Բառերի պատճառաբանվածության մթագնումը հայերենում (The Obscuring of Word Motivation in Armenian)

Felekyan, Manuk · 2025

Over the historical development of a language the semantic structure of a compound word can shift, blurring or destroying awareness of its compound structure: a process called demotivation (ապապատճառաբանում). The article explains that a compound word's meaning rests on its internal form, the motivated link between sound and sense, and that this internal form is usually transparent to speakers. Under certain conditions, however, Armenian tends to obscure both the derivational and the semantic ties inside a compound, sometimes losing the internal form entirely, as in many native Armenian root words. The study sets out the principal causes and the successive stages of this demotivation, noting that words at different stages of loss coexist side by side in the language.

Citation checked against the publisher's record on 2026-07-13.