სპარსულ და რუსულ ნასესხობათა კოლოკვიალიზაციისათვის ქართულში

Abstract

Adaptation of loanwords embraces diverse aspects (phonological, orthographic, morphosyntactic and semantic). In our opinion, attention should also be paid to the stylistic aspects of adaptation and its preconditions. According to M. Haspelmath and U. Tadmor, in frequent cases, alongside with other factors, the degree of adaptation depends on the age of a loanword (2009:42). Taking this into account, we have compared the loanwords borrowed by Georgian from late Persian and Russian with regard to their stylistic adaptation, namely, colloquialization. The contacts between Georgian the above-mentioned two languages are of diff erent duration. Historically, Persian is a language with which Georgian had most longstanding contacts, whereas Georgian and Russian language contacts, although very intense, lasted only for two centuries. Like the borrowings from Old and Middle Persian, the loans that penetrated into Georgian from New Persian until the Safavid period (1501-1722) are either outdated or belong to the neutral style. As for the borrowings of the Safavid epoch and later periods, some of them are no longer used, and only a minor portion function as stylistically neutral units, while their great majority is colloquialized. The loans that penetrated into Georgian in the Old, Middle and New Persian of the pre-Safavid period have been verifi ed based on the material provided by M. Andronikashvili (1966; 1996), whereas later loans have been verifi ed using the material taken from I. Grishashvili’s “Urban Dictionary” analyzed by N. Bartaia (2011). Apart from the European words and international vocabulary, other Russian loans have been identifi ed in contemporary Georgian oral speech. The etymons of colloquialized Russian and late Persian loans are, in the majority of cases, stylistically neutral. In our opinion, there are two reasons for their colloquialization in Georgian: 1) the “young age” of the loans; 2) their penetration into Georgian via oral speech. As it seems, the colloquialized loans become outdated or stylistically neutral only after certain “ageing”. The Persian colloquialized loans reveal the tendency to become archaic. This is natural, because direct oral contacts between Georgian and Persian have long ceased. Late Persian colloquialized loans have undergone semantic change to a certain extent, but Russian loans have preserved the meanings of the etymons. Such diff erence can be explained by the following reasons: 1) The longstanding contacts between Georgian and Persian, and a brief history of Georgian-Russian language contacts; 2) Close Russian-Georgian language contacts, leading to utmost semantic closeness between etymons and loans, on the background of ceased live contacts between Georgian and Persian.