Scheme and projection of Georgian and Mengrelian determinative phrase X'

Abstract

Generative grammar is one of the leading syntactic theories today which aims to describe the universal principles of language and explain how all languages are generated from a set of basic rules and principles. It is a natural language processing mechanism that models languages based on formal grammatical rules. This paper is built upon our research which seeks to adapt the theory and procedures of the formal universal grammar to the Georgian and Mingrelian languages. The theoretical and methodological basis of the research is the X’ theory, more specifically, the determiner phrase hypothesis, on the one hand, and corresponding material from the Georgian traditional grammar, on the other. The objective of the paper is to: (1) identify determiners in Georgian and Mingrelian; (2) define intermediate constituents of the determiner phrase and three levels of projections of the determiner phrase (DP). (3) define formal rules of the DP for Georgian and Mingrelian.