Third Person Pronouns in the Speech of Georgian Jews

Abstract

Determining the speech status of Georgian Jews and stating its place in the Kartvelian language space is one of the important issues of modern Kartvelology and Jewish Studies. In this reference investigation of the usage of third-person pronouns in the speech of the Jews living in Georgia is of particular relevance.

The empirical data include samples of spoken as well as written discourse genres (the latter is represented by the religious texts - the first book of the Pentateuch of Moses).

The study has shown that in the speech of Georgian Jews third person pronouns es, eg, is , igi, are mainly evidenced in their archaic forms ese,isi.

isi variant is encountered In the texts recorded by R. Tavdidishvili (1937-1938); however, the frequency of its usage is not high in the materials reflecting speech peculiarities of Kutaisi, Akhaltsikhe and Racha Jews recorded in 1998 and 2005, 2013-2019. The field work carried out recently has proved that Georgian Jews employ the pronoun Isi both independently as well as with the function of a determiner.

In the speech of Georgian Jews, is is most frequently encountered with the function of the 3rd person personal pronoun. igi is employed rarely. The pronouns es, is, eg, igi in the oblique case are replaced by their variants ama,ima, maga/mage, ma.