The Georgian verbal system is extremely complex, especially when compared to those of most Indo-European languages. A single Georgian verb may encode the following information:
Rather than using the terms "tense", "aspect", "mood", etc. separately, linguists prefer to use the term "screeve" to distinguish between different time frames and moods of the verbal system. A screeve is a set of six verb forms inflected for person and number.
Verbs are traditionally divided into four classes: transitive verbs, intransitive verbs, verbs with no transitive counterparts (medial verbs) and indirect verbs. There are numerous irregular verbs in Georgian, but they all belong to one of these classes. Each class uses different strategies to build the verb complex, irregular verbs employing somewhat different formations.
See w:Georgian verb paradigm for an extensive list of verb forms and examples of usage.
Class 1 verbs generally have a subject and a direct object. Some examples are "eat", "kill" and "receive". This class also includes causatives (the equivalent of "make someone do something") and the causative verbal form of adjectives (for example, "make someone deaf").
There are a few verbs in Class 3 that behave like transitive verbs of Class 1 in terms of their conjugations, such as sneeze and cough (see below).
Intransitive verbs only have a subject and no direct object (though a few govern an indirect object marked simply with the dative case). Most verbs in this class have a subject that does not perform or control the action of the verb (for example, "die", "happen"). The passive voice of Class 1 transitive verbs belong in this class too, for example "be eaten", "be killed" and "be received". In addition, the verbal form of adjectives also have their intransitive counterparts: the intransitive verb for the adjective "deaf" is "to become deaf".
Verbs in Class 3 are usually intransitive verbs, but unlike Class 2 verbs, they mark their subject using the ergative case. Most verbs of motion (such as "swim" and "roll") and verbs about weather (such as "rain" and "snow") belong to this class. Although these verbs are described as not having transitive counterparts (such as "cry"), some of them still have direct objects, such as "learn" and "study". Verbs that are derived from loan words also belong to this class.
The intransitive verbs in Classes 2 and 3, when taken together, seem to be conjugated differently based on a form of active alignment (see the section on morphosyntactic alignment).
Verbs that convey the meaning of emotion and prolonged state belong to this class. The verbs "want" and "can" also belong to this class. Other common examples of Class 4 verbs are "sleep", "miss", "envy" and "believe". These verbs typically mark the subject with the dative and the object with the nominative.
Stative verbs do not constitute a class per se, but rather refer to a state, and their conjugations are very similar to those of indirect verbs. For example, when one says, "the picture is hanging on the wall", the equivalent of "hang" is a stative verb.
There are numerous irregular verbs in Georgian; most of them employ the conjugation system of Class 2 intransitive verbs. Irregular verbs use different stems in different screeves, and their conjugations deviate from the conjugations of regular intransitive verbs. Some irregular verbs are also suppletive, or defective.
Some irregular verbs are: არის (aris, “be”), მიდის (midis, “come”), ამბობს (ambobs, “say, tell”), and აჩუქებს (ačukebs, “give”).
There are three series of screeves in Georgian: first, second and third series. The first series has two subseries, which are called the present and the future subseries. The second series is also called the aorist series, and the third series is called the perfective series. There are a total of eleven screeves.
| Indicative | Past | Subjunctive | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Present subseries | Present indicative | Imperfect | Present subjunctive |
| Future subseries | Future | Conditional | Future subjunctive |
| Aorist series | Aorist | Optative | |
| Perfective series | Present perfect | Pluperfect | Perfect subjunctive |
The present indicative is used to express an event at the time of speaking ("S/he is verbing"). It is also used to indicate an event that happens habitually ("S/he verbs").
The imperfect screeve is used to express an incomplete or continuous action in the past ("S/he was verbing"). It is also used to indicate a habitual past action, i. e. the meaning of used to ("S/he used to verb").
The present subjunctive screeve is used to express an unlikely event in the present and is usually used as a relative clause ("That s/he be verbing").
The future screeve is used to express an event that will take place in the future ("S/he will verb").
The conditional screeve is used together with if ("S/he would verb or "S/he would have verbed").
The future subjunctive screeve is used to express an unlikely event in the future and is usually used as a dependent clause.
The aorist screeve is used to indicate an action that took place in the past ("S/he verbed"). It is also used in imperatives (Verb!).
The optative screeve has many uses:
The perfect screeve is used to indicate an action, which the speaker did not witness ("S/he has verbed").
The pluperfect screeve is used to indicate an action which happened before another event ("S/he had verbed").
The perfect subjunctive screeve is mostly for wishes ("May s/he verb!").
Georgian is an agglutinative language. Agglutination means that affixes each express a single meaning, and they usually do not merge with each other or affect each other phonologically. Each verb screeve is formed by adding a number of prefixes and suffixes to the verb stem. Certain affix categories are limited to certain screeves. In a given screeve, not all possible markers are obligatory. The components of a Georgian verb form occur in the following order:
| preverb | prefixal person marker | version marker | VERB ROOT | passive marker | {thematic suffix} | causative marker | thematic suffix | imperfective marker | suffixal person marker | auxiliary verb | plural marker |
|---|
Preverbs can add either directionality or an arbitrary meaning to the verb. To this extent they resemble the derivational prefixes of Slavic verbs. For example, while mi-vdivar means "I am going", mo-vdivar means "I am coming". Preverbs appear in the future, past and perfective screeves; they are generally absent in the present screeves.
One, two or three grammatical persons can be indicated in the Georgian verb. The performer of an action is called the subject or the agent, and affected persons are patients or objects (indirect or direct). The category of number (singular or plural) is also indicated.
Below is the verb personality and transitivity scheme.
| Unipersonal | Bipersonal | Tripersonal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| intransitive | transitive | intransitive | transitive | |
| Subject | + | + | + | + |
| Direct Object | + | + | ||
| Indirect Object | + | + | ||
To indicate subjects and objects the special markers are used, which are listed in the following tables.
| Subject markers | ||
|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | |
| S1 | v- | v-...-t |
| S2 | h-/s-/∅- | h-/s-/∅-...-t |
| S3 | ∅-...-s/-a/-o | ∅-...- en (-nen)/-an/-n/-es |
| Object markers | ||
| Singular | Plural | |
| O1 | m- | gv- |
| O2 | g- | g-...-t |
| O3 | h-/s-/∅ | h-/s-/∅...-t |
S2 and O3 marker h- evolved from earlier x- which is first attested in 5th century.
The h variant is evidenced for the first time in C̣q̇isi (წყისი) inscription (616–619 y.y.) and since the 2nd half of 8th century it becomes predominant. From 9th century the h → s transformation is documented before the dental stops (ṭ, t, d) and affricates (c̣/č̣, c/č, ʒ/ǯ).
In Modern Georgian, the h- marker is not used before vowels; the S2 and O3 h-/s- prefixes are susceptible to deletion more generally.
The oldest S2 x- is preserved with three verbal stems:
Here is presented subject markers' usage example, using the verb root -c̣er, 'to write'.
| Singular | Plural | Singular (eng) | Plural (eng) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First Person | v-c̣er | v-c̣er-t | I am writing | We are writing |
| Second Person | c̣er | c̣er-t | You (sing) are writing | You (plu) are writing |
| Third Person | c̣er-s | c̣er-en | S/he is writing | They are writing |
In the case of v-c̣er-t, c̣ert, and c̣er-en, the -t and -en are the subject plurality markers.
The following is a usage example of the object markers, using the verb root nd- 'to want':
| Singular | Plural | Singular (eng) | Plural (eng) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First Person | m-i-nd-a | gv-i-nd-a | I want | We want |
| Second Person | g-i-nd-a | g-i-nd-a-t | You (sing) want | You (plu) want |
| Third Person | u-nd-a | u-nd-a-t | S/he wants | They want |
In the case of g-i-nd-a-t and u-nd-a-t, the -t is the plural marker.
The polypersonalism of Georgian verb allows to express the involvement of action participants in very compact way. For example, while it takes five words to say "I wrote it to them" in English ("I" being the subject, "it" being the direct object, "them" being the indirect object), in Georgian this can be said in one word davuts'ere.
Right after the nominal marker can come a "version" marker. Phonologically, version markers consist of any one of the vowels except for /o/. Version markers are semantically diverse. They can add either an unpredictable lexical meaning to the verb, or a functional meaning including causativity, passive voice, subjective version, objective version and locative version. For example, while v-c̣er means "I write it," v-u-c̣er means "I write it to him/her" (objective version), v-a-c̣er means "I write it on him/her" (locative version), and v-i-c̣er means "I write it (for myself)" (subjective version).
The length of the verb root typically ranges from one to seven phonemes, with the longest root consisting of 15. Some consist of consonants only. The common root of the verbs meaning 'open', 'receive', 'take', and 'take a picture' is -ɣ-. "Lexical derivation" (or "word formation") is accomplished through the use of preverbs, version markers, and thematic suffixes. Some derivations of -ɣ- are seen in the sentences mi-v-i-ɣ-e c̣erili, 'I received the letter' and ga-a-ɣ-eb ḳars, 'you will open the door' (derivational affixes are bolded).
In Georgian, two morphological means of converting a transitive verb to an intransitive verb (or to passive voice) are to add -d- to the end of the verb root or to add the version marker -i- (see the discussion of version markers elsewhere in this article). Respective examples: ga-a-c̣itl-e, 'you made him blush' (-c̣itl- is the root of c̣iteli, 'red') > ga-c̣itl-d-i, 'you blushed'; class 2 verb da-v-bad-eb, 'I give birth to you', > da-v-i-bad-eb-i, 'I am born' (the -i- at the end of the verb is the suffixal nominal marker obligatory with intransitive verbs – see below).
The language has eight kinds of thematic suffixes (also sometimes known as present-future stem formants or PFSF). When the suffixal passive marker is absent, one of these suffixes can be placed right after the root of the verb. With these suffixes the verbs gain arbitrary meanings. Thematic suffixes are present in the present and future screeves, but are absent in the past and mostly absent in the perfective screeves. For example, the root of the verb "build" is -šen-. In order to say "I am building", we have to add the thematic suffix -eb- to the end of the root: v-a-šen-eb (v- meaning that the doer is the first person (v- set nominal marker), a is the versioner, šen is the root, and eb is the thematic suffix). To say "he/she is building", we simply add the suffixal nominal marker -s after the thematic suffix: a-šen-eb-s.
In the verb form, the root immediately followed with a thematic suffix (if any) is called theme. Verbs are divided into two classes as to whether it has the same theme in the first and second series or not. A verb is two-themed if:
Most verbs are two-themed.
In English, causativity is predominantly expressed syntactically, by the phrase, 'make someone verb', whereas in Georgian it is expressed morphologically. The causative marker obligatorily cooccurs with the version marker -a-. There is no single causative marker in Georgian. To ditransitivize an already transitive verb, one uses in-eb or rarely ev: č̣am, 'you eat' > a-č̣∅m-ev, 'you make him eat', with the syncope of the root.
This marker (-d- for class 1 verbs, -od- for class 2 verbs) are used to build the imperfective, present and future subjunctive and conditional screeves: v-a-šen-eb, 'I am building' > v-a-šen-eb-d-i, 'I was building" (the additional -i- at the end of the verb is the suffixal nominal marker); v-c̣er, 'I am writing' > v-c̣er-d-i, 'I was writing' (as the verb "write" does not have a thematic suffix, the imperfective marker is added right after the verb root).
The transitive verbs (which employ the v- set) use the suffixal nominal marker -s- (as in a-šen-eb-s, c̣er-s) for the third person singular in present and future screeves. Intransitive verbs, the past and perfective screeves of the transitive and medial verbs, and indirect verbs, employ sets of vowels: in the indicative, i (strong) or e (weak) for the first/second person, o or a for the third person; in the subjunctive, the suffixal nominal marker is the same for all persons, generally e or o or, less frequently, a. The aorist intransitive form avašene, 'I built', has the structure, a-v-a-šen-∅-e, characterized by preverb -a- and weak suffixal nominal marker -e-.
The auxiliary verb is only used in the present indicative and perfective screeves of indirect verbs and in the perfective screeve of transitive verbs when the direct object is first or second person(s) (these are situations, where the m- set is used for the subject of the verb, and, therefore, v- set is used to indicate the direct object). The auxiliary verb is the same verb as to be in present screeve. The verb to be for the first singular two persons are: Me var ("I am") and Šen xar ("You are"). For example, miq̇vars means "I love him/her" (the s at the end of the verb indicating that it is the third person whom the speaker loves). In order to say "I love you", the s at the end has to be replaced with xar (as, now, the direct object is the second person): miq̇var-xar ("I love you").
In addition to the possible auxiliary verb in the verb complex, there are also separate ones. Just as in English, Georgian language has the auxiliary verbs, such as want, must (have to) and can.
Depending on which set of nominal markers is employed, the appropriate plural suffix is added. It can refer to either subject or object. An example of referring to an object is miq̇varxar-t, 'I love you (plural).'
The masdar (or verbal noun) is a form of the verb that behaves as a noun. It does not provide any information as to the time of the action, the person involved, or other details typically contained in a finite verb form. Instead, it expresses the intrinsic 'essence' of the verb, its basic meaning. It may be compared to the English verbal nouns 'to hold' and 'holding', for example. (Note that Georgian does not have an infinitive form of the verb). The only category that can be expressed by the masdar is 'aspect' in the case of Class 1 and 2 verbs, that is, whether the action is viewed as completed ('perfective') or uncompleted ('imperfective'). This distinction is made through the presence or absence of a preverb. Transitive and intransitive forms of the same verb (that is, those with and without an indirect object) both share the same form of the masdar. Although derived from a verb, the masdar behaves like any other noun.