Yes, it's a nice follow-up to the first book. The pages are falling out of mine, heh.
Kavkaz wrote:(a) გამომეტყველება უნდა იყოს მრავლისმთქმელი
For a subject, the optative governs whatever case the corresponding aorist takes, right? And the aorist of ყოფნა is just the nominative, and that's why გამომეტყველება is in the nominative? Similarly, if it was a II. conj. verb in the optative, the subject would be in the nominative?
I can't think of any verbs that use a different syntax in the aorist compared to the optative. That's why the screeves are usually organized into series with the second series being the aorist and optative. With ყოფნა the second series follows the pattern of a class II verb, so, as you say, გამომეტყველება is nominative.
Kavkaz wrote:ადამიანს უნდა შეეძლოს მასში რაღაც ამოუცნობის შეგრძნება.
Now I think here ადამიანი is the subject and is in the dative because შეეძლება is a IV. conj verb, and for all screeves of the IV. conj. the subject is in the dative. Correct?
Yes, უნდა is essentially a modal particle, and ადამიანს is the (inverted) subject of შეეძლება.
Kavkaz wrote:(b) მანეკები შეიძლება ლამაზებიც კი არ იყვნენ, მაგრამ მათი სახე უნდა მეტყველებდეს.
My question here is why is the present conjunctive მეტყველებდეს being used and not the optative?
There are special uses of უნდა with the conjunctive. From A Continuing Course p. 404:
უნდა plus conjunctive. This construction often has the meaning 'is supposed to, should.'
რომ თავისი დღენი ქუდით უნდა ბუზს ერეკებოდეს. '[...] that he should chase flies away with a hat all his life.'
ერთი გაჰყევი ჯონს და აჩვენე იქ სად უნდა დაბინავდეს. 'Please just accompany John and show him where he is supposed to be housed.
This mostly seems to be with the future conjunctive. With the present conjunctive it also often means "seems to be, supposedly is." უნდა ნიშნავდეს ხის კორძს "
[his name] should mean 'a knot in a tree.'"
Kavkaz wrote:(c) Another question. Why is the future of მძულს I hate შემძულდება? I'm mostly puzzled by the addition of the -დ- before the ending. I thought the rule for forming the future of IV. conj. verbs was drop the present/future stem formant and add -ებ-. Is this an anomaly or something that happens commonly? I would have thought the future first person singular form would be მეძულება (which Google and Aronson both confirm exists).
And things are only further complicated by the sentence სტალინს სძულდა საქართველო which lacks the შე- pre-verb that the same book just said is a feature of the future of სძულს (and I thought the aorist was based on the future form).
Georgian has a lot of this. The same roots are used in different verbs, which then supplement each other's missing screeves. An obvious example is *თქვ-ამ, which we were talking about earlier, e.g., it shows up in future/presents like წარმო+თქვამს "
pronounce sth." even though in ამბობს it supplements the aorist.
The Georgian Verb: A Morphosyntactic Analysis, which goes a fair bit beyond the traditional four classes, classifies the root *ძულ under "type I, class 3" and says:
Type I, Class 3 verbs of the third diathesis regularly produce imperfect and present conjunctive forms, but do not produce series II forms. In the colloquial language, many speakers substitute imperfect screeve forms suffixed in -დ for them in the aorist. In addition to this, Type I, Class 3 verbs rarely generate future group forms, but, when they do, they are produced in a regular manner: by adding the double present thematic suffix -ებ-ი (which is characteristic of second diathesis dynamic verbs) to the presumed aorist form. Finally, note that series III forms of Type I , Class 3 verbs are produced like second diathesis bipersonal indirect transitive dynamic verbs, but usually without preverbs.
(This is why Shanidze called these mediopassive verbs: they "borrow" their missing screeves from დონიანი verbs and their future group and series III forms are produced like dynamic passive structure verbs.)
I don't know how useful this information is, but the idea should be clear: The verbs in this subgroup supplement their future screeves by borrowing from დონიანი ("დ-having") verbs. შემძულდება is more properly "I will come to hate sth.," but მძულს doesn't have its own future, so it borrows one.
A form like სძულდა is either the imperfect of მძულს or the rare(ish) imperfect aorist of შემძულდება. I don't remember if Aronson talks about the imperfect aorist in A Reading Grammar, but A Continuing Course has a bit about it. It indicates "an action that was repeated a number of times or which lasted a given period of time [...] Perfective aorist series screeves often focus on the result of the action, while imperfective aorist screeves do not."
ეძულება is probably formed according to §12.3.2. I suppose the difference from მძულს would be an expression of an emotion, not an "active" hatred.