Iza Chantladze, Marika Odzeli - European Diplomat-researchers’ (18th-19th cc.) Contribution to Caucasian Studies (original) (raw)
The given paper discusses the significance of Kartvelian languages (Georgian, Megrelian, Laz, Svan) from the point of view of the intangible cultural heritage. It states, that Kartvelian vocabulary similarly to the general vocabulary depicts the life, historic‐ethnographic reality, material culture and national worldview of a lingual community. I believe, that for the purpose of the illustration of the above mentioned, the vocabulary of Kartvelian languages must be presented synchronically. This process will vividly reveal the above given problematics and a genetic kinship of Kartvelian languages. For the purpose of the achievement of all these goals together with my colleagues I created the dictionary, which united vocabulary of Kartvelian languages and presented its translation in one of the European languages. The dictionary entitled " Georgian‐Megrelian‐Laz‐Svan‐English Dictionary " was created in Tbilisi in 2015. The given article presents the theoretic bases of the systematization of the data of Kartvelian languages. Moreover, it discusses the objectives and tasks of newly‐published " Georgian‐ Megrelian‐Laz‐Svan‐English Dictionary " .
Methods and Strategies for Studying Georgian as a Foreign Language by the First Europeans
International Journal of Multilingual Education, by Chkuaseli Ana, 2018
The tradition of Georgian as a foreign language study has rather deep historical roots; it begins from the 17th century and is connected to the activities of the European missionaries in Georgia. Almost two-centuries of practice of the Georgian language study have been described by the French and Italian missionaries in their own vocabularies and grammars. The missionaries' activities and their vocabularies and grammars were assessed and analyzed from different standpoints, however, taking into account the modern methodology, empiric surveillance of Georgian as a foreign language study, their individual experiences and approaches have not still been considered. From the missionaries' materials we see that when studying the Georgian language they actively used the vocabularies, recorded the words frequently used in the local environment, and in brief grammars they mainly described the grammar categories necessary for the communication. We reckon, such practice of the language study is actual and valuable even today for those studying languages as well as for those practicing didactics, Georgian is thought to be the language having complicated morphological-syntactical systems. For our research we have chosen Georgian-Italian and Italian-Georgian vocabularies of the 19th century (1852-1867). The vocabulary is kept in Rome-ORDO FF. MIN. CAPUCCINORUM Archives and its author is Emanuele Iglesias. Our aim is to establish the historical experience the missionaries had in the foreign language study practice, taking into consideration certain vocabulary, and how actual could be at the modern stage the foreign language study practice and strategy as described by the missionary authors. Analyses of the mentioned vocabulary give us the possibility to try to announce the standard description of the lexical part of the language knowledge levels, in particular, distinguish themes of language entities and separate the terms concerning treatment, medicines, and religion. Moreover, we have analyzed the grammatical part from the functional grammar standpoint. The research results show us, that Georgian as a foreign language, described in the vocabularies and grammars, was helping the missionaries to adapt to the linguistic and social environment.
Demetrius Rudolph Peacock and the Languages of Georgia
General and Specialist Translation / Interpretation: Theory, Methods, Practice: International Conference Papers. Kyiv: Agrar Media Group, 2019.
―Original Vocabularies of Five West Caucasian Languages‖ and provides information about the author and his work. The English headwords are accompanied by their translations in the languages spoken in Georgia: Georgian, Megrelian (―Mingrelian‖), Laz (―Lazian‖), Svan (―Swanetian‖), and Abkhazian. With a number of positive aspects, Peacock‘s ―Vocabularies‖ should be considered a significant vestige in the history of English-Caucasian lexicography which can yield much valuable information as a result of the thorough investigation of individual entries and their translation equivalents in the five Caucasian languages spoken in Georgia.
Italian-Language Kartvelology and Georgian Literature
Georgian Literature in European Scholarship, 2001
The present monograph is the result of a team work of researchers at the libraries and philological centres of various European countries and Georgia. Both the research team and the themes of problems to be studied and the methodology were selected and drawn up by me. The material was gathered, generalised, and the monograph written on its basis at the Centre for Kartvelian Studies. I feel obliged to list the scholars and students who responded to my call and participated in the work. These are the foreign Kartvelologists:
Oliver Wardrop - English-Svanetian Dictionary
2018
REPRINT OF: Sir O. Wardrop, English-Svanetian Dictionay, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1911, XVI, 589-634. English-Svanetian Dictionary - The recent establishment of a fund in the University of Oxford for the encouragement of the study of the Georgian family of languages may in the course of time attract the attention of British philologists to the Western Caucasus, and an increasing stream of travelers will doubtless find their way thither seeking knowledge, health, sport, and scenery; it is for such visitors that the following vocabulary has been compiled. The Book you can find on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/English-Svanetian-Dictionary-Sir-Oliver-Wardrop/dp/9941961646/ref=sr\_1\_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542703788&sr=8-1&keywords=english-svanetian+dictionary
Kartvelian and Lexical Contact in the Ancient Caucasus
Beyond recorded history: Methods and results in prehistoric contact linguistics
This paper will survey what kinds of lexical contact affected the Kartvelian languages in the ancient Caucasus: what kinds of lexical items were borrowed, and when, and what light such patterns shed on phonological and morphological developments within Kartvelian. It also provides evidence for: • a number of new phonemes in that protolanguage, including palatalized *rj, a velarized/labialized series of sibilants, and at least one pharyngeal fricative • the absolute dating of the loss of these earlier segments • 'm-mobile', a kind of rebracketing process affecting nasal stops word-initially By calibrating dates of attestation with known external facts of contact languages, I provide evidence for the absolute dating of important phonological sound-shifts and morphological reanalysis in the Kartvelian languages.
Historical Linguistics of the Caucasus: Book of abstracts
Editorial board: Gilles Authier, Hélène Gérardin, Magomed I. Magomedov, Timur A. Maisak; Compiled by Timur A. Maisak. / Makhachkala: IYaLI DNC RAN, 2017. – 210 p., 2017
This book brings together the abstracts for the oral and poster presentations delivered at the international conference “Historical Linguistics of the Caucasus”, which took place at École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, April 12-14, 2017. The presentations deal mainly with historical aspects of the Caucasian language families – Nakh-Daghestanian, Abkhaz-Adyghe, and Kartvelian – as well as the Indo-European languages of the region. A special thematic workshop within the conference was devoted to imperfectivity and its relation to modality, as part of the international project IMMOCAL – Imperfective Modalities in Caucasian Languages (project coordinator Gilles Authier). For linguists, students of linguistics and philology and all those interested in the languages of the Caucasus.
Helen Giunashvili (G. Tsereteli Institute of Oriental Studies) PRE-ISLAMIC IRAN AND GEORGIA: QUESTIONS OF CULTURAL-LINGUISTIC INTERRELATIONS (artošan/atrošan) Iranian-Georgian historical contacts have the most ancient tradition. The geographical position of both countries has supported the existence of practically uninterrupted interrelationships of these neighboring regions from the remotest past. Dissemination of Iranian culture in Georgia has already been clearly distinguished from Achaemenid period (VI-IV cc. BC), when firm foundations of Iranian statehood and culture were laid. Consequently, Iranian beneficial influences were continued in later periods – Hellenistic, Parthian and particularly, Sassanian. Emergence of the Sassanian Empire in III c. AD was of great importance for the historical development of the Caucasian countries, and particularly, for the Iberian kingdom (East Georgia), known later as the state of Kartli. Sassanian influence on Iberia was deep and strong from the beginning, covering all the spheres of political, social-economic and cultural life of the country, affecting therefore different sides of Georgian civilization throughout the whole period of dominance (III-VII cc. AD). Archaeological evidences, epigraphic materials, historical records and mostly linguistic data, testify to the Iranian-Georgian intensive multilateral interrelations of that period. Sassanian expansion in South Caucasian region was followed by wide-spreading of Middle Persian, the official, religious and literary language of the Empire. Already Georgian monuments of V-VI cc. AD “The Martyrdom of St. Shushanik” and “The Passion of St. Eustace the Cobbler” attest the presence of Iranians and the use of Middle Persian in Ancient Georgia. Many Old Georgian literary sources (V-XI cc.), such as translations and commentaries of the Scripture, homilies, apocrypha, hagiographic texts, exegetic writings reveal a large number of Middle Persian lexis ranging over various semantic fields, rendering, correspondingly, different cultural designations, being penetrated as a result of these close contacts. Systematic research on Middle Iranian-Georgian linguistic interference was first presented in M. Andronikashvili’s extensive “Studies on Iranian-Georgian Linguistic Contacts”, Tbilisi, 1966 (in Georgian, see Chapter II, pp. 144-279). There was an established opinion among scholars, that most of Middle Iranian words, as they look similar or even identical with their Armenian counterparts, have entered in Georgian through Armenian (“via armeniaca”). In M. Andronkashvili’s work it was consistently shown, that there existed considerable phonetic differences between Middle Persian as well as Parthian lexical borrowings in Georgian and their Armenian parallels. Comparative empirical analysis of Georgian and Armenian forms revealed principle differences between their morphophonemic structures, consonant system and vocalism, reflecting, thus, significant divergences in adopted Middle Iranian words. This research provided an important basis for the assumption that there must have been direct Iranian influences on Old Georgian during Parthian and Sassanian periods and many Middle Iranian words might have entered independently. J. Gippert’s book Iranica Armeno-Iberica. Studien zu den iranischen Lehnwörtern im Armenischen und Georgischen, Wien 1993 (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Kl. , Sitzungsber., 606. / Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Iranistik, 26) [2 vols.] presented a new contribution to Iranian-Georgian linguistic research. By using contemporary methods of historical-comparative lexicology, the author reconsidered relationship of Western Middle Iranian, Armenian and Georgian and clearly distinguished linguistic stratum transferred in Georgian through Armenian, from direct Middle Iranian borrowings. There were systematically reconstructed common as well as different Middle Iranian archetypes from which Georgian forms and their Armenian counterparts were derived. J. Gippert’s new methodological approaches and conceptions created theoretical fundamentals for Iranian-Georgian etymological studies. Recent research and publications of Old Georgian sources as well as of Middle Persian monuments (in particularly, Sassanian inscriptions of III-V cc AD, Manichaean texts of III c AD, and several specimen of Zoroastrian spiritual literature, IX-X cc AD, known as Book Pahlavi) makes it possible to examine these languages comparatively, offering a new interpretation on their historical relationship and lexical interference. Among Middle Persian lexical borrowings attested in Old Georgian, Sassanian religious (cult) terminology (Manichaean, Zoroastrian) presents a special interest. Some of these terms became essential Christian notions (such as, (h)ešmak’ _ “demon”, jojokhet _ “the hell”, unas _ “sin, evil”, iadgar _ “memorial”, and so on), while others were used for expressing foreign, non-Christian and sometimes pagan cultural meanings, cf. dev-“evil spirit”(indo-european daiva), art’ošan _ “ fire worshipping”, mogu-i _ “magician”, etc.). The paper deals with the Old Georgian term artošan, atrošan-, only attested in early hagiographical text, “The Martyrdom of St. Shushanik”, written by the priest Jacob Tsurtaveli (see a critical edition of the Old Georgian text along with its Old Armenian translation by Ilia Abuladze, Tbilisi, 1938). According to this writing, at the end of the fifth century Kartli was governed by Varsken Pitiaxsh, who was married to Shushanik, the daughter of the chief commander of Armenians Vardan Mamikonian. Due to the political consideration Varsken adopted Zoroastrianism, but his wife opposed him and the Queen Shushanik thus became victim to this opposition. In this monument we come across many pieces of interesting evidence about the religious state of Kartli, also a whole array of sacred terms are witnessed in it and among them– artošan-i. According to the Georgian text of the Martyrdom, when the Queen Shushanik learns about conversion of Varsken to Zoroastrianism, she says: “sac’qalobel ikmna ubadruk’i Varsken, rametu uvar-Iqo češmarit’i g’merti da ag’iara art’ošani” “Pitiable indeed has become the unfortunate Varsken! He has forsaken the True God, and embraced the religion of fire and united himself to the godless” (the English translation is by D. M. Lang, in: Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints, London, 1976, p. 46). In Old Georgian concise dictionaries this term is explained as “Zoroastrian (=fire-worshipping) temple, fire-worshipping place”. In Armenian the form atrowšan (atrušan) is attested “fire-worshipping temple” (see H. Hübschmann, Armenische Grammatik, I, 1895, p. 110, 72) considered by H. Hübschmann as originated from Pahlavi *āturōšān – “fire burning place” (ātur-“fire”, ōšān- “a place”). Later, for *ātur-ōšān, E. Benveniste (“Sur la terminologie iranienne du sacrifice”, in: Journal Asiatique, t. CCLII, pp. 45-58, Paris, 1964) reconstructed Old Iranian *ātṛ-aušana _ “a place of fire combustion” stemming from *aušana _ “place of fire burning” < *auš -“to burn, to be on fire”(cf. Vedic ósati), corresponding to Greek πυρ-αιθεĩον _ “place of a cult”, cf. πύραιθοι _ “fire worshippers” (op. cit. pp. 56-57). G. Tsereteli’s considered Georgian atrošan/artošan and its Armenian counterpart as descending from Middle Persian ātur rōšān “sacred fire” comparing it with forms like ātur farnbāγ, ātur gušnasp, ātur burzēn miθr, cf. also frēštag rōšān (G. Tsereteli, Selected Writings in Five Volumes, v. V Georgia and Iranian World, Tbilisi (in Georgian), p. 124 ( a manuscript)). According to Andronikashvili’s point of view, both Georgian and Armenian forms were derived from Middle Iranian (Parthian) *ātarš-ān, aturš-ān _ “fire place”(where -ān is used to denote a collective singular, Andronikashvili 1966, p. 225). The Georgian shows metathesis of original tr, preserved in the Armenian (Andronikashvili, op. cit. p. 173). T. Chkheidze considered this term as reflecting Middle Persian aturān šāh , the name of the main Zoroastrian sacral fires (T. Chkheidze, From the History of Iranian-Georgian Relations, Typological Researches, Tbilisi, 2000, pp. 466-467). According to the Martyrdom’s editions, the oldest manuscript A 95, of the 11th century, has art’ošan-i, while all later manuscripts attest at’rošin-e. Initial form in Georgian is to be reestablished as *at’rošan (see J. Gippert, Iranians and Iranian Languages in Ancient Georgia, in: Perspective-XXI Indo-Iranica et Caucasica, Studies in Honor of Prof. M. Andronikashvili, Tbilisi, 2004, p. 112, n. 17), and subsequently, etymology of the Georgian form would be *ātr-ōšan _ “(a place of) fire burning”. Denotation of Zoroastrian fire was transformed on the Georgian basis as a general expression of Zoroastrianism (as well as another term mogoba, derived from Middle Iranian mogu _ “Zoroastrianist”, also attested in the Martyrdom’s text, cf. švilni igi šenni miakcina mogobasa – “He has converted your children to Zoroastrianism” (see I. Abuladze, Ch. XII, 6). Studies on Sassanian lexicon in Georgian are significant not only for the history of Middle Persian vocabulary, and that of Iranian-Georgian linguistic contacts, but also for revealing Georgian cultural realities originated in long, complex and deep interrelations with pre-Islamic Iran.