Mariam Kamarauli
PhD in Philosophy
University of Hamburg
Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC)
Post-Doc Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
Hamburg, Germany
Mariam Kamarauli
PhD in Philosophy
University of Hamburg
Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC)
Post-Doc Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
Hamburg, Germany
The Modern Georgian language and the DP-hypothesis
Abstract
The DP-hypothesis has gained widespread acceptance ever since Abney's seminal dissertation "The English noun phrase in its sentential aspect" in 1987. The DP-hypothesis, in contrast to NPs that are headed by a noun, suggests that the determiner is the structural head of a phrase like "the big tree," and "big tree" is analyzed as a complement to this head. Supported by several linguists, the DP-hypothesis can be defended by morphological, syntactic and semantic arguments, whereas the question of articleless languages and their ability to possess the DP-structure remains until today (Kamarauli 2022: 169). For this, Ž. Bošković developed his NP/DP parameters that addressed the issue of the DP's universality. These parameters distinguish between languages with and without articles because they relate to certain linguistic properties that NP-languages, also known as languages without articles, and DP-languages, also known as languages with articles, ought to possess.
Some of the parameters apply to Modern Georgian and argue for it to be an NP-language:
• “Only languages without articles may allow scrambling” (Bošković 2012: 184).
j) bavšv-i tamašobs ḳalatburt-s
child-NOM.SG play.S3SG.PRES basketball-DAT.SG
k) bavšv-i ḳalatburt-s tamašobs
child-NOM.SG basketball-DAT.SG play.S3SG.PRES
l) ḳalatburt-s tamašobs bavšv-i
basketball-DAT.SG play.S3SG.PRES child-NOM.SG
m) ḳalatburt-s bavšv-i tamašobs
basketball-DAT.SG child-NOM.SG play.S3SG.PRES
n) tamašobs bavšv-i ḳalatburt-s
play.S3SG.PRES child-NOM.SG basketball-DAT.SG
o) tamašobs ḳalatburt-s bavšv-i
play.S3SG.PRES basketball-DAT.SG child-NOM.SG
'The/a child plays basketball'
Some parameters, such as “Only languages with articles may allow clitic doubling” (Bošković 2012: 187) do not apply to Modern Georgian, as the language does not possess pronominal clitics.
Other parameters argue in favor of both NP and DP qualities being represented in Modern Georgian, such as:
• "Negative constituents must be marked for focus in article-less languages" (Bošković 2012: 190)
p) ar-c-ert-i
NEG-FOC-one-NOM.SG
q) ver-c-ert-i 'not even one'
NEG-FOC-one-NOM.SG
r)nur-c-ert-i
NEG-FOC-one-NOM.SG
Modern Georgian has no obligatory focus marking of negative constituents but can mark them if necessary.
The aim of this presentation will not be to discuss the DP-hypothesis in general but to test the NP/DP parameters on Modern Georgian and to evaluate the results. The results will reveal that the Modern Georgian language has qualities of both NP and DP-structures and bring more insight to the applicability of modern linguistic theories on the Modern Georgian language.
References
Bošković, Ž. (2012). On NPs and clauses. In: Discourse and grammar: From sentence types to lexical categories, edited by Günther Grewendorf and Thomas Ede Zimmermann, 179-245. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Kamarauli, M. (2022). The Nominal Domain in Georgian: A Diachronic Analysis. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.
Keywords: Modern Georgian, noun phrase (NP), determiner phrase (DP).