The Kartvelian Languages as Morphologically Rich Ones

Abstract

The consideration of the languages of the Kartvelian branch, as agglutinating and those pertaining to satellite typology, as morphologically rich languages (MRL) should be based on the following criteria: number of grammatically marked categories; number of free and bound morphemes within a word-form; a number of word-form for each lexemes; fusional morphonology.Kartvelian substantives are inflected only for two grammatical categories, whereas the Kartvelian verb may be inflected for 11-13 categories being classified as those of conjugational and derivational.   In the Kartvelian languages, nominal and verbal structures are made of bound morphemes. A general number of morphemic markers in morphological structures of the Kartvelian substantives and verbs are more or less varied; simultaneous representations of combinations are based on morphological rules. Initial patterns of a verbal paradigm vary with respect to the categories of version, voice, causation, to a kind of subject-object order; these also facilitate an occurrence of a great number of inflected verbs. In the verbal structure of the unwritten Kartvelian languages, phonology hardly counts with morphology; therefore, fusional morphemes occur as a result of phonetic transformations at morpheme boundaries.  In verbal inflections, numbers of homoforms vary with respect to a language; abundant inflection is a condition for considering the Kartvelian languages as morphologically rich ones.