It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Georgian language. (Discuss)

The Georgian language belongs to the Caucasian family. Some of its characteristics are akin to those of Slavic languages, but Georgian grammar is remarkably different from Indo-European languages and has many distinct features, such as split ergativity and a polypersonal verb agreement system. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Georgian (ქართული ენა, kartuli ena) is the official language of Georgia, a republic in the Caucasus. ... Georgian (ქართული ენა, kartuli ena) is the official language of Georgia, a republic in the Caucasus. ... The term Caucasian languages is loosely used to refer to a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than 7 million people in the Caucasus region of Eastern Europe, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. ... The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages), a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia. ... The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred languages and dialects (443 according to the SIL estimate), including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many in Southwest Asia, Central Asia and Southern Asia. ... Split ergativity is shown by languages that have a partly ergative behaviour, but employ another syntax or morphology (usually accusative) in some contexts. ... In linguistics, polypersonal agreement or polypersonalism is the agreement of a verb with more than one of its arguments (usually up to four). ...

Georgian has its own alphabet. In this article, a transliteration with Latin letters will be used throughout. The Georgian alphabet is the script currently used to write the Georgian language and occasionally other languages of the Caucasus. ...

Morphosyntactic alignment

Georgian syntax and verb agreement are those of a nominative-accusative language. That is, the subject of an intransitive verb and the subject of a transitive verb are treated alike when it comes to word order within the sentence and their agreement marks in the verb complex. Nominative-accusative alignment is the most common in the world's languages, and is found in all Western Indo-European languages (such as English language, German, and French). A nominative-accusative language (or simply accusative language) is one that marks the direct object of transitive verbs distinguishing them from the subject of both transitive and intransitive verbs. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

However, Georgian case morphology (that is, the declension of nouns using case marks) does not always coincide with the syntactic alignment. Georgian has split ergativity; morphologically speaking, it mostly behaves like an ergative-absolutive language in the Series II ("aorist") screeves. That means that the subject of an intransitive verb will take the same case markings as the direct object of a transitive verb. Split ergativity is shown by languages that have a partly ergative behaviour, but employ another syntax or morphology (usually accusative) in some contexts. ... An ergative-absolutive language (or simply ergative) is one that treats the subject of transitive verbs distinctly from the subject of intransitive verbs and the object of transitive verbs. ... A screeve is a tense/aspect/mood form of a verb. ...

But Georgian has yet another level of split ergativity. In the aorist series, intransitive verbs behave differently. Class-2 verbs behave as would normally be expected in an ergative language: the subject is declined in the least-marked case (called the nominative case, even though in context of the ergative-aligned aorist series, it should be called absolutive). Class-3 verbs behave as if they belonged to an accusative system: the most-marked case (the ergative) marks the subject. The division between Class 2 and 3 is a convenient way to remember the difference, but in fact they both contain intransitive verbs, and as a whole the behaviour of these verbs follows an active alignment. In an active language, the subject of an intransitive verb is marked in one of two ways, following a conventional rule (that is specified together with the verb). This conventional rule is usually based on semantic criteria regarding the nature of the subject and the verb; for example, if the subject identifies an agent (an active or intentional performer of the action of the verb), then it might be marked with one case (e.g. the ergative), while if the subject identifies an experiencer of the event or one who does not actively initiate it, then it might be marked with another case (e.g. the absolutive or nominative). What might be called the "most active" case, then, marks the subject of a transitive verb, while the "least active" or "most patientive" case is that used to mark a direct object. This is precisely what happens in Georgian, in the restricted environment of the Class-2 and -3 verbs in the aorist series. A nominative-absolutive language is one that marks the subject of a transitive verb or a voluntary subject of an intransitive verb distinctly from the object of a transitive verb or an involuntary subject of an intransitive verb. ...

In Georgian, the classification of verbs according to the agentive or patientive nature of their subject has to do with performing an action, regardless of whether the subject is in control or not. The division between classes is conventional and rigid; each verb receives the class that typically corresponds to it. Where the subject is typically an active performer, it is marked as ergative, even if in some specific instances the action might be outside the control of the subject. Therefore Georgian active alignment is said to be of the split-S type.

Case system

Georgian has seven grammatical cases: nominative, ergative, dative, genitive, instrumental, adverbial and vocative. In linguistics, declension is a feature of inflected languages: generally, the alteration of a noun to indicate its grammatical role. ... The nominative case is a grammatical case for a noun, which generally marks the subject of a verb, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments. ... In ergative-absolutive languages, the ergative case identifies the subject of a transitive verb. ... The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given. ... The genitive case is a grammatical case that indicates a relationship, primarily one of possession, between the noun in the genitive case and another noun. ... In linguistics, the instrumental case indicates that a noun is the instrument or means by which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action. ... The adverbial case is a noun case in the Abkhaz language and Georgian language that has function similar to the translative and essive cases. ... The vocative case is the case used for a noun identifying the person (animal, object, etc. ...

The nominative, ergative and dative are core cases, and due to the complex morphosyntactic alignment of Georgian, each one has several different functions and also overlap with each other, in different contexts. They will be treated together with the verb system. In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the system used to distinguish between the arguments of transitive verbs and intransitive verbs. ...

The non-core cases are the genitive, the instrumental, the adverbial and the vocative.

• The genitive case is the equivalent of the preposition of or the possessive clitic -'s in English. In the phrase "the republic of Georgia", the word "Georgia" is in the genitive case.
• The instrumental case corresponds to the preposition with in English, as in, "he is cutting with a knife", where the word "knife" is in the instrumental case.
• The adverbial case commonly marks adverbial phrases. It is also used in some other arbitrary contexts, especially while using the name of languages. For example, in the sentence "can you translate this to Georgian?", Georgian is in the adverbial case.
• The vocative case is used in addressing someone, and therefore only exists for the second person singular and plural. A famous example is batono? (meaning "sir?"), used when, for example, a mother calls her child, and the child says "yes?"

Nouns

The declension of a noun depends on whether the root of the noun ends with a vowel or a consonant. If the root of the noun ends with a vowel, the declension can be either truncating (roots ending with -e or -a) or non-truncating (roots ending with -o or -u). In the truncating declensions, the last vowel of the word stem is lost in the genitive and the instrumental cases. The table below lists the suffixes for each noun case, with an example next to it. In linguistics, declension is a feature of inflected languages. ... The root is the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. ...

(* truncation of the last vowel occurs)

Pluralization

The plural number is marked with the suffix -eb, which appears after the root of the noun and before the case suffix. Some examples are:

• The nominative case of men in Georgian is constructed as, k'ats+eb+i, while the ergative case would be, k'ats+eb+ma.
• The nominative case of trees in Georgian (xe, root ending with truncating vowel -e) is, xe+eb+i, while the dative case would be, xe+eb+s.
• The nominative case of girls in Georgian (gogo, root ending with non-truncating vowel -o) is, gogo+eb+i, while the instrumental case would be, gogo+eb+is.

It is important to state that, however, the plural suffix is not used when the noun is preceded by a cardinal number. Therefore, for example, "five men" in Georgian is expressed as, "xuti (5) k'atsi," not, "xuti k'atsebi." In linguistics, cardinal numbers is the name given to number words that are used for quantity (one, two, three), as opposed to ordinal numbers, words that are used for order (first, second, third). ...

Pronouns

The following table lists the declension of all six personal pronouns.

As can be seen from the table, all the cases of the third persons except the nominative case can be expressed in two different ways; with or without an "i" at the beginning of the pronoun. The extra letter "i" adds a directional meaning. The closest English equivalent could be the distinction between his, her and that. An example can be "her pencil" versus "that (girl)'s pencil." In English "that" can never behave as a pronoun, but in Georgian, the additional letter "i" makes that possible.

Adjectives

Adjectives agree in case with the nouns they modify. The declension of adjectives is different from that of nouns, but like that of nouns, it depends on whether the root of the adjective ends with a consonant or a vowel: a vowel-final-stem adjective is identical in all cases, while a consonant-final-stem adjective changes from case to case. (Put another way, one might say that vowel-final-stem adjectives do not actually decline for case.) The following table presents declensions of the adjectives did- ("big") and ç'aghara- ("grey") with the noun datv- ("bear").

Possessive adjectives

The possessive adjectives (equivalent to English my, your, etc.) are declined like other consonant-stem-final adjectives, except for a final -s in the dative, instrumental, and adverbial forms of the first- and second-person possessive adjectives. Note the lack of second- and third-person vocative forms.

Adpositions

Georgian does not have prepositions but postpositions. The adpositional particles are appended at the end of nouns. They might be written separately or together with the noun, but they are in fact enclitic. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with adposition. ... A postposition is a type of adposition, a grammatical particle that expresses some sort of relationship between a noun phrase (its object) and another part of the sentence; an adpositional phrase functions as an adjective or adverb. ... In linguistics, a clitic is a morpheme that functions syntactically like a word, but does not appear as an independent phonological word; instead it is always attached to a following or preceding word. ...

Each postposition governs (requires) a specific case of the noun (this is akin to the usage of prepositions in German or Latin). Only one postposition governs the nominative case (-vit "like"), and there are no postpositions that govern the ergative or the vocative cases. Here are some examples of postpositions: Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ...

¹ The postposition -vit could also take the dative case in its elongated form (with an insertion of -a- in between the case suffix and the postposition).

² In the usage of postposition -shi the dative case suffix -s is dropped.

³ In the usage of postposition -mde the adverbial case suffix -d is dropped.

Examples

The Georgian noun word has a series of morpheme slots that must be filled in a specific order:

noun root + plural suffix + case suffix (+ postposition)

Verbal system

The Georgian verbal system is considerably complex, especially when compared to that of most Indo-European languages. Rather than using the terms "tense", "aspect", "mood", etc. separately, linguists prefer to use the term "screeve" to distinguish between different time frames and moods of the verbal system. A screeve is a tense/aspect/mood form of a verb. ...

Verbs are traditionally divided into four classes: transitive verbs, intransitive verbs, verbs with no transitive counterparts (medial verbs) and indirect verbs. There are numerous irregular verbs in Georgian, but they all belong to one of these classes. Each class uses different strategies to build the verb complex, irregular verbs employing somewhat different formations. In English grammar, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a subject and one or more objects. ... An intransitive verb is a verb that has only one argument, that is, a verb with valency equal to one. ... In contrast to regular verbs, irregular verbs are those verbs that fall outside the standard patterns of conjugation in the languages in which they occur. ...

See Georgian verb paradigm for an extensive list of verb forms and examples of usage. Even though one knows all the prefixes and suffixes, verb conjugation still remains a difficult subject for Georgian learners. ...

Verb classes

Transitive verbs (Class 1 verbs)

Class 1 verbs have a subject and a direct object. Some examples are "eat", "kill" and "receive". This class also includes causatives (the equivalent of "make someone do something") and the causative verbal form of adjectives (for example, "make someone deaf").

There are a few verbs in Class 3 that behave like transitive verbs of Class 1 in terms of their conjugations, such as sneeze and cough (see below).

Intransitive verbs (Class 2 verbs)

Intransitive verbs only have a subject and no direct object. Most verbs in this class have a subject that does not perform or control the action of the verb (for example, "die", "happen"). The passive voice of Class 1 transitive verbs belong in this class too, for example "be eaten", "be killed" and "be received". In addition, the verbal form of adjectives also have their intransitive counterparts: the intransitive verb for the adjective "deaf" is "to become deaf".

Medial verbs (Class 3 verbs)

Verbs in Class 3 are usually intransitive verbs, but unlike Class 2 verbs, they mark their subject using the ergative case. Most verbs of motion (such as "swim" and "roll") and verbs about weather (such as "rain" and "snow") belong to this class. Although these verbs are described as not having transitive counterparts (such as "cry"), some of them still have direct objects, such as "learn" and "study". Verbs that are derived from loan words also belong to this class. A loanword (or a borrowing) is a word taken in by one language from another. ...

The intransitive verbs in Classes 2 and 3, when taken together, seem to be conjugated differently based on a form of active alignment (see the section on morphosyntactic alignment).

Indirect verbs (Class 4 verbs)

Verbs that convey the meaning of emotion and prolonged state belong to this class. The verbs "want" and "can" also belong to this class. Other common examples of Class 4 verbs are "sleep", "miss", "envy" and "believe".

Stative verbs

Stative verbs do not constitude a class per se, but rather refer to a state, and their conjugations are very similar to those of indirect verbs. For example, when one says, "the picture is hanging on the wall", the equivalent of "hang" is a stative verb.

Irregular verbs

There are numerous irregular verbs in Georgian; most of them employ the conjugation system of Class 2 intransitive verbs. Irregular verbs use different stems in different screeves, and their conjugations deviate from the conjugations of regular intransitive verbs. Some irregular verbs are: "be", "come", "say", "tell" and "give". This article is in need of attention. ...

Screeves

There are three series of screeves in Georgian: first, second and third series. The first series has two subseries, which are called the present and the future subseries. The second series is also called as the aorist series, and the third series is called the perfective series. There are a total of eleven screeves. Aorist (from Greek αοριστος, indefinite) is a term used in certain Indo-European languages to refer to a particular grammatical tense and/or aspect. ... The perfective aspect is a grammatical aspect. ...

The present indicative is used to express an event at the time of speaking ("S/he is verbing"). It is also used to indicate an event that happens habitually ("S/he verbs"). In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... Imperfect has several meanings: The imperfect tense in linguistics an imperfect cadence in music theory This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that is subjective, from the persons viewpoint, that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), emotion, possibility, judgment, necessity and statements that are contrary to fact. ... A depiction of the future of mankind as seen in the motion picture Blade Runner. ... The term conditional is used in linguistics and logic to refer to related concepts about sentences of the form If X, then Y (ie. ... Aorist (from Greek αοριστος, indefinite) is a term used in certain Indo-European languages to refer to a particular grammatical tense and/or aspect. ... The optative mood is a grammatical mood that indicates a wish or hope. ... The present perfect tense denotes a present condition resulting from a previous action. ... The pluperfect tense exists in most Indo-European languages, including English. ...

The imperfect screeve is used to express an incomplete or continuous action in the past ("S/he was verbing"). It is also used to indicate a habitual past action, i. e. the meaning of used to ("S/he used to verb").

The present subjunctive screeve is used to express an unlikely event in the present and is usually used as a relative cluase ("That s/he be verbing").

The future screeve is used to express an event that will take place in the future ("S/he will verb").

The conditional screeve is used together with if ("S/he would verb or "S/he would have verbed").

The future subjunctive screeve is used to express an unlikely event in the future and is usually used as a dependent clause. A clause is a group of words consisting of a subject (often just a single noun) and a predicate (sometimes just a single verb). ...

The aorist screeve is used to indicate an action that took place in the past ("S/he verbed"). It is also used in imperatives (Verb!).

The optative screeve has many uses:

• In negative imperatives ("Do not verb!").
• In obligations ("S/he must verb").
• In hypothetical conditions ("If s/he verbed (optative), X would happen (conditional)").
• In exhortations ("Let's verb").

The perfect screeve is used to indicate an action, which the speaker did not witness ("S/he has verbed").

The pluperfect screeve is used to indicate an action which happened before another event ("S/he had verbed").

The perfect subjunctive screeve is mostly for wishes ("May s/he verb!").

Verb components

Georgian is an agglutinating language. Each verb screeve is formed by adding a number of prefixes and suffixes to the verb stem, such as a preverb, nominal marker, versioner, passive marker, thematic suffix, causative marker, imperfective marker, suffixal nominal marker, auxiliary verb and a plural marker. Agglutination means that these affixes each express a single meaning, and they usually do not merge with or affect the rest. An agglutinative language is a language in which the words are formed by joining morphemes together. ... While not a widely accepted linguistic term, the term preverb is used in both Northwest Caucasian and Caddoan linguistics to describe certain elements prefixed to verbs. ... In linguistics, an auxiliary or helping verb is a verb whose function it is to give further semantic information about the main or full verb which follows it. ...

A verb screeve is formed by placing the prefixes and the suffixes in the following order:

Preverb

Preverbs are short prefixes (one or two phonemes long), which can add both directionality or an arbitrary meaning to the verb. This is a system akin to Slavic languages. For example, while mi-vdivar means "I am going", mo-vdivar means "I am coming".

Preverbs appear in the future, past and perfective screeves; they are generally absent in the present screeves.

Nominal marker (prefixed)

The nominal marker follows the preverb (if present) and indicates which person performs the action or for which person the verb is done. There are also suffixal nominal markers, which come after the verb root (see the tables below). In Georgian there are two sets of nominal markers, which are called the v-set, and the m-set. Here are the tables for the prefixed and suffixed nominal markers for both sets:

An example of conjugation of a verb in the present screeve, which uses the v-set. The verb root is -ts'er- ("write"):

In the case of v-ts'er-t, ts'ert, and ts'er-en, the -t and -en are the plural markers which come at the end of the verb trunk (see the plural marker below).

An example of conjugation of a verb in the present screeve, which uses the m-set. The verb root is -nd- ("want"):

In the case of g-i-nd-a-t and u-nd-a-t, the -t is the plural marker.

Verbs which use one set to indicate the subject employ the other set to denote the object (direct or indirect, depending upon the character of the verb). This enables the verb to encapsulate both the doer of the action and the benefactor (indirect object) or the direct object, which is also called polypersonalism. For example, while it takes five words to say "I wrote it to them" in English ("I" being the subject, "it" being the direct object, "them" being the indirect object), in Georgian this can all be said in one word. The dative case is a grammatical case for nouns and/or pronouns. ... The accusative case of a noun is, generally, the case used to mark the direct object of a verb. ... In linguistics, polypersonal agreement or polypersonalism is the agreement of a verb with more than one of its arguments (usually up to four). ...

Versions

There are four vowels in Georgian (a, e, i, u) which may be placed right after the nominal marker. While they can add an arbitrary meaning to the verb, the versioners can also establish the meanings of causatives, passive voice, subjective version, objective version and locative version. For example, while v-ts'er means "I write it," v-u-ts'er means "I write it to him/her," v-a-ts'er means "I write it on him/her," and v-i-ts'er means "I write it (for myself)" (subjective version).

Verb root

The verb root generally ranges from one to seven phonemes (though there can be extremes with up to 15 phonemes). There is a significant number of verbs whose roots are only one or two phonemes long, and often just consisting of consonants. For example, the root of the verbs open, receive, take and take a picture is -ġ-. These verbs, then, are distinguished rather through the use of appropriate preverbs, versioners and thematic suffixes. For example mi-v-i-ġ-e ts'erili means "I received the letter", whereas ga-a-ġ-eb k'ars means "You will open the door".

Passive marker

In Georgian, one way of converting a transitive verb to an intransitive verb (or to passive voice) is to add the passive marker -d- to the end of the verb root. An example is as follows: ga-a-ts'itl-e means "you made him blush." To make this intransitive, we add the letter -d- to the end of the root -ts'itl- (also the root of the word ts'iteli, "red"): ga-ts'itl-d-i ("you blushed").

Verbs which do not employ the passive marker -d- for passive voice, use the -i- versioner instead. For example, da-v-bad-eb means "I give birth to you." In passive voice (class 2 verb now), we have, da-v-i-bad-eb-i, "I am born" (the additional -i- at the end of the verb is the suffixal nominal marker which has to be used in intransitive verbs (see below)).

Thematic suffix

The language has eight kinds of thematic suffixes, which are mostly made of two phonemes. When the suffixal passive marker is absent, one of these suffixes can be placed right after the root of the verb. With these suffixes the verbs gain arbitrary meanings. Thematic suffixes are present in the present and future screeves, but are absent in the past and mostly absent in the perfective screeves. For example, the root of the verb "build" is -şen-. In order to say "I am building", we have to add the thematic suffix -eb- to the end of the root: v-a-şen-eb (v- meaning that the doer is the first person (v- set nominal marker), a is the versioner, şen is the root, and eb is the thematic suffix). To say "he/she is building", we simply add the suffixal nominal marker -s after the thematic suffix: a-şen-eb-s.

Causative marker

In English this corresponds to "make someone verb". This marker is placed right after the thematic suffix (if present) and uses the versioner a. There is not one fixed causative marker in Georgian. Mostly it is the suffix in-eb or rarely ev. For example, ç'am means "you eat". To make this a causative, we add the versioner a right before the root and add the causative marker ev right after the verb root with the syncope of the letter a: a-ç'Øm-ev (aç'mev, "you make him eat").

Imperfective marker

This marker (-d- for class 1 verbs, and -od- for class 2 verbs) is used to build the imperfective, present and future subjunctive and conditional screeves. This marker is added right after the thematic suffix (if present). For example, while v-a-shen-eb means "I am building", v-a-shen-eb-d-i means "I was building" (the additional -i- at the end of the verb is the suffixal nominal marker which (see below)). While v-ts'er means "I am writing", v-ts'er-d-i means "I was writing" (as the verb "write" does not have a thematic suffix, the imperfective marker is added right after the verb root).

Nominal marker (suffixed)

The transitive verbs (which employ the v- set), use the suffixal nominal marker -s (examples: a-şen-eb-s, ts'er-s) for the third person singular in present and future screeves. Intransitive verbs, the past and perfective screeves of the transitive and medial verbs, and indirect verbs, employ vowel suffixal nominal marker. The marker is either i (strong) or e (weak) for the first two persons, and o or a for the third person in indicative screeves. Whereas in the subjunctive screeves the marker is generally e or o or, less frequently, a for all three persons. For example, in order to say "I built", we have to make three changes to the sentence "I am building" (vaşeneb): In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), and statements that are contrary to fact. ...

First, we have to add the preverb a to the beginning of the verb complex (as preverbs emerge outside the present screeves). Second, we have to remove the thematic suffix eb (as thematic suffixes are absent in the past screeves). Finally, we have to add the suffixal nomimal marker e (weak) to the end of the root. Thus the verb becomes, a-v-a-şen-Ø-e (avaşene, "I built"). Here, both the prefixal nominal marker v and the suffixal nominal marker e indicate that it is the first person who did the action. To say, "he built" (third person) we add the nominal marker a right after the verb root, as this is the indicative past screeve: a-a-şen-a.

Auxiliary verb

Auxiliary verb is only used in the present indicative and perfective screeves of indirect verbs and in the perfective screeve of transitive verbs when the direct object is first or second person(s) (these are situations, where the m- set is used for the subject of the verb, and, therefore, v- set is used to indicate the direct object). The auxiliary verb is the same verb as to be in present screeve. The verb to be for the first singular two persons are: Me var ("I am") and Şen xar ("You are"). For example, miq'vars means "I love him/her" (the s at the end of the verb indicating that it is the third person whom the speaker loves). In order to say "I love you", the s at the end has to be replaced with xar (as, now, the direct object is the second person): miq'var-xar ("I love you").

Plural marker

Depending on which set of nominal markers is employed, the appropriate plural suffix is placed at the end of the verb trunk. The plural marker is not only used to indicate the subject, but it can also be used to state the plurality of the object: while miq'varxar means "I love you (singular)", miq'varxar-t means "I love you (plural)."

Auxiliary verbs

In addition to the possible auxiliary verb in the verb complex, there are also separate ones. Just like in English, Georgian language has the auxiliary verbs, such as want, must (have to) and can.

• The verb ndoma ("to want") is conjugated just like any other class 4 verbs. In order to say, "to want to do something", one can use either the infinitive form of the verb (masdari) or the optative screeve.

• The verb unda ("must") is not conjugated. However, just like the verb want, it uses the optative screeve in "must do something." In order to say "had to," one, again, uses the same word unda, but with the pluperfect screeve.

• The verb shedzleba ("can") is a class 4 verb, and thus conjugated accordingly. Just like the verb want, it uses either the optative screeve or the infinitive form of the verb. In order to say "will be able to" and "could," the future and the aorist screeves are used respectively. The negation of "can" in Georgian is established with a special negation particle ver which, when used, contains the meaning "cannot," and, thus, the verb shedzleba is not used with it (see the negation section of Syntax for more details).

Syntax

Word order

Word order in Georgian is not very strict. One common sentence structure follows the pattern subject - indirect object - direct object - verb. For example, the sentence "I am writing a letter to my mother" can be expressed as follows (where NOM = nominative case, DAT = dative case, PRES = present screeve):

It is also possible to construct a sentence using a different order (subject - verb - direct object - indirect object). The above can thus be reordered:

Since the verb encodes information about the subject, the subject of any sentence can always be dropped (see pro-drop, null subject) . Therefore, the above two examples can take the forms: A pro-drop language (from pronoun-dropping) is a language where pronouns can be deleted when pragmatically inferable. ... A null subject language, in linguistic typology, is a language whose grammar permits the omission of an explicit subject. ...

• Dedas ts'erils vts'er.
• Vts'er ts'erils dedas.

Questions

Yes/No questions

To ask a yes/no question in Georgian, neither the word order is changed, nor a question particle is added. Only the intonation of the sentence is altered (with the pitch getting higher towards the end of the sentence). For example:

Chemtan ertad moxval "You will come with me"

Chemtan ertad moxval? "Will you come with me?"

Tag questions which expect an affirmative answer may employ the particle xom. Compare: Tag questions are a grammatical structure in which a declarative statement is turned into a question by adding an interrogative fragment (the tag). Examples: Hand me that thing, could you? Go to the store, will you? Tag questions are common in politeness. ...

Dghes kargi amindia. "The weather is good today"

Dghes kargi amindia? "Is the weather good today?"

Dghes xom kargi amindia? "The weather is good today, isn't it?"

The "-a" particle, added after the word "amindi" (the weather) represents the reduced form of the verb "aris" - "is". Note that the tag question in Georgian does not include a negation, as in English; the particle xom by itself conveys the meaning. However, if one wants to ask, "The weather is not good today, is it?", then the negative particle is added right after xom an the reduced "-a" returns to its full form:

Dghes xom ar aris kargi amindi?

There is another particle tu, which can be used to make the question more polite. The particle tu has many meanings in Georgian; in this context it cannot be exactly translated to English. Compare:

Chai ginda? "Do you want some tea?"

Chai tu ginda? "Would you like some tea?"

Interrogatives

Interrogative adjectives and interrogative pronouns are declined differently. An example of an interrogative adjective in English is which, as in "which city do you like the most?", while an example of an interrogative pronoun which is in the sentence "which (one) will you take?".

Some interrogative pronouns in Georgian are:

Negation

There are three kinds of negation particles in Georgian: ar ("not"), ver ("cannot") and nu ("do not"). While the first particle, ar, is used in most of the contexts, the second particle, ver, is only used to express when the subject is not able to carry out an action. The particle nu is only used when giving negative orders. Examples:

Tsasvla ar minda ("I do not want to go")

Ver movedi ("I could not come")

Nu nerviulob! ("do not worry!")

All these particles can be extended as:

ar ("not") → aghar ("no longer", "not anymore")

ver ("cannot") → veghar ("can no longer", "cannot anymore")

nu ("do not") → nughar ("do no longer", "do not anymore")

As can be understood from their meanings, these forms of the negation particles convey a longer term meaning rather than a one-time negation. Examples:

Pexburts aghar vtamashob ("I do not play football anymore")

Veghar vcham ("I cannot eat anymore")

Nughar iparav! ("Do not steal anymore!")

See also

• Georgian language
• Georgian verb paradigm
• Polypersonal agreement
• Agglutinative language
• Active language