Person[subj]: person subject
| Values: | 1 | 2 | 3 |
While in Indo-European languages, the verb generally agrees with the subject of the sentence, in Georgian the verb agrees not only with the subject, but with its objects as well, both direct and/or indirect. The verb in Georgian has core and peripheral arguments. A core argument agrees morphologically with the verb by means of person and number markers, while a peripheral argument does not. The category of person is closely connected to the category of number. Person markers can be of prefixal and suffixal formation.
The Georgian verb reflects relations between two, three or four arguments and distinguishes the recipient, causer, causee, beneficiary and location of an action by means of prefixal and suffixal agreement markers which interact with inflectional class within the TAM series system and provide a mapping between morphology and syntactic features such as the roles of participants. As a result verb can be: a) impersonal, which do not have a subject (e.g. წვიმს ‘it is raining’ etc.); b) intransitive, which take a subject only (e.g. წუხს ‘s/he/it is sad’ etc.); c) indirect transitive, which take two arguments: a subject and an indirect object (e.g. დავემალე ‘I have hidden from smb./smth.’ etc.); d) transitive, which take two arguments: a subject and a direct object (e.g. ვხატავ ‘I draw smb. or smth.’ etc.); e) ditransitive, which take three arguments: a subject and a direct and indirect object (e.g. ვუხატავ ‘I draw smth. for smb.’ etc.).
Person[subj] is feature of verbs. It is an agreement feature that marks the person of the verb’s subject. Person[subj] marked on verbs makes it unnecessary to add a personal pronoun as subject and thus subjects may be dropped.
1: first person subject
Examples
- ვწერ ‘I write’, ვწერთ ‘we write’ etc.
- ვხატავ ‘I draw’, ვხატავთ ‘we draw’ etc.
2: second person subject
Examples
- წერ ‘you write’, წერთ ‘you write in plural’ etc.
- ხატავ ‘you draw’, ხატავთ ‘you draw in plural’ etc.
3: third person subject
Examples
- წერს ‘he/she/it writes’, წერენ ‘they write’ etc.
- ხატავს ‘he/she/it draws’, ხატავენ ‘they draw’ etc.
Person[subj] in other languages: [ka]