enaTmecnierebis sakiTxebi ISSUES OF LINGUISTICS - Tbilisi State ...

2. Transitive, Unergative, and Unaccusative in Georgian
The difference between unergative and unaccusative verbs is very important
in the syntax of Georgian (Harris 1981); but this has not always been true, and this
syntactic distinction was only nascent in Old Georgian (Harris 1985).
In this paper I identify these classes in Modern Georgian in the following
way: In Series II, transitives can be identified by their ergative subject and
nominative case direct object, unergatives by their ergative case subject, and
unaccusatives by their nominative case subject. These facts hold only in Series II
paradigms, the aorist, imperative, and optative screeves. 2
There is not a single marker to set apart all the forms of any class - transitive,
unergative, unaccusative; but since Old Georgian, several changes have made some
forms in each class distinct. Even in Old Georgian some very minor morphological
differences of frequency were present, but here I examine only those
morphological markings that have changed in historical times.
In Georgian, transitive, unergative, and unaccusative are inflectional classes
assigned by derivational rule (cf. Aronoff 1994, 131). For example, inchoatives are
formed with the derivational suffix -d-, and the rule that assigns this marker also
assigns the derived forms to the unaccusative class.
The first three changes I discuss distinguish unaccusatives from other classes
of verbs; the last distinguishes unergatives from other classes.
2.1. Series Marker -eb in Series I
In Old and Modern Georgian alike, verbs of all classes have a series marker
(SM) in Series I forms, but not in Series II forms. A variety of SM’s are used for
transitive and unergative verbs, including zero, -am, -av, -eb, and -ob. In Old
Georgian, a variety of SM’s were also used for unaccusatives; but unaccusatives
have systematically replaced other SM’s with -eb, except in statives. (15)
illustrates the present paradigm of some unaccusative verbs in -av and -am in Old
Georgian, together with the corresponding forms in the modern language.
Old Georgian Modern Georgian
v-i-xarš-v-i v-i-xarš-eb-i
i-xarš-v-i i-xarš-eb-i
i-xarš-v-i-s i-xarš-eb-a "it cooks, is cooked"
v-i-sx-m-i v-i-sx-m-eb-i
i-sx-m-i i-sx-m-eb-i
i-sx-m-i-s i-sx-m-eb-a "it pours, is poured"
Table 1. Changes in Series Markers in Series I Forms.
This is perhaps not a surprising change, since a very large number of
unaccusatives already had the SM -eb in Old Georgian. 3 However, substituting -
eb in Series I for another SM in all unaccusatives that had previously used another
SM did not make this class completely different from transitives and unergatives,
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