The Armenian Association for Academic Partnership and Support Cordially invites you to participate in the ARMACAD lecture

The Talyshi Language: Origins, History and Influences from the Languages of the South Caucasus held by Dr. Donald Stilo


Time: 18:30
Date: June 29, 2009, Monday
Country: Armenia
City: Yerevan
Venue: To be announced to registered participants

Talyshi is a Northwestern Iranian language spoken along the Caspian seacoast both in Iran and in the Republic of Azerbaijan. In his talk, Professor Stilo will briefly present the origins and distribution of the seven groups of Northwest Iranian languages, with special emphasis on the Tati-Talyshi group, and will show that after some 2800 - 3000 years of separation from the Southwest Iranian languages, which include most prominently the Persian language, the languages of the Southwest and the Northwest Iranian type have developed completely different lexical and grammatical structures. As a result, there is no mutual intelligibility among these groups. In addition, within the Talyshi language itself, the northern dialects and the southern dialects have also become completely different languages belonging to one and the same ethnic group. The reason for such drastic differences between the Talyshi dialects is due to the influence within Northern Talyshi from other languages, both Iranian and non-Iranian of the Araxes zone — perhaps Armenian, Udi (“Caucasian Albanian”) or Aramaic. A brief discussion of the “Araxes Linguistic Area” will also be given during the lecture. The topic of areal influences will also include some explanations for the appearance of widely divergent dialects of the Armenian language (Urmia, Khoy, Salmas, Meghri, etc

The lecture will be held in Russian and English and questions will be entertained in English, Russian, Persian, and possibly Armenian

BIO: Donald Stilo is presently a visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. He has his Bachelor’s Degree from Georgetown University in Russian and French and his Master’s Degree and Doctorate from the University of Michigan in Theoretical Linguistics with concentration on Iranian languages. Prof. Stilo lived in Iran for a total of five years and taught the Persian language for 20 years in the United States as well as Iranian and Middle Eastern Linguistics. Dr. Stilo is currently visiting Armenia for five weeks in order to do research on the dialects of Karabagh, Meghri, Karchevan, Urmia, among others. He is presently working on two projects: a Grammar of the Vafsi-Tati Language as well as an Atlas of the Araxes Linguistic Area

To participate in this lecture, please, submit an email with short (1-3 lines) introduction (in Armenian or English) about yourself to armacadem@yahoo.co.uk with “Talyshi” in the subject line. The authors of emails with different subject line will not be considered for participation in this lecture. So, please, be sure that you mention “Talyshi” in the subject line of your email when registering for this lecture. The details of the meeting will be shared with those who registered till June 25

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