Previously unknown Polish borrowings in Armenian court protocols of the city of Kamianets (16th century)

Some concrete scientific achievements were registered in studies of Armenian vocabulary in the 19th and 20th centuries. First of all, this concerns borrowings in the lexicon of the Armenian diaspora in Poland, which were documented in the Middle Ages, especially in the Protocols of the autonomous court of the Armenian community in the city of Kamianets. The analysis of the vocabulary of the Protocols showed that Polish Armenians, and in particular Armenians of the city of Kamianets, who lived long together with Poles and Ukrainians and had various everyday communication contacts with them, borrowed numerous lexical units from Middle Polish (i.e., Polish borrowings from the Middle Polish language, through Polish from other languages, and from Polish through other languages) and Ukrainian in the new conditions. These borrowings are interesting because they did not become part of the general Armenian vocabulary, but were used only in the local patois of Polish Armenians. These patois are a particular manifestation of the Ardeal (Transylvanian) dialect, which occupies an intermediate position between the eastern and western zones of Armenian dialects. The dialect of Ardeal had four branches spoken by immigrants emigrating and re-emigrating from Armenia and other places in the Armenian colonies in Poland, Hungary, Suceava and Romania. The above-mentioned geography and the fact that Armenians in the colonies came from different regions led to the fact that the dialect of Ardeal began to differ due to the heterogeneity of linguistic conditions. Therefore, we use the term "patois of Polish Armenians" only conditionally, because in the conditions of low linguistic material it is difficult to consider the "Polish Armenian" language and the language of the Armenians of Kamianets as patois. The primary objective of this article is to investigate the lexical units that (a) were used in the aforementioned Protocols but were not documented either in the Dictionary of the Middle Armenian Language or in other academic research; (b) were noted in certain research, but a need exists for a new study of their modes of expression or content. The research was mainly carried out using the comparative and descriptive-analytical methodologies. The Protocols give a rather comprehensive picture of the Armenian colony in Poland - of adaptation to the new environment, in some cases of complete integration, as evidenced by dozens of borrowings related to various spheres of public life: justice and law, finance and economy, clergy, commerce and economy, household, etc. It should be noted that the borrowings took place in two ways: directly (from the Polish language) and indirectly (through Polish from other languages and from Polish language through other languages). The Protocols contain a heterogeneous phonetic system and grammatical means of expression of the lexical layers of Old and Middle Armenian. The observed mixed transliterations may also be attributed to the inconsistency in the court clerks' language and dialectal distinctions, or to the consequence of the subjective interpretation of the word meaning. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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