The philologist Dr. Sevan Deirmenjian lately spoke online to participants in the Hamazkayin Armenian teacher preparation program, Nor Marmara reports from Istanbul.
The topic was the influence of Classical Armenian grammatical forms and elements of vocabulary on contemporary Armenian.
As far as possible, the speaker engaged in dialog with the participants. He used the oldest writings in Classical Armenian and looked at 19th-century efforts to convert those writings to then-contemporary spoken Armenian. He sought out reified word forms and linguistic rules that had emerged from the time.
Following the two-hour presentation, the participants left with new knowledge and gratitude.