Volume 68, Issue 1 - Special Issue: Georgian in typological perspective, Issue Editors: Nino Amiridze, Olya Gurevich and Yasuhiro Kojima

In this paper, we propose that the verbal noun in Georgian is structurally ambiguous, with a more verbal instantiation (V-VN) and a more nominal instantiation (N-VN). We argue for the ambiguity hypothesis on the basis of syntactic diagnostics that target how the two instantiations of the verbal noun crucially diverge from one another. After demonstrating that the ambiguity hypothesis is indeed motivated by the data, we propose that the distinction between V-VNs and N-VNs in Georgian helps us to distinguish between more proposition-like and more event-like readings of verbal noun phrases. We then argue from a theoretical standpoint that the N-VN is a lexically derived nominal, whereas the V-VN in its behavior approaches what might be called an “infinitive” in modern Georgian.

The marking of arguments is semantically oriented in Georgian. The basic concept of the argument marking is the activity hierarchy of the arguments. The opposition active/inactive underlies the distinction of the two patterns of Georgian person markers and governs all specific rules of the distribution of their allomorphs. Syntactic function plays almost no role in the morphological marking of arguments. Three TAM Series of Georgian verb system distinguish different types of argument marking. The problem of the diachronic relationship between the constructions of different Series is discussed in the paper from the viewpoint of the theory of markedness and the hierarchy of the parts of the clause.

The aim of this article is to discuss the existence in Modern Georgian of a grammatical opposition between Perfective and Imperfective, formally expressed by the presence or absence of preverbs (Slavic-style aspect). In order to speak of aspectual pair, i.e. two morphologically distinct verb forms sharing the same lexical meaning and differing only aspectually, it is important to identify cases of obligatory imperfectivization, when a perfective form is substituted by the corresponding imperfective one according to grammar rules and not because of semantically contrasting content. The analysis of serial context and negative polarity in the Imperative mood allows some previous generalization about the (quasi)grammatical status of this derivational category in Modern Georgian.

Languages with polysynthetic morphology present excellent opportunities for the study of how complex inflectional systems are acquired. This paper investigates aspects of the acquisition of verbal morphology in Georgian, including person agreement morphemes, roots, and inflectional mini-paradigms. The paper aims to uncover the strategies that children use in the early segmentation of verb morphemes, and specifically, the role of phonological and prosodic factors in this process. The study evaluates the effect of semantic criteria in morpheme extraction, and it is argued that the phonological, prosodic, and semantic properties of morphemes interact in complex ways in the acquisition of verbal morphology.

This paper reviews different types of language contacts found in Georgian forum discussions. We will consider natural, oral/written and natural/electronic language contacts, style-shifting and mixed contacts. The frequency and the reason of the use of borrowings, code-switching and shortenings will be considered as well as the question of why Georgian language does not allow some shortening forms – specific for English, French or German internet slang – will be discussed.