Georgian grammar
Encyclopedia
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.
, 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") screeve
s. 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 sound
are 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.
s: nominative
, ergative
(also known in the Kartvelological literature as the narrative (motxrobiti) case, due to the rather inaccurate suggestion of regular ergativity, and that this case occurs
generally 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.
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.
(* truncation of the last vowel occurs)
It is important to state that, however, the plural suffix is not used when the noun is preceded by a quantifier of some kind, such as a cardinal number
. Therefore, for example, "five men" in Georgian is expressed as, "xuti (5) k'atsi," not, *"xuti k'atsebi." Additionally, in certain formal contexts, Georgian uses Old Georgian case endings distinct from those of modern Georgian: Sabch'ota Sakartvelo ("Soviet Georgia", lit. "Georgia of Soviets").
As can be seen from the table, all the cases of the third persons except the nominative case can be expressed in two different ways; with or without an "i" at the beginning of the pronoun. The extra letter "i" adds a directional meaning. The closest English equivalent could be the distinction between his, her and that. An example can be "her pencil" versus "that (girl)'s pencil." In English "that" can never behave as a personal pronoun, but in Georgian, the additional letter "i" makes that possible.
ized to the ends of nouns. They might be written separately or together with the noun. There do exist a few prepositions, but they are very few
in number, and tend to be calques from Russian that entered the language during the Soviet period.
Each postposition governs (requires) a specific case of the noun, akin to the usage of prepositions in German
or Latin. Only one postposition governs the nominative case (-vit "like"), and there are no postpositions that govern the ergative or the vocative cases. Here are some examples of postpositions:
¹ The postposition -vit could also take the dative case in its elongated form (with an insertion of -a- in between the case suffix and the postposition).
² In the usage of postposition -shi the dative case suffix -s is dropped.
³ In the usage of postposition -mde the adverbial case suffix -d is dropped.
4 In the usage of postposition -dan the instrumental case suffix -t is dropped.
" 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 verb
s, intransitive verb
s, verbs with no transitive counterparts (medial verbs) and indirect verbs. There are numerous irregular verb
s 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.
s (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).
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).
series, and the third series is called the perfective series. There are a total of eleven screeves.
The present indicative is used to express an event at the time of speaking ("S/he is verbing"). It is also used to indicate an event that happens habitually ("S/he verbs").
The imperfect screeve is used to express an incomplete or continuous action in the past ("S/he was verbing"). It is also used to indicate a habitual past action, i. e. the meaning of used to ("S/he used to verb").
The present subjunctive screeve is used to express an unlikely event in the present and is usually used as a relative clause ("That s/he be verbing").
The future screeve is used to express an event that will take place in the future ("S/he will verb").
The conditional screeve is used together with if ("S/he would verb or "S/he would have verbed").
The future subjunctive screeve is used to express an unlikely event in the future and is usually used as a dependent clause
.
The aorist screeve is used to indicate an action that took place in the past ("S/he verbed"). It is also used in imperatives (Verb!).
The optative screeve has many uses:
The perfect screeve is used to indicate an action, which the speaker did not witness ("S/he has verbed").
The pluperfect screeve is used to indicate an action which happened before another event ("S/he had verbed").
The perfect subjunctive screeve is mostly for wishes ("May s/he verb!").
s can be indicated in the Georgian verb. The performer of an action is called the subject
or the agent, and affected persons are patients or objects (indirect or direct). The category of number (singular or plural) is also indicated.
Below is the verb personality and transitivity scheme.
To indicate subjects and objects the special markers are used, which are listed in the following tables.
S2 and O3 marker h- evolved from earlier x- which is first attested in 5th century.
The h variant is evidenced for the first time in Tsqisi (წყისი) inscription (616-619 y.y.) and since the 2nd half of 8th century it becomes predominant. From 9th century the h → s transformation is documented before the dental stops (d, ṭ, t) and affricates (ʒ, ċ, c, ǯ, č', č).
In Modern Georgian before the vowels h- marker vanishes.
In general, in Modern Georgian the S2 and O3 h-/s- prefixes have a tendency to fade away.
The oldest S2 x- is preserved with three verbal stems:
Here is presented subject markers' usage example, using the verb root -ts'er, 'to write'.
In the case of v-ts'er-t, ts'ert, and ts'er-en, the -t and -en are the subject plurality markers.
Here is presented object markers' usage example, using the verb root nd- 'to want':
In the case of g-i-nd-a-t and u-nd-a-t, the -t is the plural marker.
The polypersonalism of Georgian verb allows to express the involvement of action participants in very compact way. 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 be said in one word davuts'ere.
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.
is by altering the intonation of a statement sentence: the pitch rises towards the end of the sentence. For example:
s 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:
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:
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:
Some interrogative pronouns in Georgian are:
These three particles can be modified with the suffix -ghar, to create particles meaning 'no longer, no more':
Examples of the use of these derived negative words:
Georgian language
Georgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...
belongs to the South Caucasian
South Caucasian languages
The Kartvelian languages are spoken primarily in Georgia, with a large group of ethnic Georgian speakers in Russia, the United States, the European Union, and northeastern parts of Turkey. There are approximately 5.2 million speakers of this language family worldwide.It is not known to be related...
or Kartvelian family. Some of its characteristics are akin to those of Slavic languages
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
such as its system of verbal aspect, but Georgian grammar is remarkably different from Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
and has many distinct features, such as split ergativity
Split ergativity
Split ergativity is shown by languages that have a partly ergative behaviour, but employ another syntax or morphology — usually accusative — in some contexts...
and a polypersonal
Polypersonal agreement
In linguistics, polypersonal agreement or polypersonalism is the agreement of a verb with more than one of its arguments...
verb agreement system.
Georgian has its own alphabet
Georgian alphabet
The Georgian alphabet is the writing system used to write the Georgian language and other Kartvelian languages , and occasionally other languages of the Caucasus such as Ossetic and Abkhaz during the 1940s...
. 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 EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
).
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
Split ergativity
Split ergativity is shown by languages that have a partly ergative behaviour, but employ another syntax or morphology — usually accusative — in some contexts...
; morphologically speaking, it is said that it mostly behaves like an ergative–absolutive language in the Series II ("aorist") screeve
Screeve
A screeve is a term of grammatical description in traditional Georgian grammars that roughly corresponds to TAM marking in the Western grammatical tradition. It derives from the Georgian word mts'k'rivi , which means "row". Formally, it refers to a set of six verb forms inflected for person and...
s. 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 sound
are 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 caseGrammatical case
In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
s: nominative
Nominative case
The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
, ergative
Ergative case
The ergative case is the grammatical case that identifies the subject of a transitive verb in ergative-absolutive languages.-Characteristics:...
(also known in the Kartvelological literature as the narrative (motxrobiti) case, due to the rather inaccurate suggestion of regular ergativity, and that this case occurs
generally only in the aorist series, which usually moves the narrative forward), dative
Dative case
The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....
, genitive
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
, instrumental
Instrumental case
The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...
, adverbial
Adverbial case
The adverbial case is a noun case in the Abkhaz language and Georgian language that has a function similar to the translative and essive cases in Finnic languages. It is also featured in the Udmurt language. The term is sometimes used to refer to the ablative case in other languages.-Examples:In...
and vocative
Vocative case
The vocative case is the case used for a noun identifying the person being addressed and/or occasionally the determiners of that noun. A vocative expression is an expression of direct address, wherein the identity of the party being spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence...
.
The nominative, ergative and dative are core cases, and due to the complex morphosyntactic alignment
Morphosyntactic alignment
In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the system used to distinguish between the arguments of transitive verbs and those of intransitive verbs...
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 bat'ono? (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, Zurab (*Zurabo)? ("How are you, Zurab?").
Nouns
The declensionDeclension
In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
of a noun depends on whether the root
Root (linguistics)
The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....
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.
| Consonant final stem | Example: k'ats- ("man") | Vowel final stem (truncating) | Example: mama- ("father") | Vowel final stem (non-truncating) | Example: Sakartvelo- ("Georgia") | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | -i | k'ats-i | -Ø | mama | -Ø | Sakartvelo | ||
| Ergative | -ma | k'ats-ma | -m | mama-m | -m | Sakartvelo-m | ||
| Dative | -s | k'ats-s | -s | mama-s | -s | Sakartvelo-s | ||
| Genitive | -is | k'ats-is | -is * | mam-is | -s | Sakartvelo-s | ||
| Instrumental | -it | k'ats-it | -it * | mam-it | -ti | Sakartvelo-ti | ||
| Adverbial | -ad | k'ats-ad | -d | mama-d | -d | Sakartvelo-d | ||
| Vocative | -o | k'ats-o! | -Ø | mama! | -Ø | Sakartvelo! |
(* truncation of the last vowel occurs)
Pluralization
The plural number is marked with the suffix -eb, which appears after the root of the noun and before the case suffix. Some examples are:- The nominative case of men in Georgian is constructed as, k'ats+eb+i, while the ergative case would be, k'ats+eb+ma.
- The nominative case of trees in Georgian (xe, root ending with truncating vowel -e) is, xe+eb+i, while the dative case would be, xe+eb+s.
- The nominative case of girls in Georgian (gogo, root ending with non-truncating vowel -o) is, gogo+eb+i, while the instrumental case would be, gogo+eb+it.
It is important to state that, however, the plural suffix is not used when the noun is preceded by a quantifier of some kind, such as a cardinal number
Cardinal number
In mathematics, cardinal numbers, or cardinals for short, are a generalization of the natural numbers used to measure the cardinality of sets. The cardinality of a finite set is a natural number – the number of elements in the set. The transfinite cardinal numbers describe the sizes of infinite...
. Therefore, for example, "five men" in Georgian is expressed as, "xuti (5) k'atsi," not, *"xuti k'atsebi." Additionally, in certain formal contexts, Georgian uses Old Georgian case endings distinct from those of modern Georgian: Sabch'ota Sakartvelo ("Soviet Georgia", lit. "Georgia of Soviets").
Pronouns
The following table lists the declension of all six personal pronouns.| Nominative | Ergative | Dative | Genitive | Instrumental | Adverbial | Vocative | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First person (singular) | me | me | me | chem(s) | chemit | chemad | - |
| Second person (singular) | shen | shen | shen | shen(s) | shenit | shenad | she! |
| Third person (singular) | is | (i)man | (i)mas | (i)mis | (i)mit | imad | - |
| First person (plural) | chven | chven | chven | chven(s) | chvenit | chvenad | - |
| Second person (plural) | tkven | tkven | tkven | tkven(s) | tkvenit | tkvenad | tkve! |
| Third person (plural) | isini | (i)mat | (i)mat | (i)mat | (i)mat | (i)mat | - |
As can be seen from the table, all the cases of the third persons except the nominative case can be expressed in two different ways; with or without an "i" at the beginning of the pronoun. The extra letter "i" adds a directional meaning. The closest English equivalent could be the distinction between his, her and that. An example can be "her pencil" versus "that (girl)'s pencil." In English "that" can never behave as a personal pronoun, but in Georgian, the additional letter "i" makes that possible.
Adjectives
Properly speaking, Georgian does not distinguish nouns from adjectives; rather, it distinguishes modifiers from modified by relative position in the nominal clause. As a result of this, things that might sound like adjectives can have substantive force in Georgian: one could say mindoda lurji ts'igni ("I would like the blue book") or just mindoda lurji ("I would like the blue one"). The declension of these adjective-like modifiers is different from that of nouns, but like that of nouns, it depends on whether the root of the adjective ends with a consonant or a vowel: a vowel-final-stem adjective is identical in all cases, while a consonant-final-stem adjective changes from case to case. (Put another way, one might say that vowel-final-stem adjectives do not actually decline for case.) The following table presents declensions of the adjectives did- ("big") and ch'aghara- ("grey") with the noun datv- ("bear").| Consonant final stem | Example: did- | Vowel final stem | Example: ch'aghara- | Noun example: datv- | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | -i | did-i | -Ø | ch'aghara | datv-i |
| Ergative | -ma | did-ma | -Ø | ch'aghara | datv-ma |
| Dative | -Ø | did | -Ø | ch'aghara | datv-s |
| Genitive | -i | did-i | -Ø | ch'aghara | datv-is |
| Instrumental | -i | did-i | -Ø | ch'aghara | datv-it |
| Adverbial | -Ø | did | -Ø | ch'aghara | datv-ad |
| Vocative | -o | did-o | -Ø | ch'aghara | datv-o |
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.| Nominative | Ergative | Dative | Genitive | Instrumental | Adverbial | Vocative | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First-person singular | chem-i | chem-ma | chem-s | chem-i | chem-is | chem-s | chem-o |
| Second-person singular | shen-i | shen-ma | shen-s | shen-i | shen-is | shen-s | - |
| Third-person singular | mis-i | mis-ma | mis | mis-i | mis-i | mis | - |
| First-person plural | chven-i | chven-ma | chven-s | chven-i | chven-s | chven-s | chven-o |
| Second-person plural | tkven-i | tkven-ma | tkven-s | tkven-i | tkven-s | tkven-s | - |
| Third-person plural | mat-i | mat-ma | mat | mat-i | mat-i | mat | - |
Adpositions
Georgian by and large does not have prepositions but rather postpositions. Most of the most common of these are cliticClitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
ized to the ends of nouns. They might be written separately or together with the noun. There do exist a few prepositions, but they are very few
in number, and tend to be calques from Russian that entered the language during the Soviet period.
Each postposition governs (requires) a specific case of the noun, akin to the usage of prepositions in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
or Latin. Only one postposition governs the nominative case (-vit "like"), and there are no postpositions that govern the ergative or the vocative cases. Here are some examples of postpositions:
| Postposition | English meaning | Case |
|---|---|---|
| like | nominative | |
| on | dative | |
| at, near | dative | |
| together with | dative | |
| in, to | dative | |
| from (a place) | instrumental | |
| from (a person, a thing) | genitive | |
| gamo | because of | genitive |
| garda | except | genitive |
| gareshe | without | genitive |
| for | genitive | |
| mier | by | genitive |
| magivrad | instead of | genitive |
| miuxedavad | in spite of | genitive |
| before, in front of | genitive | |
| up to, as far as | adverbial |
¹ The postposition -vit could also take the dative case in its elongated form (with an insertion of -a- in between the case suffix and the postposition).
² In the usage of postposition -shi the dative case suffix -s is dropped.
³ In the usage of postposition -mde the adverbial case suffix -d is dropped.
4 In the usage of postposition -dan the instrumental case suffix -t is dropped.
Examples
The Georgian nominal has a series of morpheme slots that must be filled in a specific order:- noun root + plural suffix + case suffix (+ postposition)
| noun root (meaning) | plural suffix | case suffix (case) | postposition | full word | English meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| megobar- (friend) | -eb | -is (genitive) | -tvis | megobrebistvis | for friends |
| deda- (mother) | - | -s (dative) | -tan ertad | dedastan ertad | (together) with (my) mother |
| mshobl- (parent) | -eb | -is (genitive) | gareshe | mshoblebis gareshe | without (my) parents |
| shen- (you) | - | -s (genitive) | gamo | shens gamo | because of you |
| bavshv- (child) | - | -i (nominative) | -vit | bavshvivit | like (a) child |
| bavshv- (child) | -eb | -sa (dative) | -vit | bavshvebsavit | like children |
| Sakartvelo- (Georgia) | - | -s (dative) | -shi (drops case suffix) | Sakartveloshi | to Georgia, in Georgia |
| xval- (tomorrow) | - | -ad (adverbial) | -mde (drops d) | xvalamde | up to (until) tomorrow |
Verbal system
The Georgian verbal system is extremely complex, especially when compared to those of most Indo-European languages. Rather than using the terms "tense", "aspect", "mood", etc. separately, linguists prefer to use the term "screeveScreeve
A screeve is a term of grammatical description in traditional Georgian grammars that roughly corresponds to TAM marking in the Western grammatical tradition. It derives from the Georgian word mts'k'rivi , which means "row". Formally, it refers to a set of six verb forms inflected for person and...
" 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 verb
Transitive verb
In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...
s, intransitive verb
Intransitive verb
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb that has no object. This differs from a transitive verb, which takes one or more objects. Both classes of verb are related to the concept of the transitivity of a verb....
s, verbs with no transitive counterparts (medial verbs) and indirect verbs. There are numerous irregular verb
Irregular verb
In contrast to regular verbs, irregular verbs are those verbs that fall outside the standard patterns of conjugation in the languages in which they occur. The idea of an irregular verb is important in second language acquisition, where the verb paradigms of a foreign language are learned...
s 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
Georgian verb paradigm
Georgian verb conjugation remains a tough subject even for the people who have been studying the language for a while. Even after studying over hundreds of verbs, one may still encounter a new verb whose conjugation deviates from what the person has learnt...
for an extensive list of verb forms and examples of usage.
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 causativeCausative
In linguistics, a causative is a form that indicates that a subject causes someone or something else to do or be something, or causes a change in state of a non-volitional event....
s (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". These verbs typically mark the subject with the dative and the object with the nominative.Stative verbs
Stative verbs do not constitute 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".Screeves
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 aoristAorist
Aorist is a philological term originally from Indo-European studies, referring to verb forms of various languages that are not necessarily related or similar in meaning...
series, and the third series is called the perfective series. There are a total of eleven screeves.
| Indicative | Past | Subjunctive | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Present subseries | Present indicative Present Indicative Present Indicative is a 1972 Hungarian drama film directed by Péter Bacsó. The film was selected as the Hungarian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 45th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.-Cast:... |
Imperfect | Present subjunctive |
| Future subseries | Future Future The future is the indefinite time period after the present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the nature of the reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently exists and will exist is temporary and will come... |
Conditional Conditional Conditional may refer to:*Causal conditional, if X then Y, where X is a cause of Y*Conditional mood , a verb form in many languages*Conditional probability, the probability of an event A given that another event B has occurred... |
Future subjunctive |
| Aorist series | Aorist Aorist Aorist is a philological term originally from Indo-European studies, referring to verb forms of various languages that are not necessarily related or similar in meaning... |
Optative Optative mood The optative mood is a grammatical mood that indicates a wish or hope. It is similar to the cohortative mood, and closely related to the subjunctive mood.... |
|
| Perfective series | Present perfect | Pluperfect | Perfect subjunctive |
The present indicative is used to express an event at the time of speaking ("S/he is verbing"). It is also used to indicate an event that happens habitually ("S/he verbs").
The imperfect screeve is used to express an incomplete or continuous action in the past ("S/he was verbing"). It is also used to indicate a habitual past action, i. e. the meaning of used to ("S/he used to verb").
The present subjunctive screeve is used to express an unlikely event in the present and is usually used as a relative clause ("That s/he be verbing").
The future screeve is used to express an event that will take place in the future ("S/he will verb").
The conditional screeve is used together with if ("S/he would verb or "S/he would have verbed").
The future subjunctive screeve is used to express an unlikely event in the future and is usually used as a dependent clause
Dependent clause
In linguistics, a dependent clause is a clause that augments an independent clause with additional information, but which cannot stand alone as a sentence. Dependent clauses modify the independent clause of a sentence or serve as a component of it...
.
The aorist screeve is used to indicate an action that took place in the past ("S/he verbed"). It is also used in imperatives (Verb!).
The optative screeve has many uses:
- In negative imperatives ("Do not verb!").
- In obligations ("S/he must verb").
- In hypothetical conditions ("If s/he verbed (optative), X would happen (conditional)").
- In exhortations ("Let's verb").
The perfect screeve is used to indicate an action, which the speaker did not witness ("S/he has verbed").
The pluperfect screeve is used to indicate an action which happened before another event ("S/he had verbed").
The perfect subjunctive screeve is mostly for wishes ("May s/he verb!").
Verb components
Georgian is an agglutinating language. Agglutination means that affixes each express a single meaning, and they usually do not merge with each other or affect each other phonologically. Each verb screeve is formed by adding a number of prefixes and suffixes to the verb stem. Certain affix categories are limited to certain screeves. In a given screeve, not all possible markers are obligatory. The components of a Georgian verb form occur in the following order:| preverb Preverb Although not widely accepted in linguistics, the term preverb is used in Caucasian , Caddoan, Athabaskan, and Algonquian linguistics to describe certain elements prefixed to verbs.Theoretically, any prefix could be called a preverbal element... |
prefixal person marker | version marker | VERB ROOT | passive marker | {thematic suffix} | causative marker | thematic suffix | imperfective marker | suffixal person marker | auxiliary verb Auxiliary verb In linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,... |
plural marker |
|---|
Preverb
Preverbs can add either directionality or an arbitrary meaning to the verb. To this extent they resemble the derivational prefixes of Slavic verbs. For example, while mi-vdivar means "I am going", mo-vdivar means "I am coming". Preverbs appear in the future, past and perfective screeves; they are generally absent in the present screeves.Verb Personality
One, two or three grammatical personGrammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
s can be indicated in the Georgian verb. The performer of an action is called the subject
Subject (grammar)
The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
or the agent, and affected persons are patients or objects (indirect or direct). The category of number (singular or plural) is also indicated.
Below is the verb personality and transitivity scheme.
| Unipersonal | Bipersonal | Tripersonal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| intransitive | transitive | intransitive | transitive | |
| Subject | + | + | + | + |
| Direct Object | + | + | ||
| Indirect Object | + | + |
To indicate subjects and objects the special markers are used, which are listed in the following tables.
| Subject markers | ||
|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | |
| S1 | v- | v-...-t |
| S2 | h-/s-/∅- | h-/s-/∅-...-t |
| S3 | ∅-...-s/-a/-o | ∅-...- en (-nen)/-an/-n/-es |
| Object markers | ||
| Singular | Plural | |
| O1 | m- | gv- |
| O2 | g- | g-...-t |
| O3 | h-/s-/∅ | h-/s-/∅...-t |
S2 and O3 marker h- evolved from earlier x- which is first attested in 5th century.
The h variant is evidenced for the first time in Tsqisi (წყისი) inscription (616-619 y.y.) and since the 2nd half of 8th century it becomes predominant. From 9th century the h → s transformation is documented before the dental stops (d, ṭ, t) and affricates (ʒ, ċ, c, ǯ, č', č).
In Modern Georgian before the vowels h- marker vanishes.
In general, in Modern Georgian the S2 and O3 h-/s- prefixes have a tendency to fade away.
The oldest S2 x- is preserved with three verbal stems:
- ar "to be" → xar "you are"
- ved/vid "to come/go" → mo-x-ved-i "you came", mo-x-vid-odi "you would come"
- val "to come/go" → mo-x-val "you will come"
Here is presented subject markers' usage example, using the verb root -ts'er, 'to write'.
| Singular | Plural | Singular (eng) | Plural (eng) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First Person | v-ts'er | v-ts'er-t | I am writing | We are writing |
| Second Person | ts'er | ts'er-t | You (sing) are writing | You (plu) are writing |
| Third Person | ts'er-s | ts'er-en | S/he is writing | They are writing |
In the case of v-ts'er-t, ts'ert, and ts'er-en, the -t and -en are the subject plurality markers.
Here is presented object markers' usage example, using the verb root nd- 'to want':
| Singular | Plural | Singular (eng) | Plural (eng) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First Person | m-i-nd-a | gv-i-nd-a | I want | We want |
| Second Person | g-i-nd-a | g-i-nd-a-t | You (sing) want | You (plu) want |
| Third Person | u-nd-a | u-nd-a-t | S/he wants | They want |
In the case of g-i-nd-a-t and u-nd-a-t, the -t is the plural marker.
The polypersonalism of Georgian verb allows to express the involvement of action participants in very compact way. 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 be said in one word davuts'ere.
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).Suffixal 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, i (strong) or e (weak) for the first/second 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 as 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).'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):| Me | dedas | ts'erils | vts'er. |
| I-NOM | my mother-DAT | letter-DAT | write-PRES |
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
Pro-drop language
A pro-drop language is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they are in some sense pragmatically inferable...
, null subject
Null subject language
In linguistic typology, a null-subject language is a language whose grammar permits an independent clause to lack an explicit subject. Such a clause is then said to have a null subject. Typically, null subject languages express person, number, and/or gender agreement with the referent on the verb,...
). It is not uncommon for pronoun arguments to be dropped.
Yes/No questions
The only way in which an utterance is marked as a yes/no questionYes-no question
In linguistics, a yes–no question, formally known as a polar question, is a question whose expected answer is either "yes" or "no". Formally, they present an exclusive disjunction, a pair of alternatives of which only one is acceptable. In English, such questions can be formed in both positive...
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 questionTag question
A question tag or tag question is a grammatical structure in which a declarative statement or an imperative is turned into a question by adding an interrogative fragment . For example, in the sentence "You're John, aren't you?", the statement "You're John" is turned into a question by the tag...
s 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:
| Georgian | English |
|---|---|
| ra | what? |
| vin | who? |
| ramdeni | how much (many) |
| romeli | which |
| rogor | how |
| rat'om | why |
| ristvis | what for |
| sad | where |
| rodis | when |
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!'
These three particles can be modified with the suffix -ghar, to create particles meaning 'no longer, no more':
- 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 vch'am, 'I cannot eat anymore'
- Nughar iparav!, 'do not steal anymore!'
See also
- Georgian languageGeorgian languageGeorgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...
- Georgian verb paradigmGeorgian verb paradigmGeorgian verb conjugation remains a tough subject even for the people who have been studying the language for a while. Even after studying over hundreds of verbs, one may still encounter a new verb whose conjugation deviates from what the person has learnt...
- Polypersonal agreementPolypersonal agreementIn linguistics, polypersonal agreement or polypersonalism is the agreement of a verb with more than one of its arguments...
- Agglutinative languageAgglutinative languageAn agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view...
- Active–stative language
External links
- Reference grammar of Georgian, written by Howard Aronson (SEELRC, Duke University)
- Online Georgian Grammar by P. J. Hillery