Semantical Analyses of Deverbal Functional Elements from a Corpus-linguistic Point of View

Abstract

The paper focuses on grammaticalisation processes in the Georgian Language and examines functional elements of verbal origin. These elements include ა-დგ-ა a-dg-a (PR-stand-AOR.S.3.SG) meaning “s/he stood up” and indicating an abrupt start of an action”; ა-იღ-ო a-i-ɣ-o (PR-SV-take-AOR.S.3) meaning “s/he took something” and signifying an “action without further ado”; ჩან-ს čan-s (be_visible-S.3) meaning “it is visible” and conveying the sense of “it seems”. The study presents the functional and semantic characteristics of these elements. Methods such as lexical substitution and elimination are employed to describe their functions, and a language competency test is used to assess their roles in discourse. The paper aims to provide a quantitative analysis of data obtained from a corpusbased study of these functional elements. Additionally, it offers combinatorial rules to address the issue of homonymy caused by such grammaticalised functional elements in the Georgian national corpus (GNC). The research primarily relies on the Georgian National Corpus (GNC) (http://gnc.gov.ge/). Empirical data is collected from the Georgian Reference Corpus (GRC), which encompasses contexts from Old, Middle and Modern Georgian, as well as the subcorpora of political and law texts. The article analyses the contexts provided for the elements under research across eleven TAM categories. Functional elements pose challenges in computer-based language processing, particularly in computer linguistics. Since the Georgian language lacks proper functional processing, the Georgian National Corpus (GNC) provides no algorithm yet to differentiate functional elements from those belonging to paradigmatic classes. This leads to homonymy and unresolved disambiguation issues. The paper aims to address these ambiguities and proposes rules based on the positional distribution scheme of the research elements. The formal rules are illustrated in charts.