Armenian Language & Literature Unified Exam cheat sheet

The alphabet has 38 letters - 7 vowels (ա, ե, է, ը, ի, ո, ու) and 31 consonants - created by Mesrop Mashtots in 405 CE.

The signs ու and և are a digraph and a ligature (ե + ւ, read 'ev', meaning 'and'); neither is counted among the 38 letters.

The Armenian sentence-final mark is ։ (վերջակետ), a colon-like sign; the Latin period is not used, and the Latin colon has no Armenian equivalent.

The question mark ՞ and the exclamation mark ՜ are placed above the last vowel of the word carrying the interrogation or exclamation, not at the end of the sentence.

Quotation marks are « » (չակերտներ); direct speech follows the author's words after a colon, and each line of dialogue opens with a dash (-).

օ is written at the beginning of a word and after a vowel; ո is written inside a word and word-initially when pronounced /vo/.

Stress falls on the final syllable of the word, which is why the question and exclamation marks are placed over that syllable's vowel.

In line division a single letter may not be left at the end of a line or carried alone to the next line.

The 1922 reform created the modern (Soviet) orthography; the traditional Mashtotsian spelling is retained by the Diaspora and the Armenian Church.

Lexical meaning is direct (ուղղակի) or figurative (փոխաբերական); figurative meaning is the basis of metaphor and of most semantic change.

Synonyms divide into absolute (կատարյալ), ideographic/semantic and stylistic; they differ in nuance, intensity or register rather than in reference.

Homonyms share sound and often spelling but not meaning (սեր 'love' / սեր 'offspring'); subtypes are homophones, homographs and homoforms.

A դարձվածք is stable and reproducible, semantically unitary and not decomposable into the sum of its components; it is translated as a whole.

Sources of Armenian idioms: biblical and ecclesiastical usage (ձեռք լվանալ), everyday life and crafts, and calques from Persian, Turkish and Russian.

Archaisms (հնաբանություն) are obsolete words that have living synonyms; historicisms name vanished realia and therefore have no synonyms.

The five functional styles are գեղարվեստական, գիտական, պաշտոնա-գործնական, հրապարակախոսական and խոսակցական.

Typical stylistic faults: pleonasm (redundant meaning), tautology (repeated root) and unjustified mixing of styles.

Eastern Armenian has seven cases: ուղղական, սեռական, տրական, հայցական, բացառական, գործիական, ներգոյական.

There is no grammatical gender; biological sex is expressed lexically (որդի/դուստր, աքլոր/հավ).

Definiteness is marked by a suffix, not an article word: -ը after a consonant, -ն after a vowel (տունը, տղան).

The default plural suffix is -ներ; a closed group takes -եր (ծառ–ծառեր, գիր–գրեր), and some stems change (տուն–տներ, ձու–ձվեր).

Five moods: սահմանական, հրամայական, ըղձական, պայմանական, հարկադրական.

The indicative distinguishes seven tense forms: ներկա, անցյալ անկատար, անցյալ կատարյալ, ապառնի, ներկա կատարյալ, վաղակատար անցյալ, ապառնի կատարյալ.

The infinitive ends in -ել or -ալ and is the dictionary form; the converb (համակատար) ends in -ելով/-ալով.

Adjectives are invariant: they do not agree with the noun in number, case or gender.

Neutral declarative order is subject–object–verb; the verb closes the sentence and the focused element stands immediately before it.

Five sentence parts: ենթակա, ստորոգյալ, խնդիր (ուղիղ/անուղղակի), հատկացուցիչ, պարագա.

The predicate is verbal or nominal; the nominal predicate uses the copula է/են (նա ուսուցիչ է).

Sentences are simple or compound, and compound sentences divide into համադասական (coordination) and ստորադասական (subordination).

Subordinate clause types: ենթակայական, ստորոգելիական, խնդրական, հատկացուցիչ, պարագայական.

A comma separates homogeneous members not joined by a conjunction and sets off the subordinate clause.

Negation uses the proclitic չ- written together with the verb (չեմ, չգնաց); prohibition uses the separate particle մի՛ with the imperative.

Direct speech: author's words, colon, then «...»; dialogue lines are marked by a dash.

Armenian is an independent branch of Indo-European with no close living relatives; it is unrelated to Georgian (Kartvelian) and to Turkish (Turkic).

Periodization: Grabar (5th–11th c., literary medium into the 19th), Middle Armenian (11th–17th), Modern Ashkharhabar (17th c. to the present).

The alphabet was created in 405 CE by Mesrop Mashtots with Catholicos Sahak Partev and King Vramshapuh; the first translated sentence was Proverbs 1:2.

Two modern standards exist: Eastern Armenian (Ararat/Yerevan dialect base) and Western Armenian (Constantinople dialect base).

Key sound changes from Indo-European: *p > h word-initially (հայր < *ph₂tēr), *t > թ, *k > ք, with satem-type outcome *ḱ > ս.

Grabar is highly synthetic with seven cases and a suffixed article; modern Armenian is more analytic, using prepositions and fixed word order.

Loanword layers: Iranian (Parthian, Middle Persian), Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Turkish, Russian, and later French and English.

General linguistics concepts used in the exam: langue/parole (Saussure), arbitrariness of the sign, synchronic vs diachronic, and the levels of phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicology.

The 5th-century 'Golden Age' produced Koryun's Life of Mashtots (the first original Armenian work), Agathangelos, Pavstos Buzand, Yeghishe and Movses Khorenatsi.

Yeghishe's History of Vardan and the Armenian War narrates the 451 Battle of Avarayr and the martyrdom of Vardan Mamikonyan.

Movses Khorenatsi's History of Armenia in three books traces the genealogy from Hayk to the Bagratid period.

The translation movement (5th–8th c.) rendered Greek theology and philosophy into Armenian; David the Invincible represents the philosophical strand.

Grigor Narekatsi (951–1003) wrote the Book of Lamentations (Նարեկ), a long cycle of mystical penitential prayers.

Nerses Shnorhali (1102–1173) composed the prayer Ողորմեա ինձ, Աստուած and numerous hymns; Hovhannes Imastaser and Frik represent 11th–13th-century secular and protest poetry.

Sayat-Nova (18th c.) is the peak of ashugh poetry; Nahapet Kuchak (16th c.) is the master of the hayren.

The oral epic Սասնա ծռեր (David of Sassoun) was written down by Garegin Srvandztyan in 1873.

Khachatur Abovyan's Wounds of Armenia (1841, published 1858) is the first Armenian novel and the manifesto of the Ashkharhabar literary language.

Romanticism is represented by Nalbandian's civic poetry (Ազատության երգ) and Tourian's lyrics; realism by Raffi, Shirvanzade and Baronian's satire.

Raffi's historical novels - Սամվել, Դավիթ Բեկ, Խենթը - link the national past to contemporary liberation ideas.

Hagop Baronian founded Armenian comedy with Ազգային ջոջեր and Մեծապատիվ մուրացկաններ.

Hovhannes Tumanyan's Անուշ (1892) and Սասունցի Դավիթ (1903) fuse folklore with literary form.

Western Armenian cultural centres were Constantinople and the Mekhitarist monastery of Venice, publisher of Բազմավեպ from 1843.

Zabel Yesayan, Arpiar Arpiaryan and Grigor Zohrab represent the Western Armenian prose of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Periodicals and criticism (Հյուսիսափայլ, Մշակ) drove the transition from romanticism to realism.

Charents's Երկիր Նաիրի (1926) marks Armenian modernism; the poet was purged and died in prison in 1937.

Writers killed in the 1915 Genocide include Daniel Varoujan, Siamanto and Ruben Sevak.

The Soviet doctrine of socialist realism, imposed in 1934, constrained themes; Paruyr Sevak's Անլռելի զանգակատուն (1959) broke the silence on 1915 and on Komitas.

Hrant Matevosyan's Մենք ենք, մեր սարերը treats village life, national memory and uprootedness.

Diaspora prose is represented above all by William Saroyan (My Name is Aram, The Human Comedy).

Post-war poetry is dominated by Silva Kaputikyan, Hovhannes Shiraz and Vahagn Davtyan.

After 1991 literature turns to urban, existential and experimental themes, and previously censored names and texts are published.

Three literary kinds: epic (էպոս), lyric (քնարերգություն) and drama (դրամա); genres such as novel, poem, tragedy and elegy are their subdivisions.

Tropes: metaphor (similarity), metonymy (contiguity), synecdoche (part–whole), epithet, hyperbole, litotes, personification, allegory, oxymoron.

Stylistic figures: anaphora (initial repetition), epiphora (final repetition), antithesis, gradation, rhetorical question, inversion, parallelism, ellipsis.

Plot arc: exposition → complication → climax → denouement (հանգուցալուծում).

The theme (թեմա) is what the text is about; the idea (իդեա) is the author's evaluative conclusion about it.

Verse analysis uses foot (ոտանավոր), line (տող), rhyme (հանգ) and syllable count; accentual-syllabic verse dominates after the 19th century.

Analysis levels: composition, image system, conflict, narrative voice, time and space, and language/style.

Structure: introduction containing the thesis → body paragraphs (claim + textual evidence + commentary) → conclusion restating the thesis.

Each body paragraph contains a topic sentence, a quotation or example, analysis of that example, and a link back to the thesis.

The instruction verb fixes the task: վերլուծել = analyse causes and devices; համեմատել = compare on stated criteria; գնահատել = judge with evidence.

Quotations are given in « » and then analysed; retelling the plot (փոխպատում) earns no credit.

Cohesion is built with conjunctions (ուրեմն, սակայն, հետևաբար), pronouns and lexical repetition, not with chains of short simple sentences.

Assessment criteria: relevance of content, structure and logic, richness of vocabulary, grammatical and orthographic accuracy, punctuation.

Register is formal written style; colloquialisms and unmotivated first-person forms are excluded.

Proportional plan: introduction about 10% of the text, body about 80%, conclusion about 10%.