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Keywords: Kartvelian studies, Study of Caucasian languages, Linguistics in the Soviet era and today
Abstract: The general conditions existing in the USSR during the 1970s are summed up in Rosemary Sullivan’s 2015-book Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva (NY: HarperCollins), namely: ‘In the mid-1970s, virtually no citizens of the Soviet Union were permitted to travel, unsupervised, outside the Eastern bloc, and any and all contacts with foreigners inside the USSR were still considered treasonous’ (pp. 421-22). Against this background I describe the experiences I ‘enjoyed’ or ‘endured’ as a post-graduate student in Tbilisi during the academic year 1975-76, and parallels were similarly experienced by my two American predecessors Dee Ann Holisky and Alice Harris who were in Tbilisi the year before my own arrival. I was able to spend a further academic year there in 1979-80 still as a post-graduate, whilst my sojourn during the last 5 or so months of 1987 was at the level of university-lecturer there to spend a term’s sabbatical leave (from Hull University). And so, I had the twin-perspectives by virtue of living/studying in Tbilisi as both a (post-graduate) student and at the more senior level of lecturer. Thus, I propose to describe for the Soviet period procedures (with attendant difficulties) under the following sub-headings: 1. Initial access allowing one to spend an extended period in Georgia during the late Soviet period (specifically the 1970/80s) for under-grad/post-grad students and lecturers; 2. Making arrangements for one’s study and for receiving tuition on this or that language; 3. Working in circumstances where essential/desired books, journals and/or recordings might not be easy to find, let alone acquire; 4. Arranging travel within the country, whether for research-purposes or just simple pleasure; 5. How to ‘play’ the system by utilising knowledge acquired on the ground! I shall then close with some words on the post-Soviet period, including the odd account of my ‘brushes’ with aspects of now-existing technologies.
Keywords: Georgian language, Borrowings, Anglicisms in Georgian vocabulary
Abstract: From 1990 a century-old trickle of anglicisms (American and British) into Georgian became a major torrent with several subsidiary streams. One stream is the introduction of new products (from cell-phones to pickup trucks), new customs (even morals), new commercial transactions etc, for which no existing words (as distinct from descriptive paraphrases) existed: more often than not, an Anglo-Saxon word was adopted. A second stream was a determination to rid certain spheres of Russianisms, notably the terms for automobile parts (a field in which Russians and Armenians, rather than Georgians did the dirty work) by devising (or reviving) words of Georgian origin, or importing Anglo-Saxon terms (a similar process has occurred in fields such as rugby football, played from 1959 to 1989 only against Slavonic teams, but now on a world basis). A third stream, after internet use became widespread for personal communication and commerce, was the devising of a terminology parallel to that of western internet users and commerce. A prime example is the word იშოპინგეთ!, ‘Continue shopping’. The provisional conclusion is that an alien flood, an indigestible input, has since 1990 struck the Georgian language, comparable to what happened with Iranian in the 10th and Russian in the early 19th century, but that, like earlier floods, a process of absorption and rejection will take place, leaving only a percentage of digestible material to be integrated with the body of the language. Much depends on the equilibrium of norms and innovations reached between a strong and conservative school-teaching establishment and an active and anarchic internet community. Native Georgian words and phrases flourished best in the area of slang and obscenity, since from 1990 words and phrases appeared in print that had never been read since the days of Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani: here the absence of foreign influence (if we discount the Hebrew of Georgian Jews) is remarkable. This study is based on internet chat forums, commercial material, plays (notably by dramatists who presented their work for translation and development at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2013), novels by Lasha Bughadze etc.
Keywords: Georgian language, Suffixaufnahme, Diachronic studies
Abstract: Even though the phenomenon of Suffixaufnahme, i.e., the extension of adnominal genitives by the case ending of the head noun they determine, has been dealt with in many grammatical treatises of the Georgian language, the rules of its application and their exceptions have not yet been clarified entirely, and some important questions are still open. The present treatise deals with two of them, namely, to what extent both short and long endings could participate in Suffixaufnahme, and whether or not the extension could be iterated more than two times. Building upon the TITUS and GNC corpora which cover the huge textual tradition of Georgian since the beginning of its literacy in digital form, as well as many original manuscripts that are accessible today, these questions are addressed with statistical analyses that were never possible before, thus yielding new insights into Suffixaufnahme and its rules.
Keywords: Documentation of language and culture, Batumi linguocultural digital archive, Documentary linguistics
Abstract: Digital documentation and archiving of language and culture is a necessary prerequisite for cultural heritage research and is an urgent task of the 21st century. The paper introduces the “Batumi Linguocultural Digital Archive”, an initiative that was implemented through financial support by the Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation during the period of 2016 to 2019. The project was specifically designed to document the linguistic and cultural heritage of the Adjara region, Georgia. The archival holdings encompass an array of digital resources, including audio and video materials, totalling 100 hours of content formatted in MP3 and AVI. Among these holdings, a subset of 30 hours consists of audio and video materials that have undergone transcription. Additionally, 10 hours of video materials have received comprehensive multimedia annotation, featuring transcriptions, glosses, and interlinearisation in the form of EAF-type resources. Furthermore, the archive includes 5 hours of video content with multimedia annotations that comprise English translations, also structured as EAF-type resources. The primary achievement of the “Batumi Linguocultural Digital Archive” project lies in the creation of a modern, standardised framework for the documentation and archiving of cultural and linguistic materials in Georgia, a milestone that is poised to foster the development of interdisciplinary studies within the country. Furthermore, it is worth highlighting that the resources acquired and catalogued under the project’s auspices have transcended national boundaries, serving as valuable assets with international applicability. The materials have been translated into English, rendering them accessible to a broader, non-Georgian speaking audience. This effort toward internationalisation underscores the project’s commitment to facilitating cross-cultural exchange and knowledge dissemination.
Keywords: Urban linguistics, Language situation in the post-Soviet Georgia, Language policy
Abstract: The linguistic landscape is formed by the multitude of linguistic signs present in the public space, ranging from official and commercial signs to private notes, signs and graffiti. Thus, it reflects both official and professional as well as private (written) language use and language choices in the community. Georgian has a long history of competition with Russian in different spheres of society. In the last post-Soviet decades, the use of Russian in Georgia decreased. However, with the tourist boom in recent years and the high increase in the number of speakers of Russian in Georgia following February 2022, it is to be expected that these developments would have an impact on the Georgian linguistic landscape. The present study sets out to explore this multilinguality, and aims at detecting tendencies in the domains of language use in the public space. In this field study, conducted in the spring of 2023, all signs along the entire Luka Asatiani street which runs 2,2 kilometres in Batumi, were photographed, capturing over 400 textual units. A database of the digital photos and textual units was set up in Excel, allowing for a study of relative frequency of a number of categories and combinations of these, such as linguality (mono-, bi-, trilingual), language choice (Georgian, English, Russian, Turkish or other languages), scripts (Georgian, Latin, Cyrillic), domains of language use, physical appearance of signs and other categories, being further outlined and discussed in the paper. The general picture emerging from this study is that the Georgian language dominates in monolingual textual units, followed by a substantial use of English. Monolingual texts in Russian are encountered more rarely. Bilingual texts are to a large extent written in Georgian and English, thus adhering to the official language policy prescribing the use of English in parallel to Georgian.
Keywords: Digital Rustvelology, Translation studies, Address formulas, Equivalence
Abstract: Shota Rustaveli’s epic “The Knight in the Panther’s Skin” is a masterpiece of Georgian literature. It plays a special role not only in the cultural memory of the Georgian people but also in the history of world literature. The significance of Vepx. has gone far beyond Georgia’s borders, and it occupies a prominent place in the history of world literature today: it has been translated into 58 languages. The number of Georgian and foreign editions of Vepx. reaches beyond 500; thus, the abundance of translations in itself makes it interesting in terms of creating a multilingual parallel corpus. The research of this unique written document of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Georgia with modern methods is not only a challenge but will also contribute to the internationalisation of Kartvelology in the 21st century. Creation of a multilingual parallel corpus of translations of ‘The Panther’ began at the University of Frankfurt in 2018, resulting in the prototypical corpus ‘Rustaveli goes digital’, which currently comprises 32 translations of the poem in 20 languages. Although today translation studies have already been established as an independent scientific discipline and does not complain about the lack of theories and research methods, there is no unified model for the complex assessment of the quality of translations, which would allow a complex evaluation of translation quality based on certain criteria (and based on empirically verified statistical data). The paper presents a study that aims to demonstrate the superiority of quantitative translation evaluation methods using the example of a pertinent criterion – : the kind of “sun” equivalents found in the translations and the level of expressiveness of the address formula..The research utilized 22 translations of “Vepkhistkaosni” across ten languages. The research determined that a specific regularity exists between the type of equivalence and the degree of expressiveness of the address formula. Results obtained using corpus linguistic methods indicate that translation quality can be empirically quantified, allowing for the determination of the chosen translation strategies and their appropriateness in the target text based on statistical data.
Keywords: Caucasian manuscripts, Digital processing of manuscripts, Dispersed caucasian manuscripts virtually reunited
Abstract: The present paper investigates fragments of dispersed Caucasian manuscripts virtually reunited. The following work is intended to give some perspective, not only as to what state of the art is today or what it will be in the future but where we are coming from, from a time with no computers and no multispectral images of manuscripts: I have been working on Christian Oriental manuscripts for some decades when the best way was – and, I would like to say, is still today – to see the manuscripts themselves, or, if not possible, to get photographs – black and white. Here, I speak only of blank pages at the beginning and end of a book so-called fly-leaves. Usually, the presence of fly-leaves is mentioned in the descriptions, but not their content: it is left without any indication about the text. Sometimes, this has led to the discovery of unknown texts in Armenian or Georgian and enabled researchers to reunite parts of manuscripts that had been rebounded in different manuscripts, of the same or another language. But I must first say that, among the eastern Christians, the Armenians are the ones who have usually added more fly-leaves to protect the first and last pages of their manuscripts from damage caused by pages rubbing against the covers. A sample survey of 2,000 Armenian manuscripts (Yerevan, Matenadaran, M 1,000 – 3,000) shows that on ten manuscripts, three contain fly-leaves: a very high proportion indeed.
Keywords: Georgian language, Codicology, The Georgian lectionary from Graz
Abstract: This paper focuses on the codicological features of this rare seventh-century Georgian manuscript. 2058/1 is a lectionary belonging to a set of five Georgian manuscripts coming from Mount Sinai that date between the seventh and eleventh centuries. The five items are housed in the Special Collections Department of Graz University Library. From the existing literature it appears that the lectionary has already been studied for its content and philology, but not for the importance of its material nature. Elements such as the page layout, sewing structure, sewing routes, quire formation, spine preparation and cover are features that have not been investigated and therefore merit further research. The manuscript has also undergone various interventions over the course of its history, and these treatments too require analysis. Furthermore, there are loose fragments kept with the manuscript which seem to have been used as sewing guards. These recycled pieces of parchment also await study. Codicology is not only about structure and function but also involves the study of materials and their identification. In this research paper I will discuss the different kinds of materials that were used to produce this manuscript such as parchment, inks and threads. It is hoped that this will shed new light on 2058/1 which will in turn contribute to the enormous puzzle in the understanding of the Georgian book production in the first millennium. Like palaeography and art historical analysis, codicology plays a likewise significant role in the study of any historic book. Up until recently the focus has always been on the text and/or decoration, but it is clear that the physical make-up of a book provides valuable evidence in equal measure.
Keywords: Georgian language, Georgian manuscripts, Life of Paul of Thebes, Liturgy
Abstract: The oldest Georgian version of The Life of Paul of Thebes, preserved in the Guria udabno and Parkhali mravaltavi, has not been studied yet. The article presents the results of research on the manuscript collections containing the work, the text itself, and the liturgical sources related to Paul of Thebes, which are significant not only for the history of the Georgian version of The Life of Paul of Thebes but also for the Greek text. Based on the Georgian material, it has become possible to offer a different interpretation of the issues related to the original Greek version of The Life and its authorship. The study also includes a critically established text of the oldest Georgian version of The Life of Paul the Thebes, accompanied by the apparatus criticus that incorporates not only the variant readings of the manuscripts but also the results of comparing the Georgian translation with the Greek text.
Keywords: Georgian language, Georgian manuscripts, John Chrysostom, Georgian palimpsests
Abstract: While working on the Sinai Palimpsests Project, I was tasked with identifying one manuscript from the newly discovered collection in 1975, designated as Sinai, Georg. NF 19, which consists of 61 folios. The manuscript is palimpsest, with the upper layer in Georgian, specifically a copy of the hymnary (Iadgari) transcribed by Ioane Zosime, and the lower layer containing a text written in Christian-Palestinian Aramaic. After the Sinai palimpsest manuscripts were made available online, it became clear that the manuscript assigned to me for study within the project was missing one folio, specifically fol. 62. This folio is not palimpsest and has survived only in a fragmentary state. It was revealed that Sinai, Georg. NF 19, fol. 62 serves as a unifying folio that connects two manuscripts preserved in different locations: the Sinai, Georg. NF 19 manuscript is housed on Mount Sinai and the Garrett MS 24 manuscript is housed in Princeton. Specifically, the text of Sinai, Georg. NF 19, fol. 61 continues on fol. 62, which, in turn, extends into the text of Garrett MS 24, fol. 99. The unified text contains John Chrysostom’s homily De Poenitentia, presented here in the article as an appendix.
Keywords: Abkhazian language, Abkhazian national corpus, Tree bank of Abkhazian, Language processing of Abkhaz
Abstract: In this paper, I present my effort to build an Abkhaz treebank in the Universal Dependencies (UD) framework, based on texts from the Abkhaz National Corpus (AbNC) and a morphological analyzer developed in the AbNC project. UD is a framework for consistent annotation of grammar (parts of speech, morphological features, and syntactic dependencies) across languages. Currently, there are UD treebanks of widely varying sizes available for 141 languages, but Abkhaz is not among them. This project is intended to fill that gap. The Abkhaz treebank is based on the AbNC which comprises more than 10 million tokens of texts from a variety of genres and is morphologically annotated. In addition to being a corpus-linguistic resource and tool, the corpus also serves as a digital library and as a pedagogical tool for language learning. Most importantly, when the user clicks on a word in the text, grammatical information about that word is displayed, and in addition, the corresponding articles in the integrated Abkhaz-Russian Dictionary (Kaslandzia, 2005) are shown. The article describes, on the one hand, the fundamental principles and challenges of morphosyntactic analysis of the Abkhaz language, and on the other hand, the methods and approaches used in creating a treebank for the Abkhaz language. The resulting resource — the Abkhaz Treebank — is hosted on INESS. INESS (Infrastructure for the Exploration of Syntax and Semantics) is a Norwegian infrastructure and web platform that provides efficient tools for browsing and searching various types of treebanks. Furthermore, the Abkhaz Treebank I developed will be included in the next official release of Universal Dependencies treebanks.
Keywords: Nakh-Dagestanian languages, Digital resources of Caucasian languages, Borrowings, Multilingualism in Dagestan, Swadesh-lists
Abstract: The Nakh-Daghestanian language family is the biggest in the Caucasus in terms of different languages and language branches. In the last decade, there have been several collaborative projects aimed at documenting and systematically studying these languages. As a result, a number of new resources on Daghestanian population, multilingualism, vocabulary, and grammar emerged. In this paper, I present the resources that are in various stages of development. I start with a brief introduction into the area and its languages (Section 1), outline the demographic database of Daghestanian villages (Section 2), the database of Daghestanian multilingualism (Section 3), the Daghestanian loans database (Section 4), the database of Daghestanian lexemes that originate from Arabic, Persian and Turkic languages (Section 5), the database of Swadesh-100 wordlists from the languages of Daghestan (Section 6), the Typological Atlas of the Languages of Daghestan (Section 7), and the database of Rutul dialects (Section 8). I also provide a list of electronically accessible corpora and dictionaries of Nakh-Daghestanian languages.
