Georgian grammar

The Georgian language belongs to the South Caucasian or Kartvelian family. Some of its characteristics are akin to those of Slavic languages such as its system of verbal aspect, but Georgian grammar is remarkably different from Indo-European languages and has many distinct features, such as split ergativity and a polypersonal verb agreement system.

Georgian has its own alphabet. In this article, a transliteration with Latin letters will be used throughout.

Morphosyntactic alignment

Georgian syntax and verb agreement are largely those of a nominative-accusative language. That is, the subject of an intransitive verb and the subject of a transitive verb are treated alike when it comes to word order within the sentence and their agreement marks in the verb complex. Nominative-accusative alignment is the most common in the world's languages, and is found in all Western Indo-European languages (such as English, German, and French).

However, Georgian case morphology (that is, the declension of nouns using case marks) does not always coincide with verbal alignment. Georgian has often been said to exhibit split ergativity; morphologically speaking, it is said that it mostly behaves like an ergative-absolutive language in the Series II ("aorist") screeves. That means that the subject of an intransitive verb will take the same case markings as the direct object of a transitive verb. However, this is not a fully accurate representation.

This is because Georgian has yet another level of split ergativity. In the aorist series, intransitive verbs behave differently. Second conjugation verbs behave as would normally be expected in an ergative language: the subject is declined in the least-marked case, the "nominative" case (terminologically equivalent in this instance to "absolutive" cases in other languages). Third conjugation verbs behave as if they belonged to an accusative system: the most-marked case (the "ergative") marks the subject. The division between second and third conjugations is a convenient way to remember the difference, but in fact they both contain intransitive verbs, and as a whole the behaviour of these verbs follows an active alignment. In an active language, intranstive verbs are subdivided into two classes. The division is usually based on semantic criteria regarding the nature of the subject and the verb; for example, if the subject identifies an agent (an active or intentional performer of the action of the verb), then it might be marked with one case (e.g. the ergative), while if the subject identifies an experiencer of the event or one who does not actively initiate it, then it might be marked with another case (e.g. the absolutive or nominative). What might be called the "most active" case, then, marks the subject of a transitive verb, while the "least active" or "most patientive" case is that used to mark a direct object. This is precisely what happens in Georgian, in the restricted environment of the second or third conjugation verbs in the aorist series.

In Georgian, the classification of verbs according to the agentive or patientive nature of their subject has to do with performing an action, regardless of whether the subject is in control or not. (There are some exceptions to this: weather verbs and verbs of emission of light and soundare usually zero-place predicates, and thus have no agent at all.) The division between classes is conventional and rigid; each verb receives the class that typically corresponds to it. Where the subject is typically an active performer, it is marked as ergative, even if in some specific instances the action might be outside the control of the subject. Therefore, Georgian active alignment is said to be of the "split-S" type.

Case system

Georgian has seven grammatical cases: nominative, ergative (also known in the Kartvelological literature as the narrative ("mot'q'robiti") case, due to the rather inaccurate suggestion of regular ergativity, and that this case occursgenerally only in the aorist series, which usually moves the narrative forward), dative, genitive, instrumental, adverbial and vocative.

The nominative, ergative and dative are core cases, and due to the complex morphosyntactic alignment of Georgian, each one has several different functions and also overlap with each other, in different contexts. They will be treated together with the verb system.

The non-core cases are the genitive, the instrumental, the adverbial and the vocative.

* The genitive case is the equivalent of the preposition "of" or the possessive clitic -s" in English. In the phrase "the republic of Georgia", the word "Georgia" is in the genitive case: "Sakartvelos"' resp'ublik'a".
* The instrumental case corresponds to the preposition "with" in English, as in, "he is cutting "with" a knife", where the word "knife" is in the instrumental case. It also occurs with the objects of certain postpositions.
* The adverbial case commonly marks adverbial phrases. It is also used in some other contexts, especially while using the name of languages. For example, in the sentence "can you translate this to Georgian?", "Georgian" is in the adverbial case.
* The vocative case is used in addressing someone. when, for example, a mother calls her child with "batono?" (meaning "sir?"), the child says "yes?". An interesting fact about the Georgian vocative case is that with proper names, the use of the vocative case sounds condescending or rude, and so it tends to be limited to common nouns: "rogora xart, Zurabi (*Zurabo)?" ("How are you, Zurab?").

Nouns

The declension of a noun depends on whether the root of the noun ends with a vowel or a consonant. If the root of the noun ends with a vowel, the declension can be either truncating (roots ending with -"e" or -"a") or non-truncating (roots ending with -"o" or -"u"). In the truncating declensions, the last vowel of the word stem is lost in the genitive and the instrumental cases. The table below lists the suffixes for each noun case, with an example next to it.

Possessive adjectives

The possessive adjectives (equivalent to English "my", "your", etc.) are declined like other consonant-stem-final adjectives, except for a final "-s" in the dative, instrumental, and adverbial forms of the first- and second-person possessive adjectives. Note the lack of second- and third-person vocative forms.

Verbal system

The Georgian verbal system is considerably complex, especially when compared to that of most Indo-European languages. Rather than using the terms "tense", "aspect", "mood", etc. separately, linguists prefer to use the term "screeve" to distinguish between different time frames and moods of the verbal system. A screeve is a set of six verb forms inflected for person and number.

Verbs are traditionally divided into four classes: transitive verbs, intransitive verbs, verbs with no transitive counterparts (medial verbs) and indirect verbs. There are numerous irregular verbs in Georgian, but they all belong to one of these classes. Each class uses different strategies to build the verb complex, irregular verbs employing somewhat different formations.

See Georgian verb paradigm for an extensive list of verb forms and examples of usage.

Verb classes

Transitive verbs (Class 1 verbs)

Class 1 verbs generally have a subject and a direct object. Some examples are "eat", "kill" and "receive". This class also includes causatives (the equivalent of "make someone do something") and the causative verbal form of adjectives (for example, "make someone deaf").

There are a few verbs in Class 3 that behave like transitive verbs of Class 1 in terms of their conjugations, such as "sneeze" and "cough" (see below).

Intransitive verbs (Class 2 verbs)

Intransitive verbs only have a subject and no direct object (though a few govern an indirect object marked simply with the dative case). Most verbs in this class have a subject that does not perform or control the action of the verb (for example, "die", "happen"). The passive voice of Class 1 transitive verbs belong in this class too, for example "be eaten", "be killed" and "be received". In addition, the verbal form of adjectives also have their intransitive counterparts: the intransitive verb for the adjective "deaf" is "to become deaf".

Medial verbs (Class 3 verbs)

Verbs in Class 3 are usually intransitive verbs, but unlike Class 2 verbs, they mark their subject using the ergative case. Most verbs of motion (such as "swim" and "roll") and verbs about weather (such as "rain" and "snow") belong to this class. Although these verbs are described as not having transitive counterparts (such as "cry"), some of them still have direct objects, such as "learn" and "study". Verbs that are derived from loan words also belong to this class.

The intransitive verbs in Classes 2 and 3, when taken together, seem to be conjugated differently based on a form of "active alignment" (see the section on morphosyntactic alignment).

Indirect verbs (Class 4 verbs)

Verbs that convey the meaning of emotion and prolonged state belong to this class. The verbs "want" and "can" also belong to this class. Other common examples of Class 4 verbs are "sleep", "miss", "envy" and "believe".

tative verbs

Stative verbs do not constitude a class "per se", but rather refer to a state, and their conjugations are very similar to those of indirect verbs. For example, when one says, "the picture is hanging on the wall", the equivalent of "hang" is a stative verb.

Irregular verbs

There are numerous irregular verbs in Georgian; most of them employ the conjugation system of Class 2 intransitive verbs. Irregular verbs use different stems in different screeves, and their conjugations deviate from the conjugations of regular intransitive verbs. Some irregular verbs are: "be", "come", "say", "tell" and "give".

creeves

There are three series of screeves in Georgian: first, second and third series. The first series has two subseries, which are called the present and the future subseries. The second series is also called the aorist series, and the third series is called the perfective series. There are a total of eleven screeves.

In the case of "g-i-nd-a-t" and "u-nd-a-t", the -"t" is the plural marker.

Verbs which use one set to indicate the subject employ the other set to denote the object (direct or indirect, depending upon the character of the verb). This enables the verb to encapsulate both the doer of the action and the benefactor (indirect object) or the direct object, which is also called polypersonalism. For example, while it takes five words to say "I wrote it to them" in English ("I" being the subject, "it" being the direct object, "them" being the indirect object), in Georgian this can all be said in one word.

Version marker

Right after the nominal marker can come a "version" marker. Phonologically, version markers consist of any one of the vowels except for /o/. Version markers are semantically diverse. They can add either an unpredictable lexical meaning to the verb, or a functional meaning including causativity, passive voice, subjective version, objective version and locative version. For example, while "v-ts'er" means "I write it," "v-u-ts'er" means "I write it to him/her" (objective version), "v-a-ts'er" means "I write it on him/her" (locative version), and "v-i-ts'er" means "I write it (for myself)" (subjective version).

Verb root

The length of the verb root typically ranges from one to seven phonemes, with the longest root consisting of 15. Some consist of consonants only. The common root of the verbs meaning 'open', 'receive', 'take', and 'take a picture' is "-gh-". "Lexical derivation" (or "word formation") is accomplished through the use of preverbs, version markers, and thematic suffixes. Some derivations of "-gh-" are seen in the sentences "mi-v-i-gh-e ts'erili", 'I received the letter' and "ga-a-gh-eb k'ars", 'you will open the door' (derivational affixes are bolded).

Passive marker

In Georgian, two morphological means of converting a transitive verb to an intransitive verb (or to passive voice) are to add -"d"- to the end of the verb root or to add the version marker -"i"- (see the discussion of version markers elsewhere in this article). Respective examples: "ga-a-ts'itl-e", 'you made him blush' ( -"ts'itl"- is the root of "ts'iteli", 'red') > "ga-ts'itl-d-i", 'you blushed'; class 2 verb "da-v-bad-eb", 'I give birth to you', > "da-v-i-bad-eb-i", 'I am born' (the -"i"- at the end of the verb is the suffixal nominal marker obligatory with intransitive verbs (see below)).

Thematic suffix

The language has eight kinds of thematic suffixes (also sometimes known as present-future stem formants). When the suffixal passive marker is absent, one of these suffixes can be placed right after the root of the verb. With these suffixes the verbs gain arbitrary meanings. Thematic suffixes are present in the present and future screeves, but are absent in the past and mostly absent in the perfective screeves. For example, the root of the verb "build" is -"shen"-. In order to say "I am building", we have to add the thematic suffix -"eb"- to the end of the root: "v-a-shen-eb" ("v"- meaning that the doer is the first person ("v"- set nominal marker), "a" is the versioner, "shen" is the root, and "eb" is the thematic suffix). To say "he/she is building", we simply add the suffixal nominal marker -"s" after the thematic suffix: "a-shen-eb-s".

Causative marker

In English, causativity is predominantly expressed syntactically, by the phrase, 'make someone "verb, whereas in Georgian it is expressed morphologically. The causative marker obligatorily cooccurs with the version marker "-a-". There is no single causative marker in Georgian. To ditransitivize an already transitive verb, one uses "in-eb" or rarely "ev": ch'am, 'you eat' > "a-ch'Øm-ev""', 'you make him eat', with the syncope of the root.

Imperfective marker

This marker (-"d"- for class 1 verbs, "-od"- for class 2 verbs) are used to build the imperfective, present and future subjunctive and conditional screeves: "v-a-shen-eb", 'I am building' > "v-a-shen-eb-d-i", 'I was building" (the additional -"i"- at the end of the verb is the suffixal nominal marker); "v-ts'er", 'I am writing' > "v-ts'er-d-i", 'I was writing' (as the verb "write" does not have a thematic suffix, the imperfective marker is added right after the verb root).

uffixal nominal marker

The transitive verbs (which employ the "v"- set) use the suffixal nominal marker -"s"- (as in "a-shen-eb-s", "ts'er-s") for the third person singular in present and future screeves. Intransitive verbs, the past and perfective screeves of the transitive and medial verbs, and indirect verbs, employ sets of vowels: in the indicative, first/second person "i" (strong) or "e" (weak), third person "o" or "a" for the third person; in the subjunctive, the suffixal nominal marker is the same for all persons, generally "e" or "o" or, less frequently, "a". The aorist intransitive form "avashene", 'I built', has the structure, "a-v-a-shen-Ø-e", characterized by preverb "-a-" and weak suffixal nominal marker "-e-".

Auxiliary verb

The auxiliary verb is only used in the present indicative and perfective screeves of indirect verbs and in the perfective screeve of transitive verbs when the direct object is first or second person(s) (these are situations, where the "m"- set is used for the subject of the verb, and, therefore, "v"- set is used to indicate the direct object). The auxiliary verb is the same verb as "to be" in present screeve. The verb "to be" for the first singular two persons are: "Me var" ("I am") and "Shen xar" ("You are"). For example, "miq'vars" means "I love him/her" (the "s" at the end of the verb indicating that it is the third person whom the speaker loves). In order to say "I love you", the "s" at the end has to be replaced with "xar" (as, now, the direct object is the second person): "miq'var-xar" ("I love you").

Auxiliary verbs

In addition to the possible auxiliary verb in the verb complex, there are also separate ones. Just like in English, Georgian language has the auxiliary verbs, such as "want", "must (have to)" and "can".

* The verb "ndoma" ("to want") is conjugated just like any other class 4 verbs. In order to say, "to want "to do something", one can use either the infinitive form of the verb ("masdari") or the optative screeve.

* The verb "unda" ("must") is not conjugated. However, just like the verb "want", it uses the optative screeve in "must "do something"." In order to say "had to," one, again, uses the same word "unda", but with the pluperfect screeve.

* The verb "shedzleba" ("can") is a class 4 verb, and thus conjugated accordingly. Just like the verb "want", it uses either the optative screeve or the infinitive form of the verb. In order to say "will be able to" and "could," the future and the aorist screeves are used respectively. The negation of "can" in Georgian is established with a special negation particle "ver" which, when used, contains the meaning "cannot," and, thus, the verb "shedzleba" is not used with it (see the negation section of Syntax for more details).

Plural marker

Depending on which set of nominal markers is employed, the appropriate plural suffix is added. It can refer to either subject or object. An example of referring to an object is "miq'varxar-t", 'I love you (plural).'

yntax

Word order

Word order in Georgian is not very strict. One common sentence structure features the sequence "subject - indirect object - direct object - verb". For example, the sentence "I am writing a letter to my mother" can be expressed as follows (the glosses use the abbreviations NOM = nominative case, DAT = dative case, PRES = present screeve):

This sentence could also occur with the constituent order "subject - verb - direct object - indirect object". Since the verb encodes information about all these arguments, any of them can always be dropped (see pro-drop, null subject). It is not uncommon for pronoun arguments to be dropped.

Questions

Yes/No questions

The only way in which an utterance is marked as a yes/no question is by altering the intonation of a statement sentence: the pitch rises towards the end of the sentence. For example:

:"Chemtan ertad moxval", 'you will come with me' :"Chemtan ertad moxval?", 'will you come with me?'

Tag questions

Those tag questions which expect an affirmative answer may employ the particle "xom" in second position within the sentence. Compare statement, yes/no question, and tag question expecting an affirmative answer:

:"Dghes k'argi amindia", 'The weather is good today':"Dghes k'argi amindia?", 'is the weather good today?':"Dghes xom k'argi amindia?", 'the weather is good today, isn't it?'

These sentences contain an -a- suffixed to the word amindi 'weather'. It is a reduced form of the verb "aris", 'is'. Note that the tag question in Georgian does not include any of the three recognized negative particles (see subsection, "Negation"); the particle "xom" by itself conveys the meaning. However, if the answer expected is negative, then a negative particle and the full form "aris" are added right after "xom":

:"Dghes xom ar aris k'argi amindi?", 'the weather is not good today, is it?'

There is a particle, "tu", which can be used to make a question more polite. The particle "tu" has many meanings in Georgian; in this context it cannot be exactly translated to English. Compare:

:"Chai ginda?", 'do you want some tea?':"Chai tu ginda?", 'would you like" some tea?'

Interrogatives

Interrogative adjectives and interrogative pronouns are declined differently. An example of an interrogative adjective in English is "which", as in "which" city do you like the most?", while an example of an interrogative pronoun "which" is in the sentence "which" (one) will you take?".

Some interrogative pronouns in Georgian are:

Negation

There are three kinds of negation particles in Georgian: "ar", 'not', "ver", 'cannot', and "nu", 'do not!. "Ar" is the chief one. "Ver" is only used to indicate that the grammatical subject of the sentence is not able to carry out an action. "Nu" is only used when giving negative commands. Examples:

:"Tsasvla ar minda", 'I do not want to go' :"Ver movedi", 'I could not come' :"Nu nerviulob!", 'don't worry!'

All these particles can be augmented with the morpheme "-gha-", to creates particles whose meaning includes 'no longer, not anymore':

:"ar", 'not' → "aghar", 'no longer, not anymore':"ver", 'cannot' → "veghar", 'can no longer, cannot anymore':"nu", 'do not' → "nughar", 'do no longer, do not anymore'

Examples of the use of these derived negative words:

:"Pexburts aghar vtamashob", 'I do not play football anymore' :"Veghar vcham", 'I cannot eat anymore':"Nughar iparav!", 'do not steal anymore!'

References

* Aronson, Howard I. 1990. Georgian : a reading grammar. Corrected edition. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers.
* Harris, Alice C. & Smeets, Rieks (eds.) 1996. The languages of the Caucasus : indigenous languages and their speakers. Edinburgh University Press.
* Tschenkéli, Kita. 1958. Einführung in die georgische Sprache. 2 vols. Zürich: Amirani Verlag.
* Tschenkéli, Kita. 1965-1974. Georgisch-Deutsch Wörterbuch, 3 vols. Zürich: Amirani Verlag.

ee also

*Georgian language
*Georgian verb paradigm
*Polypersonal agreement
*Agglutinative language
*Active-stative language

External links

* [http://www.seelrc.org:8080/grammar/pdf/stand_alone_georgian.pdf Reference grammar of Georgian] , written by Howard Aronson (SEELRC, Duke University)