PHONOLOGICAL DESCRIPTIONS OF OLD ARMENIAN VOICED FRICATIVE Վ [V]- (SYNCHRONIC ANALYSIS)

Abstract

According to different views in Armenian Studies, Old Armenian (OA) վ [v] 1) was a
labio-dental consonant which acted as a semi vowel in certain positions, the same goes for
ւ (ṷ) and consonant ու (oṷ) (H. Hyubshman, H. Marcvart, M. Abeghyan); 2) different sounds

have been expressed by վ and ւ letters (phonemes) (A. Meye, N. Mar, H. Acharyan, S. Avetyan);

3) along with ւ and consonant ու, վ used to be one of the sub-phonemes of Ու/ sonorant, i.e.

there were additional distributional relations between these three sounds (E. Agahayan);

4) վ and ւ had the same consonant sound value. Moreover, վ, ւ and consonant
ու were the positional variants of the phoneme <Վ> (H. Muradyan). In my view,

the traditional pronunciation of these sounds as labio-dental [վ/v] played an indirect

role in seeing additional distributional relations between վ-ի, ւ-ի and the so-called

“consonant” ու i.e. in ascribing them to one phoneme. Whereas, according to phonetics,

similarity in sound forms is not an indicative of
belonging to the same phoneme. The phonemic belonging of a sound depends on its ability to

form functional contrasts, rather than sound resemblance with other sounds or its appearance in
mutually-excluding positions. Hence, though OA վ and ւ cannot appear in the same position
and form distinctive contrasts with each other, they do create similar contrasts with numerous
other phonemes which provide ample grounds to claim that վ and ւ were full representatives of
the OA phoneme system rather than positional variants of the same phoneme.