Summary

We study contact-induced morphosyntactic phenomena in modern spoken Georgian under the influence of English.

Topic 1. Verb borrowing from English into Georgian

We analyze techniques for how Georgian accommodates English loan verbs. The major role is played by preverbs, in particular, the preverb da-, which itself occupies a special role in the system of Georgian preverbs due to its high degree of grammaticalization. The use of da- does not fit into the four major types of the typology of verbal borrowings of Wohlgemuth (2009).

Topic 2. Borrowing of English noun-noun (NN) constructs into Georgian:

We study a new development in modern Georgian spoken language that is spreading throughout the Georgian social media. The phenomenon under discussion is the use of NN constructs consisting of two consecutive nouns, the referents of which are in a possessive relationship. The main formal characteristic of the construct is that its dependent noun invariably stands in nominative, while the head gets marked according to the syntactic role of the construct in the sentence. Either one or both of the components of such constructs represent an English loan word. Even when both are represented by native Georgian lexemes, the structure of the constructs resembles the structure of English NN constructs.