Lavrenti Hovhannisyan, contemporary Armenian linguist, Doctor of Philology, Professor, Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, has authored a series of scientific works dedicated to the Karabakh dialect. In his works, he has examined the archaic phonetical, lexical, and grammatical features of the dialect in order to prove the existence of the Armenian population in Artsakh since ancient times. Among the most characteristic phonetic phenomena, he highlights the deafening of the initial voiced consonants in Classical Armenian, in some cases aspiration and palatalization of these consonants, which he does not associate with Turkic influence, the absence of the “f” sound and the presence of oxytonic stress.

KeywordsKarabakh (Artsakh) dialect L. Hovhannisyan Classical Armenian Iranian languages phonetic system lexis grammatical system loanwords etymology archaisms.