Megrelian

Abstract

This chapter addresses Megrelian, a Kartvelian (South Caucasian) language spoken by Megrelians, a subethnic group compactly residing in one of the western provinces of Georgia, Samegrelo. A language of informal communication, Megrelian has been subject to linguistic research both in Georgia and beyond for more than two hundred years. Backed by the existing literature on the language, most of which has been published in Georgian, this sketch provides an account of essential features of Megrelian phonology, grammar, and lexicon, including such typologically renowned properties of Megrelian as the elaborate system of preverbs and innovative and extremely specific case-marking alignment that not only features ergative stimuli of affective verbs, but can also license this case to adverbs as well. Furthermore, new insights are proposed for such domains of linguistic structure as the language’s case system, grades of comparison, expression of spatial deixis by pronominal expressions, verbal aspect, and evidentiality; some of these statements are based on the data from the author’s long-term fieldwork and are now being introduced to linguistic discourse.