
Robin MeyerUniversity of Lausanne | UNIL · Section des sciences du langage et de l'information
Robin Meyer
Doctor of Philosophy
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31
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Introduction
Additional affiliations
August 2020 - present
September 2018 - December 2018
January 2018 - August 2020
Education
October 2013 - September 2017
October 2011 - July 2013
October 2007 - July 2011
Publications
Publications (31)
Armenian is an Indo-European language, a family not strongly associated with the category of converbs. Nevertheless, Classical Armenian exhibits one such class of forms, aligning clearly with Haspelmath’s (1995) definition of converbs as a “nonfinite verb form whose main function is to mark adverbial subordination” (1995: 3). Known in the grammar o...
Both at school and at university, language teaching is a fundamental and invaluable element for the development of knowledge of foreign cultures. However, teachers of ancient, medieval and modern languages face different challenges: while ancient languages depend almost exclusively on the study of written texts and are taught by colleagues who are...
The teaching of ancient languages at university level is usually quite different from its counterpart in secondary schools: the latter will offer only a small number of such languages (e.g. Latin and Greek) as compared to the broader spectrum available at universities. At the same time, these secondary-school courses traditionally last longer and n...
The Classical Armenian periphrastic perfect consists of a participle in-eal and an initially optional form of a copulative verb Over the course of the fifth century CE, one copula, em 'to be', gram-maticalises into a standard, unmarked major use pattern in a process of obligatorification; patterns with other copulas such as linim 'to become' and ka...
This special issue of the Transactions of the Philological Society is dedicated to Contact-Induced Change in Morphosyntax. It contains 11 original articles, ranging geographically from Mesoamerica via the Caucasus to East Siberia, and diachronically from Classical Antiquity to the present.
La voix d’Antoine Meillet n’a pas définitivement disparu. Il en reste aujourd’hui une trace sous la forme de deux enregistrements sonores effectués en mars 1927 dans le cadre du projet des Archives de la parole et disponibles sur Gallica. Sur ce disque double-face se laisse entendre la voix frêle de Meillet qui parle de «L’histoire des langues» et...
Alors que Heinrich Hübschmann est généralement considéré comme le fondateur de la linguistique arménienne moderne, les travaux d’Antoine Meillet dans ce domaine ont eu, durant tout le XXe siècle, et ont encore un impact plus profond et continu. Cet article examine son rôle dans le développement d’un nombre de sous-disciplines au sein de la linguist...
Professeur à l’École pratique des hautes études et au Collège de France, célèbre comparatiste et spécialiste de quasiment toutes les langues indo-européennes, le Français Antoine Meillet (1866-1936) fut considéré comme un maître des études linguistiques. Aujourd’hui encore, il est, par ses travaux, presque unanimement reconnu comme une figure incon...
This book draws on a detailed corpus analysis of fifth-century historiographical texts to explore the influence of the Iranian languages on the syntax of Armenian. While contact between the Iranian languages - particularly Parthian - and Armenian has been a fertile field of research for several decades, its effects on syntax have to date been somew...
The phenomenon of Suffixaufnahme refers to a type of morphosyntactic agreement whereby a dependent noun phrase shows case agreement with its head in addition to its functional case marking. The phenomenon is best known from Old Georgian and Hurro-Urartian, but also occurs elsewhere (Caucasus, ancient Mesopotamia, Australia), mainly in agglutinative...
This paper serves as an introduction to a thematic issue of the Transactions of the Philological Society focusing on morphosyntactic change resulting from language contact.
The fields of linguistic typology, contact linguistics and historical linguistics frequently interact with one another and each draws on the insights gained in the others. To date, however, there is no effective and systematic cooperation between these subdisciplines, no database comparing the typological distribution of features with common outcom...
The Armenian translation of the Greek New Testament usually follows the original quite closely whilst still employing various translation strategies for dealing with one and the same type of construction. In one passage, Lk. 3:23, none of the common translation strategies are employed: a participle in the nominative singular (Gk. ὤν ṓn) is translat...
The Armenian version of the Art of Grammar attributed to Dionysius Thrax has long been a staple of research into the so-called Hellenising School of Armenian translation. To date, scholarship has undervalued the modus operandi and content of the Armenian τέχνη, and thus the problematic relationship between ‘translation’ and original. Three differen...
From pilgrimage sites in the far west of Europe to the Persian court; from mystic visions to a gruesome contemporary “dance”; from a mundane poem on wine to staggering religious art: thus far in space and time extends the world of the Armenians.
A glimpse of the vast and still largely unexplored threads that connect it to the wider world is offered...
This chapter outlines the development of morphosyntactic alignment in Armenian from its pre-attested stage to modern forms of the language. For the most part, Armenian follows a nominative–accusative alignment pattern; the only exception occurs in the periphrastic perfect in Classical Armenian. This tense shows tripartite alignment: subjects are ma...
This volume advances research on diachronic alignment typology across the Indo-European family, showing the breadth and fertility of this field. It brings together contributions from leading specialists in Indo-European languages to explore the macro- and micro-dynamic factors contributing to variety and change in alignment and argument realisation...
This paper seeks to combine the insights gathered in a corpus study of the periphrastic perfect in Classical Armenian texts from the 5th century CE and research into the socio-historical and political interactions of the Armenians and their Iranian neighbours in the same time period.
It is argued that the construction of the Classical Armenian per...
This paper seeks to combine the insights gathered in a corpus study of the periphrastic perfect in Classical Armenian texts from the 5 th century CE and research into the socio-historical and political interactions of the Armenians and their Iranian neighbours in the same time period.
This article outlines the development of morphosyntactic alignment in Armenian from its pre-attested stage to modern forms of the language. On the basis of numerous examples, it is shown that, for the most part, Armenian follows a nominative-accusative alignment pattern; the only exception occurs in the periphrastic perfect in Classical Armenian. T...
Structuralists and generativists have insisted for a long time that the elements and structures one language could borrow from another are constrained by typological compatibility, naturalness, and other factors (cf. Thomason and Kaufman 1988: 13–34). Such constraints are still thought to apply to structural interference, or pattern replication in...
Patrick Honeybone & Joseph Salmons (eds.), The Oxford handbook of historical phonology (Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xv + 792. - Volume 54 Issue 4 - Robin Meyer
This paper endeavours to show that, at least as far as the syntax of relative clauses is concerned, the form of the Armenian language employed in the Bible translation does not fully correspond to that found in non-translated Armenian literature.
It will be shown that, as argued by Lafontaine and Coulie (1983), next to Classical and Hellenising Ar...
While Armenian is not a member of the Iranian language family, its lexicon is replete with borrowings from esp. Parthian. This paper ventures to show that borrowing is not restricted to lexical items alone, but extends to the realm of syntax as well. This will be demonstrated by means of a corpus based investigation of the usage of Middle Persian x...