GRAMMATICAL POLYSEMY IN ARMENIAN DIALECTS

Abstract

From the perspectives of the comprehensive formal-semantic description of the verb system in the Armenian language, it is important to study the categorical forms of tenses and moods of dialects, given that they have undergone significant changes in the course of historical development being reflected in territorial variants of the language. This article discusses the phenomenon of polysemy in tense and mood systems of the territorial varieties of the Armenian language, something which has not yet been thoroughly studied. Of course, other studies on the verb system of the Armenian dialects have touched upon the cases of conveying different meanings through one grammatical form, yet they were not considered as a special phenomenon and were not systematically studied.

There were three types of moods in old Armenian: indicative (represented by the forms of four tenses - present, past imperfect, past perfect and future), imperative (two tenses - present and future) and subjunctive (represented by forms of the future tense). The tense forms of the indicative mood of the present and past imperfect tenses, in addition to their main meaning, also conveyed the meanings of the future and past subjunctive mood.

The polysemy of tense and mood forms of old Armenian is also observed in the dialects. Obviously, tense and mood systems, which present identical forms, often carry different semantic features based on which two groups of dialects can be distinguished.