Georgian language

Georgian (, , ) is the most widely-spoken Kartvelian language, and serves as the literary language or lingua franca for speakers of related languages. It is the official language of Georgia and the native or primary language of 87.6% of its population. Its speakers today number approximately four million.

Classification

No claimed genetic links between the Kartvelian languages and any other language family in the world are accepted in mainstream linguistics. Among the Kartvelian languages, Georgian is most closely related to the so-called Zan languages ( Megrelian and Laz); glottochronological studies indicate that it split from the latter approximately 2700 years ago. Svan is a more distant relative that split off much earlier, perhaps 4000 years ago.

Dialects

Standard Georgian is largely based on the Kartlian dialect.''Georgian Dialects''
, The ARMAZI project. Retrieved on March 28, 2007 Over the centuries it has exerted a strong influence on the other dialects, as a result of which they are all, for the most part, mutually intelligible with it and with each other.

History

The history of the Georgian language is conventionally divided into the following phases:
* Early Old Georgian: 300 BC
* Classical Old Georgian: 9th–11th centuries
* Middle Georgian: 11th/12th–17th/18th centuries
* Modern Georgian: 17th/18th century–present

The earliest extant references to Georgian are found in the writings of Marcus Cornelius Fronto, a Roman grammarian from the 2nd century AD. The first direct attestations of the language are inscriptions and palimpsests dating to the 5th century, and the oldest surviving literary work is the 5th century '' Martyrdom of the Holy Queen Shushanik'' by Iakob Tsurtaveli.

The emergence of Georgian as a written language appears to have been the result of the Christianization of Georgia in the mid-4th century, which led to the replacement of Aramaic as the literary language. Tuite, Kevin, "Early Georgian", pp. 145-6, in: Woodard, Roger D. (2008), ''The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor''. Cambridge University Press,

By the 11th century, Old Georgian had developed into Middle Georgian. The most famous work of this period is the epic poem '' The Knight in the Panther's Skin,'' written by Shota Rustaveli in the 12th century.

In 1629 a certain Nikoloz Cholokashvili authored the first printed books written (partially) in Georgian, the ''Alphabetum Ibericum sive Georgianum cum Oratione'' and the ''Dittionario giorgiano e italiano''. These were meant to help western Catholic missionaries learn Georgian for evangelical purposes.

Phonology

Consonants

On the left are IPA symbols, and on the right are the corresponding letters of the modern Georgian alphabet, which is essentially phonemic.

# Opinions differ on the aspiration of , as it is non-contrastive.
# Opinions differ on how to classify // and //; classifies them as post-velar, argues that they range from velar to uvular according to context.
# The uvular ejective stop is commonly realised as an uvular ejective fricative [] but it can also be [], [], or [], they are in free variation.
# // is realised as an alveolar tap [] though [] occurs in free variation.
# // is pronounced as velarized [] before back vowels, it is pronounced as [] in the environment of front vowels.
# // has the following allophones.
## word-initially, intervocally and word-finally it is realized as a bilabial fricative [] or []., p.21.
## before voiceless consonants it is realized as [] or [].
## post-consonantally it is realized as [] labialization on preceding consonants.
#In initial positions, /b d ɡ/ are pronounced as weakly voiced [b̥ , d̥ , ɡ̊]:15
#in Word-final position, /b, d, ɡ/ are devoiced to ʰ, tʰ, kʰ

Former () has merged with (), leaving only the latter.

The glottalization of the ejectives is rather light, and in many romanization systems it is not marked, for transcriptions such as ejective ''p'', ''t'', ''ts'', ''ch'', ''k'' and ''q'', against aspirated ''p‘'', ''t‘'', ''ts‘'', ''ch‘'' and ''k‘'' (as in transcriptions of Armenian).

The coronal occlusives (, not necessarily affricates) are variously described as apical dental, laminal alveolar, and "dental".

Vowels

Per Canepari, the main realizations of the vowels are [], [], [], [], [].

Aronson describes their realizations as [i̞], [], [] (but "slightly fronted"), [], [u̞].Aronson 1990: 18

Shosted transcribed one speaker's pronunciation more-or-less consistently with [], [], [], [], [].

Allophonically, [] may be inserted to break up consonant clusters, as in .

Prosody

Prosody (linguistics), Prosody in Georgian involves stress, intonation, and rhythm. Stress is very weak, and linguists disagree as to where stress occurs in words. Jun, Vicenik, and Lofstedt have proposed that Georgian stress and intonation are the result of pitch accents on the first syllable of a word and near the end of a phrase.

Phonotactics

Georgian contains many "harmonic clusters" involving two consonants of a similar type (voiced, aspirated, or ejective) which are pronounced with only a single release; e.g. ''bgera'' (sound), ''tskhovreba'' (life), and ''ts'q'ali'' (water). There are also frequent consonant clusters, sometimes involving more than six consonants in a row, as may be seen in words like ''gvprtskvni'' ("you peel us") and ''mts'vrtneli'' ("trainer").

Vicenik has observed that Georgian vowels following ejective stops have creaky voice and suggests this may be one cue distinguishing ejectives from their aspirated and voiced counterparts.

Writing system

Georgian has been written in a variety of scripts over its history. Currently the '' Mkhedruli'' script is almost completely dominant; the others are used mostly in religious documents and architecture.

''Mkhedruli'' has 33 letters in common use; a half dozen more are obsolete in Georgian, though still used in other alphabets, like Mingrelian, Laz, and Svan. The letters of ''Mkhedruli'' correspond closely to the phonemes of the Georgian language.

According to the traditional account written down by Leonti Mroveli in the 11th century, the first Georgian script was created by the first ruler of the Kingdom of Iberia, Pharnavaz, in the 3rd century BC. However, the first examples of a Georgian script date from the 5th century AD. There are now three Georgian scripts, called ''Asomtavruli'' "capitals", ''Nuskhuri'' "small letters", and ''Mkhedruli''. The first two are used together as upper and lower case in the writings of the Georgian Orthodox Church and together are called ''Khutsuri'' "priests' lphabet.

In ''Mkhedruli'', there is no case. Sometimes, however, a capital-like effect, called ''Mtavruli'', "title" or "heading", is achieved by modifying the letters so that their vertical sizes are identical and they rest on the baseline with no descenders. These capital-like letters are often used in page headings, chapter titles, monumental inscriptions, and the like.

Keyboard layout

This is the Georgian standard keyboard layout. The standard Windows keyboard is essentially that of manual typewriters.

Grammar

Morphology

Georgian is an agglutinative language. There are certain prefixes and suffixes that are joined together in order to build a verb. In some cases, there can be up to eight different morphemes in one verb at the same time. An example is ''ageshenebinat'' ("you (pl.) should have built (it)"). The verb can be broken down to parts: ''a-g-e-shen-eb-in-a-t''. Each morpheme here contributes to the meaning of the verb tense or the person who has performed the verb. The verb conjugation also exhibits polypersonalism; a verb may potentially include morphemes representing both the subject and the object.

Morphophonology

In Georgian morphophonology, syncope is a common phenomenon. When a suffix (especially the plural suffix -''eb''-) is attached to a word which has either of the vowels ''a'' or ''e'' in the last syllable, this vowel is, in most words, lost. For example, ''megobari'' means "friend". To say "friends", one says ''megobrebi'' (''megobØrebi''), with the loss of ''a'' in the last syllable of the word stem.

Inflection

Georgian has seven noun cases: nominative, ergative, dative, genitive, instrumental, adverbial and vocative. An interesting feature of Georgian is that, while the subject of a sentence is generally in the nominative case and the object is in the accusative case (or dative), one can find this reversed in many situations (this depends mainly on the character of the verb). This is called the dative construction. In the past tense of the transitive verbs, and in the present tense of the verb "to know", the subject is in the ergative case.

Syntax

* Georgian is a left-branching language, in which adjectives precede nouns, possessors precede possessions, objects normally precede verbs, and postpositions are used instead of prepositions.
* Each postposition (whether a suffix or a separate word) requires the modified noun to be in a specific case. This is similar to the way prepositions govern specific cases in many Indo-European languages such as German, Latin, or Russian.
* Georgian is a pro-drop language; both subject and object pronouns are frequently omitted except for emphasis or to resolve ambiguity.
* A study by Skopeteas ''et al.'' concluded that Georgian word order tends to place the focus of a sentence immediately before the verb, and the topic before the focus. A subject–object–verb ( SOV) word order is common in idiomatic expressions and when the focus of a sentence is on the object. A subject–verb–object ( SVO) word order is common when the focus is on the subject, or in longer sentences. Object-initial word orders (OSV or OVS) are also possible, but less common. Verb-initial word orders including both subject and object ( VSO or VOS) are extremely rare.
* Georgian has no grammatical gender; even the pronouns are ungendered.
* Georgian has no articles. Therefore, for example, "guest", "a guest" and "the guest" are said in the same way. In relative clauses, however, it is possible to establish the meaning of the definite article through use of some particles.

Vocabulary

Georgian has a rich word-derivation system. By using a root, and adding some definite prefixes and suffixes, one can derive many nouns and adjectives from the root. For example, from the root -''kart''-, the following words can be derived: ''Kartveli'' (a Georgian person), ''Kartuli'' (the Georgian language) and ''Sakartvelo'' (Georgia).

Most Georgian surnames

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