Exploring the Gavar Dialect of Armenian: Variation in Perception and Production

Event details Date: Thursday, August 6, 2026 Time: 1:00 PM to 1:00 PM Location: Zoom Type: Lecture / Workshop Audience: Alumni,Faculty,Public,Students About this event Speaker: Emma Portugal is a PhD Candidate in Linguistics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Abstract: Despite the extensive Armenian dialectological tradition, little is known about the current state of regional dialects in Armenia. Previous authors have observed that the use of regional dialects may be declining, particularly in urban areas, as the influence of literary Armenian and of Yerevan’s dialect grows. However, there has been no previous systematic study of this potential dialect leveling, or of how different residents of a given city might vary in their maintenance of dialectal features. This project seeks to address this gap by investigating sociolinguistic variation in the maintenance of dialect vowels in the city of Gavar (regional center of Gegharkunik province), as well as by exploring how social and linguistic factors affect Gavar residents’ perception of dialectal and non-dialectal vowels. Production of vowels was investigated through sociolinguistic interviews (carried out in 2022 with the help of a local research assistant) and through additional word-list data gathered in 2025, while perception of vowels was investigated through a two-part experiment carried out in 2025. Comparison of participants’ vowel productions with existing dialectological sources revealed that many speakers maintained several aspects of the previously described dialect vowel system, while also shedding light on patterns of social variation in the maintenance of these vowels. The results of the perception experiment suggest that the perception of dialect vowels is affected both by their social salience and by their role in the dialect’s sound system, providing insights into which types of... Official event details: https://events.berkeley.edu/armenian/event/324060-exploring-the-gavar-dialect-of-armenian-variation