Elementos vascos en la obra de Hrachia Adjarian

Abstract

Within the great Armenian philologist Hrachia Adjarian’s (1876-1953) entire contribution to linguistics, of no little significance is that material regarding the Basque language. Using the data available to him at the time, this linguist was the first in Armenian circles to offer a general description of the Basque language, Adjarian included a great many references to the Basque language in his Complete Dictionary of the Armenian Language: in comparison with 562 other languages, highlighting coincidences with equivalent Armenian forms in a number of cases. His Dictionary of Armenian roots offers 46 Basque-Armenian lexical approximations drawn from the works of other researchers. The approximation of the Basq. Buru “head” – Arm. Poyr (pur) “head” which Adjarian himself points out is considered relevant. Being a great advocate of the theory which supports Indo-European origins for the Armenian language, however, Adjarian rejected the evidence of any comparison between Basque and Armenian. Despite his rejection, nevertheless, the Basque-language ideas formulated by Hrachia Adjarian are of great importance in Basque-Armenian studies.