Zoks (), are an ethnographic group of

Armenians Armenians (, ) are an ethnic group indigenous to the Armenian highlands of West Asia.Robert Hewsen, Hewsen, Robert H. "The Geography of Armenia" in ''The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times Volume I: The Dynastic Periods: From Antiq ...

. They were the indigenous population of the Goghtn province, including Agulis—a large late medieval Armenian region—and several surrounding villages. The name "Zok" comes from the use of a preposition in conversation in the local dialect of the Armenian language. The Zok dialect is one of the 31 dialects of the Armenian language and is similar to the Syunik dialect.

The origin of the Zoks and the Zok dialect

Zoks are Armenians who migrated from the

Syunik region Syunik (, ) is the southernmost administrative divisions of Armenia, province of Armenia. It is bordered by the Vayots Dzor Province to the north, Azerbaijan's Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic exclave to the west, Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran ...

to the Goghtn region. They spoke the Zok or Agulis dialect of Armenian, which closely resembles the Syunik dialect. Although it is linguistically close to the Eastern Armenian dialect, it is somewhat unintelligible to speakers of the latter. This difference has led to many myths regarding the origin of the Zoks. In the

Armenian language Armenian (endonym: , , ) is an Indo-European languages, Indo-European language and the sole member of the independent branch of the Armenian language family. It is the native language of the Armenians, Armenian people and the official language of ...

, there are several demonstrative pronouns such as "ays", "ayd", and "ayn" (meaning "this" and "that"). In the old Goghtn dialect, these were pronounced as "hok", "dok", and "nock". In the Agulis dialect spoken in the villages of Agulis, Dasht, Tsgna, Tanakert, Disar, Kakhakik, and Andamech, these pronouns were used with the prefix "z"—a feature typical of 18th- and 19th-century Armenian dialects. This gave rise to the pronoun "zhok" or "Zok", which eventually led to the creation of the ethnographic and linguistic term "Zok" in the 19th century. According to

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

and academician Manuk Abeghyan, the name "Zok" derives from the pronoun "zhok" in their dialect. In essence, the Zoks represent one of the indigenous Armenian communities of Nakhichevan. The uniqueness of their language is primarily due to

vowel shift A vowel shift is a systematic sound change in the pronunciation of the vowel sounds of a language. The best-known example in the English language is the Great Vowel Shift, which began in the 15th century. The Greek language also underwent a v ...

s. For example, the vowel "o" changed to "u" (e.g., gorts → gyurts, Markos → Marcus), and "u" changed to "o" (e.g., shun → shon, ptug → petog). The vowel "a". depending on surrounding consonants, could shift to "o", "u", "y", "i", "ai", or remain unchanged. The consonant system of the Zok dialect has remained unchanged since the

Classical Armenian Classical Armenian (, , ; meaning "literary anguage; also Old Armenian or Liturgical Armenian) is the oldest attested form of the Armenian language. It was first written down at the beginning of the 5th century, and most Armenian literature fro ...

(Grabar) period and, in fact, best reflects the consonant structure of Old Armenian. Moreover, the dialect preserves features of Proto-Armenian that are absent in Grabar. For example, the word kakhts' (from

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...

"glkt-") retains the presence of the consonant "l", while in other forms of Armenian, such as Old Armenian, it appears as kat'. The Zok (Agulis dialect) was first described in 1711 by the German linguist Johann Joachim Schröder in his grammatical work ''Thesaurus Linguae Armenicae''.

References

{{reflist Ethnic Armenian people Indo-European peoples Ancient peoples of the Near East

The origin of the Zoks and the Zok dialect

See also

References