantic domain of carpet weaving. This paper discusses several words for ‘to weave’ and ‘loom’ in these dialects. The verb he/anum ‘to weave, plait’ from Indo-European (henceforth: IE ) * spenh 1 ‑ here refers to ‘to stretch the main threads of warp before beginning of the weaving’, which may be an archaic semantic nuance that aligns with OCS pęti , 1sg. p ь nǫ ‘to stretch’, Toch. A pänw ‑ ‘to stretch’, etc. A more specific archaism is found in Ɫarabaɫ etc. lüsɛ/il ‘to weave, plait’ which continues Proto-Armenian * les-/los ‑ ‘to beat, pound, rub; to braid, plait, knit’ from IE * plek̂ ‑ ‘to plait, knit; to beat, flay’ with a contamination with hiwsem ‘to weave, plait, knit’ and reflects an underlying general notion ‘to work/make/form (by cutting or knitting etc.)’. In two designations for ‘carpet weaver’s wooden loom’ one finds remarkable archaisms in the dialectal areas of Artsakh and Syunik: torg from IE * doru̯ ‑ ‘wood’ (cf. Skt. dárvi ‑ f. and darvī́ ‑ f. ‘spoon’, HLuw. tarw-i(i̯a) ‑ ‘wooden beam’, etc.) and ostayn from Arm. ost , o -stem ‘branch’ < IE * Hosdo ‑ ‘branch, knot’. Both are significant because (1) they have been preserved only in these dialectal areas, (2) and they display more archaic semantics than the Classical attestations, in which one finds secondary meaning ‘web, texture’. The dialectal continuity is illustrated by the example of šiw ‘weaver’s stick’, which is only attested in Fables by Mxit‘ar Goš (12th–13th cent.), native of Ganjak and has only preserved in the dialectal area of the same Ganjak region in Artsakh. Next to the remarkable archaisms in the dialectal regions of Artsakh-Syunik and surroundings, one also finds interesting innovations within the same semantic domain of carpet-weaving terminology.