Person[subj]: person subject
| Values: | 1 | 2 | 3 |
In Old Georgian, as in Modern Georgian, verbal agreement is polypersonal and cannot be reduced to simple subject–verb agreement as found in most Indo-European languages. The Old Georgian verb agrees morphologically not only with the subject, but also with one or more objects, depending on the verbal class and syntactic construction. This agreement is expressed through a complex system of prefixal and suffixal person–number markers, whose distribution is closely tied to verbal morphology and historical TAM series.
Old Georgian verbs distinguish between core (valency-determining) arguments and non-core (peripheral) arguments. Core arguments are those that are morphologically indexed on the verb by means of person and number markers, whereas peripheral arguments are not reflected in verbal agreement. The Old Georgian verb is capable of encoding relations between two and three participants. By means of agreement morphology, it distinguishes roles such as agent, patient, recipient, beneficiary, causer and causee, as well as locative relations in certain constructions. From a valency perspective, Old Georgian verbs can be classified as follows:
a) Impersonal verbs, which lack a grammatical subject and typically denote natural phenomena or states, already well attested in the earliest Old Georgian texts; b) Intransitive verbs, which take a single core argument, usually marked as subject and agree with it in person and number; c) Indirect transitive verbs, which govern two core arguments, commonly a subject and an indirect object, with the indirect object frequently indexed on the verb by prefixal agreement morphology; d) Transitive verbs, which take a subject and a direct object, both of which may be reflected in verbal agreement depending on person hierarchy and verbal class; e) Ditransitive verbs, which take three core arguments: subject, direct object, and indirect object, and exhibit the most complex agreement patterns, often encoding both objects within the verbal form.
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
- ვიტყჳ ‘I say’, ვწერ ‘I write’ etc.
- ვიტყჳთ ‘we say’, ვწერთ ‘we write’ etc.
2: second person subject
Examples
- (ხ/ჰ)წერ ‘you write in singular’ etc.
- (ხ/ჰ)წერენ ‘you write in plural’, შჭამოთ ‘you eat in plural’ etc.
3: third person subject
Examples
- წერს ‘he/she/it writes’, წერნ ‘he/she/it writes’, წარუგდებიედ ‘cast it off from him’, დაეწერა ‘he/she had written it’ etc.
- წერენ ‘they write’, იწერებიან ‘they write’, წერდენ_ ‘they were writing’, წერეს ‘they wrote’ etc.
Person[subj] in other languages: [ka] [oge]