Kartvelian Morpho-Syntax

LOS IBEROS primeros fundadores de Europa es un extracto del libro Karuo el secreto ibero, por el cual Enrique Cabrejas o Enric Cabrejas nos relata de modo llano su experiencia personal con lo extraordinario de un descubrimiento. El 21 de Abril de 2012 consiguió lo que parecía imposible: Descifrar la escritura ibérica. El hallazgo más relevante de la cultura universal en nuestro país de los últimos tiempos, sin lugar a dudas. Un hito en la historia de la escritura sin precedentes. Desde este mismo instante la obra Karuo de Enrique Cabrejas lo convierte en un referente destacado a nivel mundial en historia y lingüística. Los innumerables datos, explicaciones, pruebas y significados que nos reporta nunca conocidos antes, son una referencia obligada para todos aquellos que quieran comprender la historia, la lengua antigua e incluso también la moderna de nuestro país o para quienes en el futuro deseen estudiarla e investigarla en profundidad, más si cabe desde el mundo académico.

Funde, Eigennamen und Schriftzeichen beweisen Roms lange Zugehörigkeit zur etruskischen Kultur. Die historisch faßbaren Anfänge des Etruskertums in Italien fallen mit der mythischen  Gründungzeit Roms (datiert auf 753 v. Chr.) zusammen. Die Sage berichtet vom korinthisch-etruskischen Ursprung der letzten römische Könige und von Einfällen der Etrusker unter dem König von Clusium Lars Porsenna nach dem Sturz der Tarquinier.  Die zwei römischen Gründungsmythen, die Äneas- und die Romulus-Sage, bezeugen die enge Verbindung Roms mit den etruskischen Nachbarn. Von den sieben sagenhaften Königen Roms, von Romulus bis Tarquinius Superbus, waren vier etruskischer Herkunft. Romulus ist der mythische Ahnherr der *Ruma, eines aus lat. Roma erschlossenen Geschlechternamens. Die erschlossene etruskische Form von Romulus lautet *Rumle. Von ihm leiten sich auch die Gentilizien Romulius bzw. Romilius ab. Auf die Romulii oder Romilii ist auch die erste der  sechzehn ältesten römischen Landtribus, die Romulia zurückzuführen. Remus gilt als der Ahnherr der Remmii, eines Geschlechts, das es wohl im ältesten Rom gegeben haben muß. Dem Gentilnamen liegt der etruskische Name  Rem-ne oder Rem-ni zugrunde. Von diesem Gentilizium leiten sich in und um Rom die Toponyme Rem-ona und Rem-oria her. Tyrrhener  und Römer wurden von den Griechen häufig synonym benutzt: Tyrrhenoì  è Rhomaîoi („Tyrrhener oder Römer“), ebenso wie Tyrrhenía è Italía. Einige Sprachelemente seien zusätzlich genannt: Im Etruskischen lauten die Namensbezeichnungen für Rom Ruma, für Römer Rumach, für Troja Truia, für Trojaner Truial. In der Frühzeit herrschte ein Priesterkönig (lauchme oder lochume, lat. lucumo) in jeder etruskischen Stadt, ein Titel, der möglicherweise auf die Heilskönige und Richter der nordostgeorgischen Bergstämme verweist, die häufig den Namen Luchumi trugen.

Das etruskische Erbe Roms gelangte erst Jahrhunderte später, während des Humanismus und in der Renaissance wieder zum Vorschein. Bei der Hinwendung zur Antike in der Rinascita spielte in der Toskana und in Latium, vor allem in Florenz und Viterbo, die Etruscheria, die Begeisterung für die Etrusker, eine besondere Rolle. Das Etruskertum diente als Modell gesellschaftlicher Erneuerung und fand Eingang in die kulturellen Programme der Renaissancefürsten, nicht zuletzt  der Medici. Der römische Baumeister Vitruv hatte  in seinem Augustus gewidmeten Werk De architectura  die tuskische Säulenordnung beschrieben. Diese Schrift regte die Renaissancearchitekten Andrea Palladio und Giorgio Vasari an. Der Palladianismus bildet zwei Jahrhunderte später eine der wichtigsten Stilrichtungen des Klassizismus. Durch die Lektüre von Palladio inspiriert, errichtete Thomas Jefferson sein Haus „Monticello“ mit toskanischem Portikus – die  erste toskanische Villa in der Neuen Welt.  Den Etruskern verdankt das  abendländischen Denken  schließlich  eine zentrale Kategorie – die Person.

The paper deals with Base/Reduplicant relationship in Kartvelian (South
Caucasian) echo-word constructions as a determining condition in their classification
with special reference to copying direction. Base/Reduplicant relationship is pivotal in
reduplicative processes because a resulting entity is built of the Base and the Reduplicant. Hence, two types of echo reduplication are identified: Type 1 - L > R (Base-initial)
and Type 2 – R > L (Reduplicant-initial). The data from the Kartvelian languages have
highlighted the necessity of subdivision of echo-pairs into different types. The classification pattern, adhered to in the present paper, may be applied to similar phenomena
cross-linguistically, provided that various types and/or sub-types occur in a language.

This paper compares the expression of information structure in the three indigenous language families of the Caucasus (West Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestanian and Kartvelian) by means of the concepts of focus, contrast, topic and givenness. I concentrated on constituent order and the use of particles, thereby largely ignoring other formal means such as intonation. When comparing all three Caucasian language families we can see a number of parallels in the way information structure is expressed.
First of all, there are obvious (and expectable) similarities in the constituent order at the clause level. All three language families show a clear preference for SOV, but other orders are, in general, possible, whereby Ubykh and Laz are more rigid than the other languages (which might be due to Turkish influence on both languages). The major focus position is preverbal, but postverbal focus is also attested and although focal items are frequently positioned in adjacency to the verb this is not a strict requirement. All three language families allow for verb-initial order for presentational focus in introductory statements of narratives.
By contrast, at the phrasal level we find a sharp difference between West Caucasian with its prenominal and postnominal modifiers as well as nominal complexes on the one hand side and Kartvelian and Nakh-Daghestanian language on the other hand side. Only the latter two families make use of postnominal modifiers for emphasis, contrast or focus, although their syntactic status as belonging to the preceding head noun and forming one NP with it is rather doubtful.
The second major parallel is the existence of cleft-like and pseudo-cleft constructions that normally express constituent focus. Although the exact syntactic nature of these constructions has been investigated only for a handful of languages and their status as genuine cleft constructions is rather doubtful, we can generalize that these constructions have a bipartite structure without necessarily being biclausal and make use of subordinate clause structures that are otherwise found in relative clauses. Cleft-like and pseudo-cleft constructions are commonly found in WH-questions, in particular in West Caucasian and a number of Nakh-Daghestanian languages (e.g. Ingush, Avar, Udi). In general, the extent of use of these constructions varies from family to family, but they seem to be most frequent in West Caucasian because they represent the default strategies for the formation of content questions.
The third similarity concerns the frequent use of enclitics and suffixes for information-structuring purposes, but also dedicated focus particles in some languages. In a great number of languages, modal markers, interrogative markers, additives, scalar-additives, discourse markers, and markers with grammatical meaning (person, tense, negation, etc.) are used as focus-sensitive particles and usually placed after the item they scope over or after the head of the phrase.

This chapter addresses Megrelian, a Kartvelian (South Caucasian) language spoken by Megrelians, a subethnic group compactly residing in one of the western provinces of Georgia, Samegrelo. A language of informal communication, Megrelian has been subject to linguistic research both in Georgia and beyond for more than 200 years now. Backed by the existing literature on the language, most of which has been published in Georgian, this sketch provides an account of essential features of Megrelian phonology, grammar, and lexicon, including such typologically renowned properties of Megrelian as the elaborate system of preverbs and innovative and extremely specific case-marking alignment that not only features ergative stimuli of affective verbs, but can also license this case to adverbs as well. Furthermore, new insights are proposed for such domains of linguistic structure as the language's case system, grades of comparison, expression of spatial deixis by pronominal expressions, verbal aspect, and evidentiality; some of these statements are based on the data from the author's long-term fieldwork and are now being introduced to linguistic discourse.

"Complementation in Georgian is a study of subordinate clauses in Georgian. The constructions in focus are finite and non-finite clauses in subject and object position. Georgian is characterized by complex patterns in marking grammatical relations, using both case marking and subject and object affixes on the verb. The language has no infinitives. In complements of verbs like 'persuade' and 'try' and 'want', Georgian uses finite forms that include subject and object marking, making it an interesting object  for study as regards the problem of control.

Central issues investigated include restrictions in terms of temporal reference and participant reference that the matrix clause imposes on the complement. The modality meanings Truth and Action are found to provide a useful classification of the various matrix predicates. Two clusters of morphological, syntactic and semantic features are moreover shown to correlate with the Truth and Action modalities. The study further outlines a formal grammatical representation of relations between matrix and complement clauses, as well as the structure of simple sentences.

The data examined in the study is based on informant work conducted in Georgia. The matrix predicates that make up the database of the investigation are represented in an appendix, along with an English-Georgian key. An introduction to Georgian grammar for readers not familiar with the language is also presented. ""

Por Georgeos Díaz-Montexano / Scientific Atlantology International Society (SAIS) / The Epigraphic Society

Desde los inicios del presente siglo, varios de nuestros más destacados expertos en epigrafía y lengua íberas coinciden en que la repetición de un término en las torteras o fusayolas ibéricas, que aparece escrito como keśtaun, kaśtaun o kaśtaum, indica que estaríamos ante un término del léxico relacionado con la actividades textiles, incluso que se trate del término usado por los íberos para denominar a la misma tortera. La lingüística histórica comparada nos proporciona una evidencia que permite sustentar dicha hipótesis a través de un vínculo lingüístico entre las dos Iberias.

Making spelling errors is one of the common issues faced by learners in any language as Second Language (SL) at the early stage of learning. This study investigated the spelling errors in the writings of undergraduate B.A. English students, University of Bisha, Al-Namas, Saudi Arabia. The study explored the spelling errors’ phenomenon with relation to the phonological syllable structure of words where the spelling errors were classified into three categories of words, (1) mono-syllabic, (2) di-syllabic, and (3) tri-syllabic and complex syllabic words. The researcher analyzed the spelling errors with relation to the sounds/phonemes positions in each syllable, (a) onset position, (b) nucleus position, and (c) coda position spelling errors. The results showed that Arabic-speaking learners made more spelling errors in tri-syllabic and complex syllabic words compared to the spelling errors in mono-syllabic words. The results explored that learners made more spelling errors in the nucleus...

In this paper we examine the interaction of a number of grammatical phenomena in Wubuy, a polysynthetic language from northern Australia, and show how they can be given a comprehensive analysis within the framework of LFG. While each of these phenomena–noun incorporation, verbal agreement, coordination and external possession–has received various treatments within the LFG literature, no one study has addressed the compatibility of these analyses under interaction, despite the fact that they frequently co-occur in the ...

The aim of this paper is to examine the diatopic variation of some Sardinian complex predicates, mainly from a morphosyntactic (and, secondarily, a semantic) perspective. I will discuss (i) the distribution of Camp(idanese) ai / Log(udorese)-Nu(orese) àere a + inf(initive), lit. ‘to have to’ + inf., and of the agglutinated and univerbated forms of Log.-Nu. dèvere/dèppere + inf., lit. ‘must’ + inf., both constructions expressing (different types of) future time reference; (ii) the diffusion of person and number in the modal complex predicate Camp. fai / Log.-Nu. fàghere/fàchere a + inf., lit. ‘to do to’ + inf., with the sense of ‘being able/allowed to do something’; (iii) cases of double accusative marking of clitic pronouns expressing causee/beneficiary and undergoer, and agreement between these pronouns and the past participle of ‘make’/‘let’ in the causative constructions Camp. fai / Log.-Nu. fàghere/fàchere + inf., lit. ‘to make’ + inf., and Camp. lassai / Log.-Nu. lassare/(dassa...

Marcello Cherchi. 1997. Modern Georgian morphosyntax. A grammatico-categorial hierarchy-based analysis with special reference to indirect verbs and passives of state. [Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag] Reviewed by Kevin Tuite, Anthropological Linguistics, 42 #2; 2000; 297-300

All four traditional Georgian verb classes have both transitive and intransitive verbs. So transitivity as a basic category predicts nothing regarding the morphosyntactic behaviour of Georgian verbs. More promising is the relative control/volition of the subject. Ergative case asserts the control/volition of the nominal; dative case (and oblique person-marking) denies the control/volition of the nominal, and nominative case means that control/volition is not salient. There is no ergative person-marking in the Georgian verb. Otherwise, person-marking corresponds closely to the case-array of nominal arguments. Ergative case appears to be expanding in Mingrelian and Laz, two more innovative members of the Kartvelian family. Contrary to received wisdom, this suggests that ergativity may be a relatively recent prehistoric borrowing in Georgian, thanks to contact with more purely NE and NW Caucasian languages.

... Kronzeuge dieser Auffassung war für SCHUCHARDT David ˇCUBINAŠVILI ("TŠUBINOW"), der -˙qe mit einer entsprechenden Bedeu-tungsangabe in ... auch ˙ KIZIRIA 1985: 107); auf den ingiloischen Dialekt hatte auch SCHUCHARDT bereits aufmerksam gemacht (1896b: 280 ...