Georgian is the official language of Georgia (spoken by 90% of the population) and serves as its main language for literary and business use. It is written with an original and distinctive alphabet, and the oldest surviving literary text dates from the 5th century AD. The oldGeorgian script seems to have been derived from theGreek script.[7]
Mingrelian has been written with the Georgian alphabet since 1864, especially in the period from 1930 to 1938, when the Mingrelians had somecultural autonomy, and after 1989.[citation needed]
TheLaz language was written mainly between 1927 and 1937, and then in Turkey using theLatin alphabet. Laz is endangered as its speakers are shifting toTurkish.
The Kartvelian language family consists of four closely related languages:
Svan (ლუშნუ ნინ,lušnu nin), with approximately 35,000–40,000 native speakers inGeorgia, mainly in the northwestern mountainous region ofSvaneti and theKodori Gorge inAbkhazia
Georgian (ქართული ენა,kartuli ena) with approximately 4 million native speakers, mainly inGeorgia. There are Georgian-speaking communities inRussia,Turkey,Iran,Israel, andEU countries, but the current number and distribution of them are unknown.
Judaeo-Georgian (ყივრული ენა,kivruli ena) with some 85,000 speakers, is the only Kartvelian Jewish dialect, its status being the subject of debate among scholars.[8]
Mingrelian (მარგალური ნინა,margaluri nina), with some 500,000 native speakers in 1989, mainly in the western regions of Georgia, namelySamegrelo andAbkhazia (at present inGali district only). The number of Mingrelian speakers in Abkhazia was very strongly affected by thewar with Georgia in the 1990s which resulted in theexpulsion and flight of the ethnic Georgian population, the majority of which wereMingrelians. Nevertheless, Georgians in Abkhazia (mostly Mingrelians) make up 18% of the population, in Gali district 98.2%.[9] The Mingrelians displaced from Abkhazia are scattered elsewhere in the Georgian government territory, with dense clusters inTbilisi andZugdidi.
Laz (ლაზური ნენა,lazuri nena), with 22,000 native speakers in 1980, mostly in theBlack Sea littoral area of northeastTurkey, and with some 2,000 inAdjara, Georgia.[citation needed]
The connection between these languages was first reported in linguistic literature byJohann Anton Güldenstädt in his 1773 classification of the languages of the Caucasus, and later proven byG. Rosen,Marie-Félicité Brosset,Franz Bopp and others during the 1840s.Zan is the branch that contains theMingrelian andLaz languages.
On the basis ofglottochronological analysis,Georgi Klimov dates the split of theProto-Kartvelian intoSvan andProto-Georgian-Zan (Proto-Karto-Zan) to the 19th century BC,[10][11] and the further division intoGeorgian and Zan to the 8th century BC,[11] although with the reservation that such dating is very preliminary and substantial further study is required.[10] A 2023 study employing Bayesian linguistic phylogenetics in conjunction with archaeological, ethnoecological, and human population genetic data suggests a substantially earlier separation between Svan and the Karto-Zan languages. This multidisciplinary approach dates the divergence to the Early Copper Age, approximately 7600 years before present.[12]
According to this study it is highly likely that Proto-Karto-Zan (i.e. Proto-Georgian-Zan) prior to its split into Georgian and Zan was spoken by pre-Kura-Araxes andKura-Araxes farmers that thrived in the watershed ofMtkvari (Kura) River during the Copper and Bronze Ages.
Proposed Kartvelian evolution showing wildlife with reconstructed proto-Kartvelian names (black areas); past societies (HG: Hunter-gatherers, N: Neolithic, CA: Copper Age, BA: Bronze Age, IA: Iron Age); and major rivers in whose watersheds extant Kartvelian languages evolved (colored lines). KBP means millenia before 1950.[12]
No relationship with other languages, includingNorthwest Caucasian and/orNortheast Caucasian, has been demonstrated so far.[7] There have been numerous attempts to link Kartvelian languages to other language families, such as the proposedNostratic family, but these have fallen out of favor.[13] Certain grammatical similarities withBasque, especially in thecase system, have often been pointed out. However, the hypothesis of a relationship, which also tends to link the Caucasian languages with other non-Indo-European and non-Semitic languages of the Near East of ancient times, is generally considered to lack conclusive evidence.[7] Any similarities to other linguistic phyla may be due toareal influences. Heavy borrowing in both directions (i.e. from North Caucasian to Kartvelian and vice versa) has been observed; therefore, it is likely that certain grammatical features have been influenced as well.
The Kartvelian languages have traces ofgrammatical gender based onanimacy, classifying objects asintelligent ("who"-class) andunintelligent ("what"-class) beings.
Kartvelian verbs can indicate one, two, or threegrammatical persons. A performer of an action is called thesubject and affected persons are objects (direct orindirect). The person may be singular or plural. According to the number of persons, the verbs are classified as unipersonal, bipersonal or tripersonal.
Unipersonal verbs have only a subject and so are always intransitive.
Bipersonal verbs have a subject and one object, which can bedirect orindirect. The verb is:
transitive when the object isdirect;
intransitive if the object isindirect.
Tripersonal verbs have one subject and bothdirect andindirect objects and are ditransitive.
Verb personality table
Unipersonal
Bipersonal
Tripersonal
intransitive
transitive
intransitive
ditransitive
Subject
+
+
+
+
Direct object
+
+
Indirect object
+
+
Subjects andobjects are indicated with specialaffixes.
Personal markers
Subject set
Singular
Plural
Old Geo.
Mod. Geo.
Ming./Laz
Svan
Old Geo.
Mod. Geo.
Ming./Laz
Svan
S1
v-
v-
v-
xw-
v-...-t
v-...-t
v-...-t
xw-...-(š)d (excl.)
l-...-(š)d (incl.)
S2
x/h-
∅,(h/s)-
∅
x-/∅
x/h-...-t
∅,(h/s)-...-t
∅-...-t
x/∅-...-(š)d
S3
-s,-a/o,-n,-ed
-s,-a/o
-s,-u,-n
(l)-...-s/(a)
-an,-en,-es,-ed
-en,-an,-es
-an,-es
(l)-...-x
Object set
O1
m-
m-
m-
m-
m- (excl.)
gv- (incl.)
gv-
m-...-t,-an,-es
n- (excl.)
gw- (incl.)
O2
g-
g-
g-
ǯ-
g-
g-...-t
g-...-t,-an,-es
ǯ-...-x
O3
x/h,∅-
∅,s/h/∅-
∅
∅,x-
x/h,∅-
∅,s/h/∅-...-t
∅-...-t,-an,-es
∅,x-...-x
By means of special markers Kartvelian verbs can indicate four kinds of action intentionality ("version"):
subjective—shows that the action is intended for oneself,
objective—the action is intended for another person,
objective-passive—the action is intended for another person and at the same time indicating the passiveness of subject,
Subject, direct object and indirect object are coded by the three core-cases, namely ergative, nominative and dative. Although the term "ergative" is traditional, strictly speaking no Kartvelian language featuresergative alignment. Rather, they display a mixture ofnominative-accusative andactive alignment,[16] depending on two factors:
the class to which the verb belongs, based on its morphological and syntactic properties (class 1 including all transitive verbs, while intransitive verbs are divided between class 2 and 3);
the series to which the tense/aspect/mood form (traditionally known asscreeve) belongs.
Georgian and Svan have accusative alignment in the Present series (often termed Series I) and active alignment in the Aorist series (Series II).
Mingrelian, on the other hand, has extended the use of the ergative to all intransitive verbs, becoming fully accusative in all series, although with different case marking.
^abGavashelishvili, A; et al. (2023), "The time and place of origin of South Caucasian languages: insights into past human societies, ecosystems and human population genetics",Scientific Reports,13 (21133): 21133,doi:10.1038/s41598-023-45500-w,PMC10689496,PMID38036582
Boeder, Winfried (1979). "Ergative syntax and morphology in language change: the South Caucasian languages". In Plank, Frans (ed.).Ergativity: towards a theory of grammatical relations. London: Academic Press. pp. 435–480.ISBN9780125581509.
Boeder, Winfried (2002). "Speech and thought representation in the Kartvelian (South Caucasian) languages". In Güldemann, Tom; von Roncador, Manfred (eds.).Reported Discourse. A Meeting-Ground of Different Linguistic Domains. Typological Studies in Language, vol. 52. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. pp. 3–48.ISBN9789027229588.
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Harris, Alice C., ed. (1991).The Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus, Vol.1: The Kartvelian languages. Delmar, New York: Caravan Books.
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