THEORETICAL AND GRAMMATICAL APPROACHES OF GABRIEL AYVAZYAN IN THE CONTEXT OF THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ARMENIAN ORTHOGRAPHY

Abstract

Ayvazyan’s textbook-manual “The Orthography of Our Armenian Language”, in addition to its primary pedagogical function, also reflects the author’s grammatical understanding and his approaches to various linguistic issues.  The work examines numerous important questions related to the invention of the Armenian alphabet, problems of letter pronunciation, as well as matters of transliteration and punctuation. Ayvazyan provides comprehensive knowledge about the prevailing views on the creation of the alphabet and their relationship to the letters of other languages. In accordance with the demands of the time, the author devotes significant attention to issues concerning transliteration, setting forth all the principles that translators had to follow in order to make their work as uniform as possible. Ayvazyan’s grammatical approaches are based on the rich experience of the historical development of the Armenian language. The author was able to accurately foresee numerous orthographic and punctuation functions used in Armenian language (Ashkharhabar), most of which remain relevant in modern Armenian. Moreover, the parallels and comparisons drawn with European languages made the author’s work more comprehensive and an exceptionally effective grammatical study for its time.