Relationship between the Kartvelian Roots *γwn- ‘wine’ and *γun - ‘creep, curve, twist’ Rusudan Asatiani, Marine Ivanishvili & Ether Soselia

Abstract

Thomas Gamkrelidze &Viacheslav Ivanov’s fundamental work, based on lexical borrowings and structural-typological similarities of the Indo-European, Kartvelian, and Semitic Proto-Languages, confirms that the Georgians (Kartvelian tribes) together with the representatives of ancient civilizations (Indo-Europeans and Semites) historically belong to the same chronological stage. In this respect, the lexical units denoting ‘wine’ in the above-mentioned languages, being the subject of much research, seem very notable. The views on the Kartvelian origin of the respective stems are as old as that of considering the Kartvelian form as an Indo-European borrowing. Various viewpoints exist because the reasonable etymology of the stem has not been established based on Kartvelian data. The paper examines the Common-Kartvelian stem *γvin- ‘wine’, reconstructed by the comparison of Georgian, Megrelian, Laz, and Svan (resp. Kartvelian languages) linguistic data. Taking into account that the root represents a regular form defined by the rules of Kartvelian ablaut alternations, it is possible to regard this form as a Kartvelian stem derived from the verb *γun- denoting ‘creep, curve, twist’, and not as an Indo-European borrowing, as it used to be accepted. Thus, another linguistic-typological parallel between Kartvelian and Indo-European languages has been revealed at the lexical level. Keywords: Kartvelian languages, Indo-European languages, Semitic languages, Comparative-Historical linguistics, Kartvelian ablaut patterns, the lexeme wine