Your Questions about Georgian Grammar

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Kavkaz
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Re: Your Questions about Georgian Grammar

Postby Kavkaz » 2017-08-22, 18:09

Not a problem, thanks for the response. Hope you had a good vacation.
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Re: Your Questions about Georgian Grammar

Postby Kavkaz » 2017-09-06, 18:57

My latest question is about the verbs დაუკრავს and დაჰკრავს. Is it true that the -უ- and -ჰ- are both indirect object markers, but that neither actually have much of a function? I.e. they take direct objects but not indirect ones? მან სიმღერა დაუკრა, for example.

If so, what are some other verbs like this? If they are few and far between, perhaps it's worth remembering them all to avoid head-scratching in the future.
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HoneyBuzzard
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Re: Your Questions about Georgian Grammar

Postby HoneyBuzzard » 2017-09-10, 11:11

Yes, exactly. It's my impression these mostly used to be inverse verbs, e.g., დაეცემა "+nom. falls down" (compare დაავიწყდება "+dat. forgets +nom. involuntarily"), or the indirect object marker is just normalized from a form where it actually means something, e.g., დაგვიკრეს ტაში "they applauded us" (lit. "they struck applause (d.o.) at us (id.o)" (also from დაუკრავს).

I'm not familiar with a list, and I checked both my dictionaries, neither of which marked these. The closest would be the ones explicitly mentioned in Aronson:

დაუკრავს play (musical instrument),
გაუშვებს let sthg. out, release s.o., sthg.,
გაემგზავრება travel
გაემართება move, make one's way
გაებმება become entangled (in sthg.)
დაეცემა fall (down)
დაეხეტება wander around

A few others I've found are დაუხვევს "make a turn downwards" (and მო= "make a turn this way," etc., but also ჩაუხვევს "turn down towards sb. [id.o]"), შეუპრინტავს "go crazy," წაუტირებს "weep," წაუჩქარებს "hurry up," წაუძინებს "take a nap."

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Re: Your Questions about Georgian Grammar

Postby E}{pugnator » 2017-09-13, 17:16

What's the most recommended source to read/review about motion verbs in Georgian? I'm revising the same topic in Russian and it's as confusing, especially when the verb has a multidirectional form in the present and lacks it in the past.
Learning Georgian, Mandarin Chinese, Russian and Papiamentu from scratch. Trying to brush up my Norwegian up to an advanced level.

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Re: Your Questions about Georgian Grammar

Postby HoneyBuzzard » 2017-09-16, 8:55

Hmm, I'd probably just reread the relevant sections in Aronson, but I know he doesn't talk too much about how the present subseries removes the preverb of most verbs. Somehow it never seems to be a problem when I read. Of course სვლა is the most important one, and it has different stems in the present and future subseries, and it probably also helps that Georgian uses the future for possible conditionals, the optative is prefixed, etc., so the simple present isn't as much used as in many other languages.

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Re: Your Questions about Georgian Grammar

Postby Kavkaz » 2018-02-27, 6:37

Long time, no question. Though I'm back again with another one.

I know Aronson addressed "irregularities" in I. conjugation verbs in Lesson 9 of his first textbook, but this is just for verbs in -am, -av, and -i. For irregular (i.e. nonsyllabic?) I. conjugation verbs in -eb/-ob, I only recall him addressing their conjugation in the aorist (which would be -e, -o, -es instead of the expected -e, -a, -es). He doesn't mention whether there is any sort of epenthesis or what happens in the optative of these irregular -eb/-ob verbs, as far as I know. Does he? Because he's quite explicit about the changes in irregular -am/-av/-i verbs.

What prompted me to ask this was გაცნობა. What I see is an irregular -ob verb, so I would predict the 3s. aorist to be გაიცნო/გააცნო -- which is correct -- but I never would have been able to assume the second person would have an epenthetic -a- inserted before the final consonant (or is it after the first consonant? or after the first harmonic cluster?) or that it would take the strong -i ending instead of the expected -e that Aronson mentioned irregular -eb/-ob verbs take.

So my questions are these: (1) Is there a general rule about epenthesis with regards to I. conjugation -eb/-ob verbs in the aorist and/or optative? (2) Is there a general rule about which take -e and which take -i in the first/second person aorist of these verbs (i.e. გავიცანი and not *გავიცანე)? (3) Just by googling for attested forms it seems verbs like გაცნობა take the regular -o/-os/-on endings in the optative. Is that correct? (4) Is გაცნობა just a weird outlier and not governed by any hard and fast rules, and I should just memorize it as being in a class of its own?

Thanks in advance, if anyone sees this and can answer it.
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HoneyBuzzard
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Re: Your Questions about Georgian Grammar

Postby HoneyBuzzard » 2018-02-27, 22:59

Yeah, it's just a weird outlier. The root is *ცან, and in most forms the ა elides for essentially the same reason as in მეგობარ- → მეგობრის. The aorist first and second person originally had no suffix, so the stem vowel remained, შევიცან, then later an overt aorist suffix was borrowed. Stems with eliding vowels (Aronson explains it the other way around, as if the vowels are being inserted) usually use strong -ი instead of -ე in the aorist. That's probably the closest you can get to a practical rule, the only real exception would be the verbs with formant -ი like ვითვლი → დავითვალე.

The aorist third person singular was originally -ა too, Old Georgian იცნა, but it shifted to -ო, presumably due to confusion with genuinely nonsyllabic roots like დაიდებს. So *ცან is essentially regular in the aorist except for the ablaut shenanigans. I'm not sure about the optative. Old Georgian has theme -ა (ვცნა, ცნას), but Modern Georgian has -ო as you say, so I'm guessing it too assimilated to the pattern of the irregular -ებ verbs.

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Re: Your Questions about Georgian Grammar

Postby Kavkaz » 2018-02-28, 2:57

HoneyBuzzard wrote:Yeah, it's just a weird outlier. The root is *ცან, and in most forms the ა elides for essentially the same reason as in მეგობარ- → მეგობრის. The aorist first and second person originally had no suffix, so the stem vowel remained, შევიცან, then later an overt aorist suffix was borrowed. Stems with eliding vowels (Aronson explains it the other way around, as if the vowels are being inserted) usually use strong -ი instead of -ე in the aorist. That's probably the closest you can get to a practical rule, the only real exception would be the verbs with formant -ი like ვითვლი → დავითვალე.

The aorist third person singular was originally -ა too, Old Georgian იცნა, but it shifted to -ო, presumably due to confusion with genuinely nonsyllabic roots like დაიდებს. So *ცან is essentially regular in the aorist except for the ablaut shenanigans. I'm not sure about the optative. Old Georgian has theme -ა (ვცნა, ცნას), but Modern Georgian has -ო as you say, so I'm guessing it too assimilated to the pattern of the irregular -ებ verbs.


Great explanation, thanks!
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Kavkaz
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Re: Your Questions about Georgian Grammar

Postby Kavkaz » 2018-03-01, 23:28

Could you explain the difference between using რაც and რომელიც? For example, I saw this headline earlier: 20 ყველაზე ლამაზი აკვარელის ტატუ, რაც კი ოდესმე გვინახავს. Why რაც and not რომელიც? Until this, I thought I had რაც figured out; it seemed that it was always used to refer to a pronoun (like ვხედავ იმას, რასაც კითხულობ), whereas რომელიც was used with nouns (like ვხედავ წიგნს, რომელსაც კითხულობ). But this headline, which uses რაც to refer to a noun and not a pronoun, dashes that theory to bits. Is there an explanation for when to use which, then? Thanks.
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HoneyBuzzard
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Re: Your Questions about Georgian Grammar

Postby HoneyBuzzard » 2018-03-03, 12:20

I've wondered about the same thing, and I've observed the same distribution, but I've never found an explanation in an authoritative resource. I think they're interchangeable as relativizers, and it's just an issue of pragmatics. Georgian doesn't have gender, so pronominal antecedents almost always have რაც/ვინც, nouns mostly have რომელიც but can have either.


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