Word Order in Eastern Armenian Language Based on Dryer's Branching Direction Theory

In the present research word order has been used to determine the type of Eastern Armenian Language in comparison to the groups of “Eurasian” and “world” languages based on Dryer's (1992) “Branching Direction Theory”. Dryer (1992), has introduced 23 correlation pairs as verb-patterned and object-patterned, to determine the word order in languages. He has argued against Greenberg's (1963) “Head-Dependent Theory” and by presenting “Branching Direction Theory” has concluded that the word order correlations reflect a tendency for languages to be consistently right-branching or consistently left-branching. The main question here is to investigate the belonging of Eastern Armenian language to the OV or VO language types, in comparison to “Eurasian” as well as “world languages”. In achieving the research goals, 19 valid correlation pairs have been analyzed within the collected data. The results show that Eastern Armenian language in comparison to group of “Eurasian” languages has 14 characteristics of strong OV languages and 15 characteristics of strong VO languages, hence, it has a tendency to VO languages; In case of its comparison to the group of “world languages” it has 14 characteristics of strong OV languages and 14 characteristics of strong VO languages, hence, it has a tendency to both OV and VO languages. Furthermore, it illustrates that despite Dryer's (1992) claim, the Eastern Armenian language does not have tendency to be classified consistently in a left-branching or right-branching type. Based on these, the median type could be considered as an independent type for Eastern Armenian language.