‘SPEAKING’ VERBS IN MIDDLE ARMENIAN

Abstract

Identifying specific weight of verbs in the Armenian grammatical system, semantic diversity, communicative value, and communicative abilities, it is imperative to analyze the semantic grouping of verbs and the connective features of lexical groups, which will contribute to the discovery of lexical meaning and syntactic-conjunctive interrelationships. The purpose of this article is to show the boundaries, features, and linguistic potential of the most diversified collection of verbs in the lexicon-proverbial verbs. The analysis of verbs denoting ‘speaking’ in Middle Armenian brings to the conclusion that these verbs possess a common quality - that of telling information. Based upon this fact one can say that there are two subgroups within these verbs: a) single-stream and b) reciprocal verbs denoting speaking. Within the studied verbs, the stylistically neutral verb ‘say’ which is the most frequently used one due to its polysemy. As a rule, the verbs denoting speaking or other verbs used in the same meaning possess or gain the transitivity with two objects, one of which is presupposed or imposed by the grammatical rank of the verb (direct object) and the second – by the meaning of the verb (indirect object). In other words, the verbs of the studied group take two objects.