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The c- prefix in early Georgian
Kevin Tuite
(Note added in 2003: This is the English original of a paper which appeared in German
translation in Georgica 13/14: 34-61 [1991]. The problem of the distribution of the Early
Georgian c- prefix continues to baffle me, and I by no means consider the hypotheses presented
here to be the last word on the subject! — KT)
1. Introduction. One of the most significant developments in Georgian philological studies to
occur in this century is the discovery and analysis of manuscripts from the period preceding the
Arab conquest of Tbilisi [Shanidze 1923]. These early texts, dating from the 5th-7th centuries, are
of special interest for the view they afford of an ancient dialect of the Georgian language which was
soon to disappear. This is the so-called KHANMETI DIALECT (canmet’i “superfluous c’s”), the
existence of which had been alluded to by the medieval scholar Giorgi Mtacmideli [Kawtaradse
1975: 576]. It derives its name from its system of person marking. The S2 and O3 marker is c-, and
the prefix appears in this form in almost all contexts, including prevocalic position.1 The discovery
of an early dialect of Georgian with “superfluous” c’s was not entirely unexpected (Shanidze had
in fact predicted it), in view of fragmentary evidence from within Georgian, and comparative data
from Svan. The Svan S2 and O3 marker is indeed c- (prevocalically). There are, however, curious
differences in the distribution of this prefix between Svan and Khanmeti Georgian (hereafter
abbreviated KhG). In particular, the c- prefix occurs in certain contexts in which it does not appear
to mark agreement with any surface argument. The distribution is given in Table 1, and the terms
for grammatical relations which will be used in the following discussion are in Table 2.
TABLE 1. Distribution of c- prefix (Khanmeti Georgian and Svan)2
Distribution of S2 c-:
Svan: All verb forms.
KhG: All verb forms except (positive) imperatives.
Distribution of O3 c-:
KhG/Svan: Agreement with DAT Arg2 (all series) and DAT Arg1 (perfect series).
KhG only: Agreement with DAT Arg3 (present series) — with exceptions.
Function unclear:
KhG/Svan: Present in comparative degree of adjectives.
KhG only: [a] Present in i -prefixed Class P verbs.
[b] Present in some intransitive Class A verbs.
1There is a second early Georgian dialect, attested in manuscripts from the 7th-9th centuries, which Shanidze [1923]
has termed Haemeti (“superfluous h’s”). The distribution of the h -prefix in these texts is in principle the same as
that of the c- prefix in the Khanmeti dialect, but it is not employed as consistently. It is probably the case that by
the middle of the 8th century the principles governing the earlier distribution of the h -prefix were no longer
observed in the dialect spoken by the writers [Sarjveladze 1971: 39]. For this reason I will not make use of Haemeti
data. Throughout this paper the terms “Khanmeti Georgian” (KhG) and “early Georgian” will refer to the earliest
attested form of the language (5th-7th c.), “Old Georgian” to the entire period from the 5th to the 13th c., and
“Modern Georgian” to the contemporary standard language.
2For both languages, morphophonemic rules delete the c- prefix in certain contexts. In this paper, when an assertion
is made that a particular verb form employs or does not employ the c- prefix, the reference is to underlying
morphological structure, before the application of morphophonemic rules.
http://www.mapageweb.umontreal.ca/tuitekj....fix.pdf
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