Dissertation

Prehistoric loanwords in Armenian: Hurro-Urartian, Kartvelian, and the unclassified substrate

On the 7th of November, Rasmus Thorsø Nielsen successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Rasmus on this achievement!

Author

Rasmus Thorsø Nielsen

Date

07 November 2023

Links

Leiden University Repository

Armenian is an Indo-European language, but it is known for harboring many words that are not inherited from Proto-Indo-European. This PhD dissertation takes a close look at three distinct, early loanword layers in Armenian: words from Hurro-Urartian languages, from Kartvelian languages, and from at least one language that also loaned words to other Indo-European languages. By scrutinizing these three groups of loanwords, we learn more about the contact events that shaped the early history of Armenian, but also about the population movements that brought speakers of Armenian into their historical homeland in the highlands south of the Caucasus.