Lake SevanLake Sevan (Sevana lich) is the largest body of water in both Armenia and the Caucasus region. It is one of the largest freshwater high-altitude (alpine) lakes in Eurasia. The lake is situated in Gegharkunik Province, at an altitude of above sea level. The total surface area of its basin is about , which makes up of Armenia's territory. The lake itself is , and the volume is . It is fed by 28 rivers and streams. Only 10% of the incoming water is drained by the Hrazdan River, while the remaining 90% evaporates.
Glottalic theoryThe glottalic theory is that Proto-Indo-European had ejective or otherwise non-pulmonic stops, , instead of the plain voiced ones, as hypothesized by the usual Proto-Indo-European phonological reconstructions. A forerunner of the theory was proposed by the Danish linguist Holger Pedersen in 1951, but he did not involve glottalized sounds.
Rough breathingIn the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing (dasỳ pneûma or δασεῖα daseîa; spīritus asper) character is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an h sound before a vowel, diphthong, or after rho. It remained in the polytonic orthography even after the Hellenistic period, when the sound disappeared from the Greek language. In the monotonic orthography of Modern Greek phonology, in use since 1982, it is not used at all. The absence of an /h/ sound is marked by the smooth breathing.
Armenian hypothesisThe Armenian hypothesis, also known as the Near Eastern model, is a theory of the Proto-Indo-European homeland, initially proposed by linguists Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov in the early 1980s, which suggests that the Proto-Indo-European language was spoken during the 5th–4th millennia BC in "eastern Anatolia, the southern Caucasus, and northern Mesopotamia". Recent ancient DNA research has led to renewed suggestions of a Caucasian homeland for a 'pre-proto-Indo-European'.
GutturalGuttural speech sounds are those with a primary place of articulation near the back of the oral cavity, where it is difficult to distinguish a sound's place of articulation and its phonation. In popular usage it is an imprecise term for sounds produced relatively far back in the vocal tract, such as German ch or the Arabic ayin, but not simple glottal sounds like h. The term 'guttural language' is used for languages that have such sounds. As a technical term used by phoneticians and phonologists, guttural has had various definitions.
Advanced and retracted tongue rootIn phonetics, advanced tongue root (ATR) and retracted tongue root (RTR) are contrasting states of the root of the tongue during the pronunciation of vowels in some languages, especially in Western and Eastern Africa, but also in Kazakh and Mongolian. ATR vs RTR was once suggested to be the basis for the distinction between tense and lax vowels in European languages such as German, but that no longer seems tenable.
AshtarakAshtarak (Աշտարակ ɑʃtɑˈɾɑk) is a town in the Ashtarak Municipality of the Aragatsotn Province of Armenia, located on the left bank of Kasagh River along the gorge, northwest of the capital Yerevan. It is the administrative centre of the province and an important crossroad of routes for the Yerevan–Gyumri–Vanadzor triangle. The town plays a great role in the national economy as well as the cultural life of Armenia through several industrial enterprises and cultural institutions. It has developed as a satellite town of Yerevan.