«Ma in armeno questo non l’abbiamo»: il confronto tra teoria linguistica generale e realtà dell’armeno nell’opera grammaticale di Oskan Erewancci

Abstract

The article deals with Oskan Erewancci’s (1614‒1674) grammar book, which is actually a translation ‒ and partly an adaptation ‒ of the first two books of the Grammaticalium libri tres by Italian philosopher Tommaso Campanella. In its longer version, Oskan’s work is attested only in a handful of manuscripts. While adapting his source, Oskan occasionally declares that a given grammatical category (e.g. grammatical gender for nouns and adjectives) exists, but not in Armenian. In so doing he is influenced by the tendency towards ‘grammatisation’ predominant in contemporary Western culture. The latter was a process brought about within the framework of the so called ‘extended Latin grammar’, which provided the reference point to which any language must adhere in order to be adequately described, as well as the necessary metalanguage to be used in such descriptions.