![]() ![]() Konsdantin Yerzinkatsi and several others even take the unusual step of criticizing the ecclesiastic establishment and addressing the social issues of the Armenian homeland. Gradually, the interests of the population at large were reflected in other literary works as well. “A Word of Wisdom”, a poem by Hovhannes Sargavak devoted to a starling, legitimizes poetry devoted to nature, love, or female beauty. The thematic shift from mainly religious texts to writings with secular outlooks further enhanced and enriched the vocabulary. In addition to elevating the literary style and vocabulary of the Armenian language by adding about well above a thousand new words, through his other hymns and poems Gregory paved the way for his successors to include secular themes and vernacular language in their writings. The Book of Lamentations by Gregory of Narek (951–1003) is an example of the development of a literature and writing style of Old Armenian by the 10th century. ![]() Nevertheless, as Fortson (2004) comments, 'by the time we reach our earliest Armenian records in the 5th century AD, the evidence of any such early kinship has been reduced to a few tantalizing pieces'. Armenian shares the augment, and a negator derived from the set phrase Proto-Indo-European language * ne h₂oyu kʷid ('never anything' or 'always nothing'), and the representation of word-initial laryngeals by prothetic vowels, and other phonological and morphological peculiarities with Greek. Hamp (1976, 91) supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis, anticipating even a time 'when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian' (meaning the postulate of a Graeco-Armenian proto-language). Georg Renatus Solta (1960) does not go as far as postulating a Proto-Graeco-Armenian stage, but he concludes that considering both the lexicon and morphology, Greek is clearly the dialect most closely related to Armenian. ![]() Meillet's hypothesis became popular in the wake of his Esquisse (1936). Antoine Meillet (1925, 1927) further investigated morphological and phonological agreement, postulating that the parent languages of Greek and Armenian were dialects in immediate geographical proximity in the Proto-Indo-European period. The hypothesis that Greek is Armenian's closest living relative originates with Holger Pedersen (1924), who noted that the number of Greek-Armenian lexical cognates is greater than that of agreements between Armenian and any other Indo-European language. ![]()
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