This study provides new insights into the historical language contact between Classical Armenian and West Middle Iranian, specifically Parthian. Next to an up-to-date account of known lexical, morphological, and phraseological Iranian loans in Armenian, the discussion focuses on one major and three minor syntactic patterns which, it is argued, are the result of pattern replication. The major pattern, the Classical Armenian periphrastic perfect, has previously been the focus of numerous papers owing to its unusual construction: while intransitive verbs construe with nominative subjects and an optional form of the copula in subject agreement, transitive verbs exhibit genitive agents, accusative objects and an optional copula in a invariable 3.sg form. Based on a discussion of morphosyntactic alignment patterns in general, and of Armenian and West Middle Iranian in particular, it is shown that previous accounts cannot satisfactorily explain the syntax of the perfect. In a new approach, it is argued that Armenian exhibits tripartite morphosyntactic alignment as the result of 'copying' and adapting the ergative alignment pattern of the West Middle Iranian past tense. This analysis is supported both by the historical morphology of the perfect participle and by a corpus analysis of five major works of Armenian 5^th-century historiography. The minor patterns - ezāfe-like nominal relative clauses, subject resumption and switch-reference marking using the anaphoric pronoun Arm. ink'n, and the quotative use of Arm. (e)t'ē - are equally linked to parallel constructions in West Middle Iranian, which may have served as syntactic models for their Armenian counterparts. The final part of the study discusses the Armenian-Iranian relationship from a language contact point of view and, making use of historical, epigraphic, and literary sources, proposes that a superstrate shift of the Parthian-speaking ruling class of Armenia to Armenian as their primary language best explains the amount of Parthian linguistic material and patterns in Armenian.

The prison novels (Haji Murat, Haji Abdullah and Süleyman Effendi) of Western Armenian writer Hagop Oshagan (1883-1948) articulate two unprecedented sociocultural critiques of Armenian experience. Like much of Oshagan's works, these novels, comprising the cycle Haryur Mék Tarvan [101 Years' Imprisonment] (1933), have scarcely been studied. The task of this study is to reveal the nature of Oshagan's critique, and to revise two chief Armenian literary critical trends: that of either de-contextualizing or instrumentalizing these novels' nationalist preoccupations; that is, either overlooking their contextual relevance as responses to contemporaneous nationalist dogmas, or distorting them to seem ideologically sympathetic. Oshagan's novels rather deploy the prison trope to foreground and question the aesthetic and ideological influence of late 19^th century Armenian nationalist-revolutionary movements. They moreover undermine the persisting paradigm borne of nationalist-revolutionary rhetoric that collectively represents Armenians and Turks as victims and victimizers respectively. The present study reads Oshagan in the wider context of Armenian penological literature, and locates his engagement with nationalist-revolutionary ideology as an overtly critical, rather than sympathetic project. It provides an unprecedented appraisal of such political movements' primarily negative impact upon late 19^th and early 20^th century Western Armenian literature, a tradition that has presented 'Armenianness' through an almost exclusive narrative of subjection. This literary historical background allows Oshagan's singularity to appear. He is the first to recognize the prison trope as the preferred nationalist-revolutionary literary convention, a trope he then reconfigures in order to formulate an alternative, a literary mode of nationalism - namely, mystic nationalism - informed by his readings of Dostoevsky's novels. Oshagan imagines and articulates anew the Armenian-Turk relationship in terms that complicate, subvert and transcend the normative master/slave model instituted by nationalist-revolutionary rhetoric. In the process, he elaborates a conception of these movements as inadvertently complicit in the discursive - and, ultimately, also political - (self)-subjection of Armenians culminating as experiences of absolute subjection. After Oshagan, this study constitutes the first comprehensive analysis of literary renderings of both Armenian-Turk relations and nationalist-revolutionary ideology.

The development of Proto-Indo-European *y in Classical Armenian ranks among the most debated questions in Armenian historical phonology. This thesis reexamines all the evidence for the evolution of PIE *y in different phonological contexts, including word-initial position, intervocalically, and in consonant clusters. Special attention is given to the various conditioned outcomes of clusters of consonant + *y and of *y in contact with a laryngeal, as well as the consequences of such developments for Armenian nominal and verbal morphology.

Ethnicity is one of the powerful concepts in social sciences. It encourages social scientists coming from different academic disciplines to think over its roles, influences and power within communities which are shaped at various level. Particularly in the globalised world, traditional approaches such as primordalism, essentialism or instrumentalism have difficulty to provide a powerful framework to understand complexity and power of ethnicity in diasporic spaces which host different identity formations, experiences and cultural hybridisation. Accordingly, these traditional approaches miss differences among human beings who associated themselves with certain ethnicities. For this reason, social scientists tend to understand the concept of ethnicity with alternative approaches. Unlike traditional approaches, social constructionism does not seen ethnicity as fixed, stable homogeneous things. Rather, ethnicities refer to a cognitive process which is shaped by people’s attitudes, perceptions or interactions. Approaching to ethnicity as a cognitive process allows us to go beyond universality and sharp definitions of ethnicity. Also, it emerges out various interpretations in diasporic spaces where ethnicity can be reproduced in various ways. By relying on this theoretical framework, this research seeks to understand the reproduction of Armenianness in diasporic spaces. Through focusing on Turkish, Lebanese and British Armenians, it searches answers for following questions a) What are the components of Armenianness in Turkey, Lebanon and Britain? b) How are the components of Armenianness interpreted in diasporic communities in Turkey, Lebanon and Britain? c) How is Armenianness reproduced among Armenian youngsters in Turkey, Lebanon and Britain? It is hypothesised that Armenianness is not a holistic form, it can be observed as “a patchwork” consisting of various patterns and colours. In order to materialise research aims and goals, the research was supported by field works in Istanbul, Beirut and London between 2011 and 2013. Throughout the data collection period, in-depth interviews, ethnography and participant observation were preferred to not only identify components of Armenianness, but also to create datasets for comparing and analysing the cases. The datasets have been analysed by ANCO-HITS to demonstrate similarities and differences among various reproduction forms of Armenianness in numerical ways. As a result of the ANCO-HITS analysis, Armenianness was ranked in each case according to participants’ scores. Later on, two participants (having the most negative and positive) were introduced through referring findings and fieldwork notes which derived from ethnography. This research shows that Armenianness is observed in various forms. It is highly heterogeneous in diasporic spaces and experienced in different ways. Interpretations of youngsters are varied. It sometimes seems to be ethnic, nationalist, political, moderate or congregational. It also demonstrates that attitudes, perceptions as well as interactions of youngsters with Armenians and non-Armenians can be effective parameters differentiate Armenianness in diasporic spaces.

My first contact with the Armenians of Jerusalem was during a four day Minor Field Study in February 2015.1 Before that I hardly knew anything about the community that has such a long history in the region. Despite their lengthy presence in what is commonly known as the Holy Land, the fact that they are joint custodians of the Christian Holy places and even have a whole quarter named after them in the Old City, they seem to be somewhat of a mystery to most people that visit. They are a minority that hold on to many of their distinct features regarding religion and culture from their homeland, something that is the trademarks of what is commonly known as a diaspora. The importance of culture and faith for the Armenian people seemed to be stressed time after another during my research. Pride was expressed to have endured as a people through many hardships. The Armenian Genocide stands out as the most significant of the many sufferings. Alongside with the traumatic consequences of the genocide is the ongoing struggle fought on many fronts for global recognition of the atrocities committed against their people.The largest group of Armenians in Jerusalem are situated in the Armenian Quarter. At the center of both the territorial and the structural composition of this community lies the convent of Saint James. Not only does the brotherhood of Saint James, consisting of about 30 brothers, and other clergy reside inside the convents premises. The majority consists of lay people. The lay community though has been decreasing for a number of years.2 If the current trend continues it may, according to some predictions, even vanish in the future.3 A gloomy outcome that would radically change the makeup of the Old City of Jerusalem.Therefore, after my first Minor Field Study, I went back four times during the coming year to learn more. I was also granted a scholarship through Stockholm School of Theology to conduct a Minor Field Study among Armenian youth. When first voicing my interest to interview youth and learn more about their identity I was told by a local contact that it would be futile. Because of the pressures of everyday life in Jerusalem few youth would have something relevant to share. They are forced to live day by day due to the ongoing conflicts. A strong statement that cannot be taken as true without evidence. This confirms the importance of conducting a more in depth study concerning how Armenian youth reflect on identity and belonging. The very existence of a future Armenian community in Jerusalem depends on their youths desire and ability to remain in the City.

The main objective of this thesis is to show that the thirty melodies ascribed to the ashoogh Sayat Nova are melodically and rhythmically homogeneous, and that they bear similarity to both Armenian folk and sacred melodies. Since very little has been written on this topic in Occidental languages, it has been necessary to provide (1) a descriptive account of the ancient Armenian music; namely, vibassan, koosan, folk and sacred traditions; (2) a presentation of ashoogh poetic forms, rhyming schemes, and accentuation patterns, which are summarized for the first time in a chart with corresponding sources; (3) a chapter on Armenian tzayns as a background to the melodic analysis and codifications of Sayat Nova's melodies, which is contrary to the accepted practice of codifying these melodies with Greek modal names. / Professor Nigoghos Tahmizian's analysis of Sayat Nova melodies was used as a starting point. Furthermore, through analysis based primarily on available secondary sources, certain conclusions have been obtained: such as, the unity of rhythm/meter with language conventions, presence of specific melodic patterns, cadential endings, intervallic patterns and ranges in Sayat Nova melodies, as characterised by individual tzayn codifications. Further research is suggested to clarify codification of poetic forms, tzayn designations, and specifically, to solidify accentuation conventions of the Armenian language and of its dialects.

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Haig Utidjian - Abstract In this thesis we attempt to establish, in as concrete and tangible a manner as possible, the procedures used by Ełia Tntesean (1834-1881) in compiling and redacting his version of the melodies of the Armenian Hymnal, and to place his own endeavour in the context of other attempts to record the melodies of Armenian hymns using the Limōnčean system of musical notation in nineteenth-century Constantinople - at a time when the mediaeval neumatic notation had already become largely intractable. Our approach entails the juxtaposition of Tntesean's musicological articles and paedagogical publications with his transcriptions in Western notation and with his mature realisations of the hymnal melodies in the Limōnčean system, published posthumously in 1934 - treating these sources as a coherent corpus, of which the diverse components are allowed to shed light on each other. Comparison with other hymnals from the same period, the investigation of parallels with the neighbouring practice of Ottoman makams, fieldwork with surviving remnants of the oral tradition, and a critical examination of Tntesean's writings and transcriptions enable us to elucidate aspects of notation and performance practice, and to expose a subtle evolution in aesthetic. Furthermore, a detailed analysis of the Tntesean...

<p>This dissertation examines the conflict in Eastern Anatolia in the early 20th century and the memory politics around it. It shows how discourses of victimhood have been engines of grievance that power the politics of fear, hatred and competing, exclusionary claims to statehood and territory by Turks, Armenians, and Kurds. Grounded in extensive archival research in American, British, Turkish, and Armenian historical repositories, I trace how discourses of communal victimhood were generated around the traumatic ordeals in the two decades that preceded the Armenian genocide of 1915-6, carried out by the Young Turk government. The dissertation pays special attention to the nature of political tension and debate among Armenians on the eve of the genocide as well as rethinking the events and later interpretations of the iconic Armenian uprising in the Ottoman city of Van in 1915. The analysis here goes beyond deterministic, escalationist and teleological perspectives on the antecedents of the Armenian genocide; instead, it highlights political agency and enabling structures of the war, offering a new perspective on the tragic violence of Eastern Anatolia in the early 20th century.</p> / Dissertation