Armenologist, linguist, professor, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR, Honored Worker of Science of the Armenian SSR.
Atcharyan was born on March 8, 1876, in Constantinople. He graduated from the local Central College, and then in 1895, he left for Paris to study at the Sorbonne University.
In 1898, he came to Transcaucasia and devoted himself to pedagogical and scientific activities. He worked as a teacher in Echmiadzin, Shushi, and Nor Bayazet. Upon the foundation of YSU, he was invited as a lecturer in Armenology, linguistics, and oriental studies. In 1943, when the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR was established, Hr. Atcharyan was confirmed among the founding members of the academy.
Almost all areas of the Armenian language are studied in his linguistic works. Along with M. Abeghyan's unique works, they became the scientific foundations of the study of the Armenian language, based on which Armenology is developing even now. As early as 1898, having examined a number of dialects (Aslanbeg, Karabakh, and Van) in separate articles, he completed his dialectological research and, in 1909, published the work "Classification of Armenian Dialects" in French. Hr. Atcharyan paid great attention to the rich vocabulary of Armenian dialects of Maragha, Agulis, Nor Julfa, Nor Nakhijevan, Karabakh, Hamshen, Constantinople, Artial, and Van in the monographs published in 1925-1954.
One of the important areas of Atcharyan's research was the lexicography of the Armenian language. His greatest work devoted to this is the six-volume "Armenian Root Dictionary" (Yerevan, 1926-1932; the seventh volume is the appendix, published in 1935). The "Armenian Root Dictionary" is a complete list of about 11 thousand Armenian root words, with their explanation, grammatical information, and etymology. According to Antoine Mayer, it is a unique semantic-etymological dictionary, where the roots of Armenian are characterized in terms of the Indo-European base language, their relations with related and neighboring languages, word-forming possibilities, and their manifestations in provincial dialects.
He summarized the results of his study of the history of the Armenian language in the two-volume work called "History of the Armenian Language" (Part A, 1940, Part B, 1951).
His ten-volume monograph called "Complete Grammar of the Armenian Language in Comparison with 562 Languages" is devoted to the historical-comparative study of the Armenian language. Summarizing the results of studies devoted to the comparative and historical grammar of the Armenian language over the past century, as well as his research, Hr. Atcharyan offered his solutions to the complex problems discussed in this work.
"The Dictionary of Armenian Personal Names," as well as other works devoted to the history and theory of Armenian writing, ancient bibliography, and the history of modern literature, have a permanent place in studying the Armenian language and speech culture.
His rich knowledge allowed him to conduct various courses at different times (introduction to linguistics, history of the Armenian language, comparative grammar, Grabar, dialectology, ancient Armenian bibliography, comparative grammar of Indo-European languages, French, Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, etc.).
When the Department of Oriental Languages was established at the university, he also assumed the leadership of the Department of Oriental Languages and taught Persian, the history of the Persian language, and Arabic.
Atcharyan died on April 16, 1953, in Yerevan. By the decision of the government of the Armenian SSR, the Institute of Language of the Academy of Sciences was named after him.
Hr. Atcharyan's bronze bust in the lobby of the YSU central building symbolizes the role of the outstanding scientist-pedagogue in the development of the university.
