For Some Linguistic-Stylistic Aspects of Obole by Aka Morchiladze

Abstract

In his book, Obole, Aka Morchiladze retells a well-known historical event with a charm of a story-teller characteristic of him. While reading Obole, the past events come to life and we have wonderful opportunities to travel in time and space. Furthermore, we are endowed with a certain sensibility to meet and keep fictional characters forever in our memory. The author possesses a unique style of telling any story so that it reaches the deepest bottom of readers’ hearts and makes them totally engaged with the subject matter.         Aka Morchiladze often employs dialectical lexis in his fiction. In this relation, we should mention that in most cases, the writer does not use one specific dialect in one work but he uses a blend of various dialect patterns. This is not true for Obole for here the author favors the Lechkhumian dialect. Thus, the vast majority of dialect forms are those of the Lechkhumian.There are instances of phonetical processes such as assimilation in the book. The diphtongs [ai, oi ] are transformed as [ei]; respectively: [au] →[eu], [au] →[ou]. For instance, there is [geikhara] (გეიხარა), instead of [gaikhara], [shoushva] (შოუშვა) instead of [sheushva], [chourbine] (ჩოურბინე) instead of [chaurbine], [choujeqi] (ჩოუჯექი) instead of [chaujeqi].  We also have an example of sound metathesis in the following: [navkhe] (ნავხე) instead of [vnakhe]; an example of extra sound formation: sound [v] is formed in front of [o] in the following words [vori] [vorve] [vorsartuliani] instead of [ori] [orive] [orsartuliani]. There are cases of the final sound omissions, especially in complex sentences with the conjunction; we have [ro] instead of [rom] (so that). Also, the writer often uses [cha] and [mi] verbal prefixes instead of the prefix [da]. In Aka morchiladze’s fiction proper names are often made diminutive by suffixes which is characteristic of certain dialects of western Georgia. Here too, we have some diversions from the norm. Namely, we have [e] instead of [a] which becomes even more complex and has the suffixes [-ik] [-uk-el] [-ik-un] [-ik-o] preceeding it. In Obole by Aka Morchiladze there are also such lexical units of colloquial spoken speech such as slangs and barbarisms. By using them, the writer gives additional semantic and stylistic air to the text and makes its expressiveness more marked. Consequently, the langueage of the book acquires ironical, playful manner.