BIRTH OF HOVHANNES BARSEGHIAN

Hovhannes Barseghian was a prolific and authoritative linguist in Armenia.

He was born on October 25, 1920, in the village of Mastara (Aragatsotn province). After graduating from the seven-year school in Mastara and the high school in Talin, he was admitted to the Linguistics and Literature Faculty of Yerevan State University in 1938.

He was drafted into the army in 1941 and participated in World War II until 1943, when he was seriously injured for the first time and demobilized. He graduated from the university in 1944 and completed his post–graduate studies in 1948. Barseghian defended his candidate (first Ph.D.) thesis in 1952 and his second Ph.D. thesis in 1981. He became an associate professor in 1981 and full professor in 1984.

He lectured at the Armenian language chair of Yerevan State University (1946-1948) and at the Armenian language chair of the Armenian State Pedagogical University (1948-1958). He returned to Yerevan State University in 1958 and was elected head of the Armenian language chair in 1969. In 1970 he received the title of Emeritus Worker of Science. Hovhannes Barseghian was dean of the Philology Faculty in 1977-1985 and founding head of the chair of history of the Armenian language in 1985-1990.

He was scientific secretary of the Terminological Committee dependent on the Council of Ministers of Soviet Armenia from 1955, and scientific secretary of the Armenian Higher Council of the State Language Directory dependent on the Government of the Republic of Armenia from 1992. He edited the “Terminological Guide,” which appeared regularly between 1964 and 2006.

Barseghian was the author of dozens of scholarly articles, as well as twenty monographs, including Theory of Verb and Conjugation in Modern Armenian (1953), Manuk Abeghian’s Theory of Five Cases and His Old and New Criticisms (1967), “Theories of Differentiation of Parts of speech in Armenian (1975), Teaching of Armenian Parts of Speech” (1980), and school textbooks.

He authored the Armenian Orthographic Terminological Dictionary (1973), as well as the co-author of the monumental Dictionary of Place Names of Armenia and Adjacent Regions in five volumes (1986-2001), along with historians Tadevos Hakobian and Stepan Melik-Bakhshian. After the death of his coauthors, he edited and prepared for publication the last two voluminous tomes. The work received the Presidential Award of the Republic of Armenia in 2003.

Hovhannes Barseghian received many awards and was decorated with the medal of the order of St. Mesrop Mashtots in 2012. He passed away on August 2, 2014, in Yerevan.