Expressive forms of quality in Georgian Sign Language (GESL)

Abstract

In general, adjectives and adverbs have the ability to convey a quality. Georgian sign language (GESL) is not distinguished by a particularly large abundance of adjectives; however, it is clear that there are basic adjectives in this language, in the analysis of which it is important to understand the class-category. Actually, it should be said that this category is active with adjectives in almost all sign languages ​​of the world.

The past tense participles are the most common forms to convey the quality of nouns along with adjectives. The derivational affix 'already' is presented in these participles, which usually follows the main lexical part of a sign. Such forms are homonymous with the perfect forms of the verb. In linguistic analysis, a concrete definition becomes difficult and it is not easy to say whether this or that form is the participle or the perfect form of the verb. This issue is related to the wide semantic field of the above-mentioned derivative ('already'), the main semantic essence of which is to convey an action that has already happened, that is, in the past. Past tense participles refer to an action that has already been done, and have the same sematic content of perfect action. Only the analysis of the complete construction of the sentence gives an answer in all specific cases whether we are dealing with a verb or a participle. This circumstance (along with other such phenomena) determines the morphological features of sign languages ​​and once again emphasizes the problems of identifying parts of speech in these languages.

This paper also presents the quality-negation system and examples.