17 02 2009 - TALK ON URARTIAN INFLUENCE ON ARMENIA

AT NAASR BY PROF. JOHN GREPPIN

Prof. John A. C. Greppin of Cleveland State University will give a lecture on “The Urar-tian Influence on the Earliest Armenians,” on Thursday, March 5, at 8:00 p.m., at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) Center, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA.
It is now well known that the Urartians preceded the Armenians in the South Caucasus and that they influenced the Armenians who followed them for at least two centuries until the arrival of the Persians under Darius in about 525 B.C. The Armenians learned from the Urar-tians their wine skills, an important cultural influence. They assuredly learned other agricul-tural skills in grain crops and especially in irrigation methods for which the Urartians were fa-mous.
But the Urartian influence went deeper and left a linguistic substratum in the Armenian language that has been known about for over 60 years, following the initial scholarly investiga-tions of Grigor Ghapantsian in Yerevan. Prof. Greppin will focus on the linguistic relationships between these two ancient peoples and will touch upon cultural and other connections.
John A. C. Greppin is professor of linguistics at Cleveland State University in Ohio where he has taught for the past 34 years. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1972 in Indo-European Studies, and through his work with the late Prof. Avedis Sanjian developed a spe-cialty in Classical Armenian. He is the author of 14 books and some 500 articles and reviews on the Armenian language and other subjects and has served as the editor of the Annual of Arme-nian Linguistics and the Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies and was managing editor of Raft: A Journal of Armenian Poetry.

Admission to the event is free (donations appreciated). The NAASR Center is located opposite the First Armenian Church and next to the U.S. Post Office. Ample parking is avail-able around the building and in adjacent areas. The lecture will begin promptly at 8:00 p.m.
More information about the lecture is available by calling 617-489-1610, faxing 617-484-1759, e-mailing hq@naasr.org, or writing to NAASR, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA 02478.
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Belmont, MA
February 13, 2009

NAASR