about

Georgian

Georgian is a Kartvelian language spoken in Georgia, with a documented written history of fifteen centuries. It is probably the best studied language of the Caucasus, with a rich linguistic tradition (in Georgia and abroad), and well represented in current linguistic research, providing many puzzling phenomena that challenge current phonological and syntactic theories, e.g., complex onsets, challenging metrical properties at the word level, case inversion and split ergativity conditioned by the permutations of tense and verb class. The present lecture series introduces some of these basic issues and points to the available research for further inspiration.

Lecturers

Svetlana Berikashvili

Ilia State University

Lena Borise

Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics

Nino Doborjginidze

Ilia State University

Diana Kakashvili

Ivane Javakishvili Tbilisi State University

Stavros Skopeteas

University of Göttingen

introduction

materials

genetic affiliation: see classification in glottolog.

language map: see distribution of Kartvelian languages in wikipedia.

phonology

morphology

syntax

texts

sources

general

general introductions, encyclopedias, literature, writing, history, miscellaneous

Aleksidze, N. 2018. Caucasia: Albania, Armenia and Georgia. In J. Lossl & N. J. Baker-Brian (eds.), A Companion to Religion in Late Antiquity, pp. 135-156. New York: Wiley. (publisher's website)
Doborjginidze, N. 2009. Die georgische Sprache im Mittelalter. Wiesbaden: Reichert. (available to download)
Doborjginidze, N. 2014. Religious Inculturation and Problems of Social History of the Georgian Language. In T. Nutsubidze, C. B. Horn & B. Lourié (eds.),Georgian Christian Thought and its Cultural Context, pp. 327-343. Leiden: Brill. (publisher's website)
Melikishvili, L. & N. Jalabadze. 2015. Language and ethnic boundaries in multiethnic Georgia. In P. Rosenberg, K. Jungbluth & D. Zinkhahn Rhobodes (eds.), Linguistic construction of ethnic borders (pp. 83-94). Frankfurt: Lang. (available to download)
Boeder, W. 1997. Sprachen und Nationen im Raum des Kaukasus. In G. Hentschel (ed.), Über Muttersprachen und Vaterländer. Zur Entwicklung von Standardsprachen und Nationen in Europa, pp. 183-209. Frankfurt: Lang.
Boeder, W. 1998. Sprache und Identität in der Geschichte der Georgier. In B. Schrade & Th. Ahbe (eds.), Georgien im Spiegel seiner Geschichte, pp. 68-81. Berlin: Staatsbibliothek.
Boeder, W. 2004. Altgeorgisch. In Th. Stolz (ed.), "Alte" Sprachen, pp. 135-165. Bochum: Brockmeyer. (available to download)
Seibt, W. & J. Preiser-Kapeller 2011 (ed.). Die Entstehung der kaukasischen Alphabete als kulturhistorisches Phänomen / The Creation of the Caucasian Alphabets Phenomenon of Cultural History. Wien: Akademie. (publisher's website)

grammar

grammars, grammatical sketches

Dirr, A. 1904. Theoretisch-praktische Grammatik der modernen georgischen (grusinischen) Sprache. Vienna: Hartleben. (available to download)
Harris, A., 1993. Georgian. In: Jacobs, J., von Stechow, A., Sternefeld, W., Vennemann, Th. (Eds.), Syntax: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research (pp. 1377-1397). De Gruyter, Berlin/New York.
Hewitt, G. 1995. Georgian: a structural reference grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (publisher's website)
Ioseliani, P. 1840. P’iruel dats’q’ebitni k’anonni kartulis ghramat’ik’isa. Tbilisi: I. da D. Arzanovta St’amba.
Janashvili, M. 1906. Kartuli gramat’ik’a [Georgian grammar]. Tbilisi: Elekt’rombečdavi amx. Šroma.
Tschenkéli, K. 1958. Einführung in die georgische Sprache, 2. vols. Zürich: Amirani Verlag.
Vogt, H. 1971. Grammaire de la langue géorgienne. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

Georgian grammar and Kartvelian languages

Boeder, W. 2005. The South Caucasian languages. Lingua 115, 5-89. (available to download)
Harris, A. 2020. Diachronic Syntax: The Kartvelian Case (1st edition: 1985). Leiden: Brill. (publisher's website)
Tuite, K. 1988. Kartvelian Morphosyntax, Number Agreement and Morphosyntactic Orientation in the South Caucasian Languages. Munich: Lincom. (available to download)

phonetic and phonological issues (including recommendations of the teaching units)

Akhvlediani, G. 1949. Zogadi ponet’ik’is sapudzvlebi [Introduction to general phonetics]. Tbilisi: Mecniereba.
Borise, L. 2020. Disentangling word stress and phrasal prosody: evidence from Georgian. Ms. (available to download)
Borise, L. & X. Zientarski 2018. Word stress and phrase accent in Georgian. Proc. 6th International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages (TAL 2018), pp. 207-211. (available to download)
Butskhrikidze, M. 2002. The Consonant Phonotactics of Georgian. LOT: (available to download)
Shosted, R. K. & V. Chikovani. 2006. Standard Georgian. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 36(2), 255-264. (available to download)
Skopeteas, S., C. Féry, & R. Asatiani 2018. Prosodic separation of postverbal material in Georgian. In E. Adamou, K. Haude & M. Vanhove (eds.), Information Structure in Lesser-described Languages., pp. 17-50. Amsterdam: Benjamins. (available to download)

morphosyntactic issues (including recommendations of the teaching units)

Amiridze, N. 2006. Reflexivization strategies in Georgian. PhD dissertation, Utrecht University. Utrecht: LOT. (available to download)
Anderson, S. R. 1984. On representations in morphology: case, agreement and inversion in Georgian. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 2, 157-218.
Apridonidze, Šukia. 1986. Sit’q’vatganlageba axal kartulši [Word order in modern Georgian]. Tbilisi: Mecniereba.
Asatiani, R. & S. Skopeteas 2012. The information structure of Georgian. In M. Krifka & R. Musan (eds.), Information Structure, pp. 126-157. Berlin: De Gruyter. (available to download)
Borise, L. 2019. Phrasing is key: The syntax and prosody of focus in Georgian. PhD dissertation, University of Harvard. (available to download)
Harris, Alice. 1981. Georgian syntax: a study in relational grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harris, Alice. 1982. Georgian and the unaccusative hypothesis. Language 58(2). 290–306. (available to download)
Harris, Alice. 1990. Georgian: a language with active case marking. Lingua 80(1). 35–53. (available to download)
Harris, A. 2009. Word order harmonies and word order change in Georgian. In Rosanna Sornicola, Erich Poppe and Ariel Shisha-Halevy (eds.), Stability, Variation and Change of Word-Order Patterns over Time (pp. 133-164). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (available to download)
Harris, A. 2009. Georgian Syntax, 1st ed. 1981. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (publisher's website)
Harris, A & N. Amiridze. 2015. Georgian. In Tibor Kiss and Artemis Alexiadou (eds.), Syntax: Theory and Analysis. An International Handbook of Contemporary Research, 2nd edition (pp. 1588-1622). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. (publisher's website)
Hewitt, G. 1982. Review Article on A. C. Harris ‘Georgian Syntax: A Study in Relational Grammar’. Lingua 59, 247–274.
Hewitt, G. 1987. Georgian: ergative or active? Lingua 71, 319–340.
Holisky, D. A. 1981. Aspect and Georgian medial verbs. Delmar: Caravan.
Lobzhanidze, I. 2022. Finite-State Computational Morphology: An Analyzer and Generator for Georgian. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90248-3 (publisher's website)
McGinnis, M. 2004. Lethal ambiguity, Linguistic Inquiry 35(1), 47-95.
Nash, L. 1995. Portée argumentale at marquage casuel dans les langues SOV et dans les langues ergatives: l’exemple du géorgien. Ph.D. Dissertation. Université de Paris VIII.
Skopeteas, S., G. Fanselow 2011. Focus in Georgian and the expression of contrast. Lingua 120, 1370-1391. (available to download)

further

see also collection of references in glottolog

lexicon

dictionaries, headword search tools, further sources of information about the lexicon

See collection of available online dictionaries in:

Lexicity 2016.

texts

corpora of written language

Georgian Language Corpus at the Ilia State University, presented in:
Doborjginidze, N., I. Lobzhanidze. 2017. Corpus of the Georgian Language. In T. Margalitadze, G. Meladze (eds.), Proceedings of the 17th EURALEX International Congress (pp. 328-334). Tbilisi: Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi University Press. available to download

The Georgian National Corpus, presented in:
Gippert, J. & M. Tandashvili. 2015. Structuring a diachronic corpus: The Georgian National Corpus project. In Jost Gippert & Ralf Gehrke (eds.), Historical Corpora: Challenges and Perspectives (pp. 305-322). Tübingen: Narr. available to download

Georgian Dialect Corpus, created at the TSU Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics.

see also list of corpora in Clarino.

spoken data collections

Asatiani, R. (recording/transcription,annotation) S. Skopeteas (design/supervision), V. Ries (recordings), C. Brokmann and F. Fischer (revisions) 2019. Georgian spoken data corpus. The Language Archive, Corpus resource; persistent identifier: https://hdl.handle.net/1839/00-0000-0000-0021-4DA3-5. soundfiles, transcription, glosses, translation (ELAN) online accessible in TLA

teaching material

coursebooks, exercises, materials or introductions supporting teaching

Aronson, H. I. 2014. Georgian: A Reading Grammar. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. (available to download)

See also collections of teaching materials online:

Resources for learning the Georgian language online at Nomad flag,

Georgian language resources at the Universe of Memory.

see Georgian as a foreign language,
and hear the Georgian Alphabet song.