Zoks
Zoks (Armenian: Զոկեր), are an ethnographic group of Armenians. They were the indigenous population of the Goghtn province, including Agulis—a large late medieval Armenian region—and several surrounding villages.[1] The name "Zok" comes from the use of a preposition in conversation in the local dialect of the Armenian language. The Zok dialect is one of the 31 dialects of the Armenian language and is similar to the Syunik dialect.
The origin of the Zoks and the Zok dialect of the Armenian language
[edit]Zoks are Armenians who migrated from the Syunik region to the Goghtn region. They spoke the Zok or Agulis dialect of Armenian, which closely resembles the Syunik dialect[2]. Although it is linguistically close to the Eastern Armenian dialect, it is somewhat unintelligible to speakers of the latter. This difference has led to many myths regarding the origin of the Zoks.
In the Armenian language, there are several demonstrative pronouns such as "ays", "ayd", and "ayn" (meaning "this" and "that"). In the old Goghtn dialect, these were pronounced as "hok", "dok", and "nock". In the Agulis dialect spoken in the villages of Agulis, Dasht, Tsgna, Tanakert, Disar, Kakhakik, and Andamech, these pronouns were used with the prefix "z"—a feature typical of 18th- and 19th-century Armenian dialects. This gave rise to the pronoun "zhok" or "Zok", which eventually led to the creation of the ethnographic and linguistic term "Zok" in the 19th century. According to linguist and academician Manuk Abeghyan, the name "Zok" derives from the pronoun "zhok" in their dialect.
In essence, the Zoks represent one of the indigenous Armenian communities of Nakhichevan. The uniqueness of their language is primarily due to vowel shifts. For example, the vowel "o" changed to "u" (e.g., gorts → gyurts, Markos → Marcus), and "u" changed to "o" (e.g., shun → shon, ptug → petog). The vowel "a". depending on surrounding consonants, could shift to "o", "u", "y", "i", "ai", or remain unchanged.[3]
The consonant system of the Zok dialect has remained unchanged since the Classical Armenian (Grabar) period and, in fact, best reflects the consonant structure of Old Armenian.[4][5] Moreover, the dialect preserves features of Proto-Armenian that are absent in Grabar. For example, the word kakhts' (from Proto-Indo-European "glkt-") retains the presence of the consonant "l", while in other forms of Armenian, such as Old Armenian, it appears as kat'.
The Zok (Agulis dialect) was first described in 1711 by the German linguist Johann Joachim Schröder in his grammatical work Thesaurus Linguae Armenicae.[6]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ "Zok language". Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia (in Armenian). Vol. 1. 1974. p. 61.
- ^ Vaux, Bert (2007). Zok: The Armenian dialect of Agulis. p. 2.
- ^ Calabrese, Andrea (2003). "The Evolution of Latin Short High Vowels". In Pérez-Leroux, Ana Teresa; Roberge, Yves (eds.). Romance Linguistics: Theory and Acquisition: Selected Papers from the 32nd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages. p. 86.
- ^ Vaux, Bert (2008). "Zok: The Armenian Dialect of Agulis". Between Paris and Fresno: Armenian Studies in Honor of Dickran Kouymjian.
Though closely related to it linguistically, Zok is completely unintelligible to speakers of Standard Eastern Armenian, and is therefore properly considered a separate language. Speakers of the language refer to it as zokerēn "Zok language". Because Zok is so different from other varieties of Armenian, many myths about its nature and origins have arisen in the Armenian community. Nevertheless, in certain other respects it is one of the most archaic dialects. Some notable archaisms include the preservation of the proto-Armenian consonant series (group 6); the survival of the reflex of proto-Armenian l in kakhts' 'milk' < IE *glkt- (cf. Greek galaktos; all other forms of Armenian show variants of kat', with no trace of the original *l)
- ^ Mardirosyan, Hrach (2013). "The Place of Armenian in the Indo-European Language Family". Вопросы языкового родства. Международный научный журнал (10): 117.
- ^ Greppin, John A. C.; Chatschaturjan, Amalija A. (1986). Handbook of Armenian Dialectology. Caravan Books. p. 10.