STOL	AR	NA	S
Chair	Plural	Definite	Genitive

of the chairs

Languages vary considerably in their degree of word's complexity. Some languages are characterized by very simple structure  of words. In other languages the other extreme is common. Many of the Caucasian languages, including Georgian, are also of this type. For instance, verbs exhibit great complexity, corresponding in meaning to a whole clause in other languages. 

გადამაფიქრებინებს
gadamapikrebinebs

gada	m	a	pikr	ebin	eb	s
Preverb	1 object person, singular	Neutral version	think	Causative marker	Thematic suffix	3 subject person, singular

He/she will make me change my mind.

A word where the form-meaning units are easy to segment and identify is said to have agglutinative structure. There is a one-to-one correspondence between meaning and form units in the word, as in stolarnas above. But when we look at another example, for instance, in Russian, we get a different picture. Here, it is not possible to identify a form unit that corresponds to dative separately from singular or plural. Thus, there is no one-to-one correspondence between meaning and form units in the word. This structural type is called fusional (or flective).
 

stol-u	table-Dative+Singular	to a/the table
stol-am	table-Dative+Plural	to the tables

(Russian)

Agglutination and fusion are often presented in one and the same language.
Before we turn to Georgian morphology, it is useful to mention a few more terms used in morphology.

Root
The lexical morpheme that may not be segmented into further subparts is called the root.

Stem
A new word formed from a root is referred to as a stem. 

Affixes
Morphological elements added before the root are prefixes, whereas elements added after the root are called suffixes. Pairs of elements called circumfixes are added before and after the root. A term that covers all these elements is affixes, including prefixes, suffixes and circumfixes.

Morphemes
A term that covers all these elements (including roots, stems, prefixes, suffixes, circumfixes) is morphemes.
For example, the word მომღერალზე momgheralze (about a singer) is formed like this:
The stem მო-მღერ-ალ- mo-mgher-al- (a singer) + the suffix -ზე ze- (on, about). The root is მღერ sing, the prefix მო- (mo-) and the suffix -ალ (-al) make a circumfix mo- ----- -al, expressing approximately the same meaning as the English -er (sing-er). The suffix -ზე -ze has the same function as the prepositions on, about in English:

Note: Please, note, this part is a general overview of the Georgian language. Students are not supposed to have mastered all this information already after this introductory part. This overview is presented in the beginning of the course in order to give students a general idea about the Georgian language system because we believe that to have an idea about the whole system can make it easier to study the details and different parts of this system. Every subject that is touched upon in this part will be more fully described in the following lectures.

• Nominal morphology
• Verbal morphology
• Adverbs
• Postpositions
• Conjunctions
• Particles
• Interjections

General information about parts of speech and their morphology in Georgian

• Nominals: nouns, adjectives, numerals and some pronouns are declinable in Georgian.
• Verbs have a system of conjugation.
• Adverbs (კარგად k'argad well) are generally considered to be unchangeable forms, although exceptions (examples of declension) are also found.
• Postpositions (უკან uk'an behind), conjunctions (და da and),  particles (-ც -c also), and interjections (ოჰ oh...)
  

Nominal morphology is very simple:

• There is no grammatical gender in Georgian. There is one shared pronoun (is [is]) for everything that is expressed in English by the pronouns: he, she, it.
• There are no articles, nor any categories of definite/indefinite.
• There are seven cases in the system of declension.
• There is only one type of declension. Few differences result from phonetic factors.
• The case marker remains unchanged following the plural marker.

Verbal morphology

In the table below we see that the verbs  change depending on the person and number of the subject. For instance, the form v-wer v-c'er indicates that the subject is first person singular, "I write", whereas the form wer-en c'er-en is used when the subject is third person plural, "they write". The root of the verb is wer c'er.

Conjugation of the verb to be

An interesting feature of Georgian verbs is that not only the identity of the subject is reflected in the form, but also the person and number of objects may be marked.. Georgian has a rich system of tense, aspect and mood forms. We will return to these issues later on in the course.

Adverbs
Adverbs are  words that express time, place, manner, reason, purpose etc, e. g. and modify the verb or the circumstances of the clause. They modify adjectives and other adverbs as well (as they do in English):

a) time: დღეს dghes "today", გუშინ gushin "yesterday", შარშან sharshan "last year", მაშინ mashin "then", ადრე adre "early" etc.

b) place: აქ ak "here", იქ ik "there", ზევით  zevit "up", ქვევით kvevit "down" etc.

c) manner: ნელა nela "slowly", სწრაფად sc'rapad "quickly", ძალიან dzalian "very much", etc.

Postpositions
Postpositions correspond in function to prepositions, but differ from prepositions in being placed after the noun or noun phrase. Compare the phrases:
 

Conjunctions
Conjunctions are words that join other words, phrases or sentences, e. g.:

(1) connecting words (და da "and" is the conjunction in this sentence):

(2) connecting sentences:

ნინოს წასვლა უნდოდა, მაგრამ დედამ არ წაიყვანა.
Ninos c'asvla undoda, magram dedam ar c'aiq'vana.
"Nino wanted to go but mother did not take her with her"
Listen:

Particles

Particles have various functions, for instance of emphasis. They are added to the nouns either before or after the case marker.

Particle before the case marker:

Particle after the case marker:

If the case marker is followed by a postposition, the particle is found in the final position, after the postposition. The sequence looks like this: stem-case marker-postposition-particle, e. g.:

Interjections
Interjections are forms that express feelings, such as anger, surprise, etc., like: აჰ ah, ოჰ oh etc.
After this brief review of the morphology of different parts of speech in Georgian, we turn to the general morphological processes in Georgian.

Inflection and derivation

Both nominals and verbs are able to produce new grammatical and lexical forms, e.g. verbs  produce different forms for different persons and tenses, nouns are declined in different case forms, new verbs may be formed from nouns or verbs, new nouns  from nouns, adjectives or verbs etc.

In inflection a form changes, while the lexical meaning of the word is the same:

In derivation the form of a word changes and  a new word is produced. The lexical, but not the grammatical, meaning of the word is changed:

More information - non-obligatory (additional) information:
Agglutination and fusion