The Nominal Domain in Georgian

The book deals with the formation of noun phrases (NP) in Georgian, the state language of Georgia, which is considered the most prominent representative of the South Caucasian (or Kartvelian) language family. Since Georgian - as the only non-Indo-European language of the Caucasus region - can look back on an uninterrupted written tradition of more than 1500 years (the oldest written evidence are inscriptions from the 5th century CE), it is ideal for diachronic analyses. A distinction is usually made between an Old Georgian (approx. 5th - 11th century), a Middle Georgian (approx. 12th - 18th century) and a Modern Georgian period (since the 18th century). The work can be roughly divided into four main chapters: 1. Old Georgian, 2. Middle Georgian, 3. Modern Georgian and 4. The DP (determiner phrase) hypothesis. The first chapter, which examines the structure of NPs in Old Georgian, includes I.A. the analysis of the article function of postpositioned demonstrative pronouns (for the function of the definite article) and the postpositioned numeral 'one' (for the function of the indefinite article), which mostly occupy a Wackernagel position in the noun phrase. As a further special feature, the phenomenon of "suffixaufnahme" analyzed, in which an attributive noun (in the genitive) receives the marking of the head noun in addition to its own case marking. Finally, the possible influence of Ancient Greek and Classical Armenian is examined by comparing passages from the Bible with regard to the structure and composition of the NPs. The second chapter begins with the question of whether Middle Georgian should be considered a developmental stage of the Georgian language in its own right and discusses various opinions and arguments of linguists in this regard. Concerning the NP structure, this chapter examines particularly the question of the development of the article functions and of "suffixaufnahme". All questions in this chapter are accompanied and explained by statistics