Georgian syntax: a study in relational grammar

On representations in morphology case, agreement and inversion in Georgian

“…We suggest that it is the properties of themes that are relevant to the choice of suppletive verbs. A similar proposal is made by Hewitt (1983). The importance of themes in grammatical structure is well known (cf., e.g., Anderson 1977b and references there); given the semantic nature of the restrictions involved in suppletion, it is particularly plausible that they should be controlled by an aspect of semantic, rather than syntactic structure.…”

“…Context should make clear the extent to which the 'indirect-object' in a reference to 'indirect-object-agreement', etc., should be taken seriously. 4 Hewitt (1983) argues that in some cases, the indirect objects of relative intransitive verbs can trigger plural agreement:…”

On the Category of Version in Georgian

“…This variant can be considered for Georgian if we agree with the opinion that the subjective version is a specific form of the objective version. [Nebieridze 1976, Boeder 1968, Harris 1981, Makharoblidze 2007. "Subjective version could be considered as a specific case of the objective version, namely when the subject and indirect object have common referential meaning" [Nebieridze 1976:133].…”

“…(7) v-u-xat' av SBJ1SG-VER/O-paint-TH 'I'm painting it for him/her/it. ' The markers of version are the prefixes preceding the verbal root and following the markers of morphologically referenced arguments [Shanidze 1980, A. Chikobava 1950, Boeder 1968Harris 1981, Jorbenadze 1983]. These markers are the preradical vowels a-, i-and u - [Aronson 1982:173].…”

Evidential meaning and (not-)at-issueness

“…I will refer to this type of approach as the ER-as-NAI view, and will discuss two of its representatives: the assertion-based proposal in Murray 2010Murray , 2014Murray , 2017 and the questioninfer inferential evidential; ind indirect evidential; f feminine; n neuter; neg negation; nom nominative; pl plural; pres present; pst past; q question; refl reflexive; rep reportative evidential; sg singlular. Evidentiality in Georgian is part of the highly suppletive verbal complex (Harris 1981), so a morpheme-by-morpheme breakdown will not be provided. I talk about the speaker's evidence for simplicity, as the paper only considers root declaratives.…”