05 03 2009- THE URARTIAN INFLUENCE ON THE EARLIEST ARMENIANS

A Lecture by Dr. John A. C. Greppin
Prof. of Linguistics Cleveland State Univ.
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 Urartians their wine skills, an important cultural influence. They assuredly learned other agricultural skills in grain crops and especially in irrigation methods for which the Urartians were famous.

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 investigations of Grigor Ghapantsian in Yerevan. Prof. Greppin will focus on the linguistic relationships between these two ancient peoples and will touch upon cultual 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 specialty 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 Armenian Linguistics and the Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies and was managing editor of Raft: A Journal of Armenian Poetry.
TIME AND LOCATION
Thurs.,
March 5, 2009
8:00 p.m.
NAASR Center
395 Concord Ave.
Belmont, MA 02478

email: hq@naasr.orgphone: 617-489-1610web: http://www.naasr.org

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