I am an associate professor of Linguistics at the Ilia State University in Tbilisi. I obtained my first PhD in Greek Linguistics at the Iv. Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University and my second doctorate in General Linguistics at the Joint Lehman-Haupt International Doctoral Program of Ilia State University and Georg August University of Göttingen. I also hold BA Hons in Greek Language and Literature, and Georgian Language and Literature and MPhil in Classical Philology.
My main research interests are in formal linguistics, more specifically syntactic and morphological theory. My approach to teaching focuses on engaging young scholars to the research projects, thus strengthening the nexus between research and teaching and developing the teaching architectures that promote research-based educational practices.
Lately, my interests covered the following topics:
To be more precise, my main research interests include generative syntax, morphology, case licensing, language contact and endangered language varieties, Greek and Georgian. A more detailed outline of my research interests, as well as my publications, can be found in a full version of my CV in the Projects & Online Resources section.
For the whole List of Publications, please follow the link.
Generative grammar is a system of rules that generates exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a language.
Contact Linguistics is a research of grammatical structures when bilingual speakers use their two or more languages in the same clause.
Applied linguistics refers to a broad range of activities which involve solving some language-related problem or addressing some language-related concern.
The aim of the project is to analyse differential subject marking (DSM) in Georgian Language, thus providing one more specific case study on DSM. Although much is known about DSM variations cross-linguistically, relatively little attempt has been made to study that issue in Georgian linguistics. In many languages DSM may take many forms and it does not constitute a unified phenomenon. Georgian DSM is triggered by formal: transitivity, aspect and tense, and semantic features: factors relating to animacy/person scale and volitionality. DSM is analysed within the syntactic approach in the framework of the generative grammar (GG), Minimalist Program (MP). The main research questions addressed in the project are:
The basic data collection is archived according to current standard of linguistic resources and is accessible to the research community via DSM Database The research is based on the material elicited from different corpora of Georgian language:
The project has been maintained with the financial support of the Volkswagen Foundation in 2013-2017. The project investigated Greek communities’ language differences that exist in Georgia. Namely there are two communities that share a common ethnic identity but use different languages:
The main aim was to collect different data and to create a multimedia corpus including a text collection that can be used for the study of language use.
The basic data collection is archived according to current standard of linguistic resources and is accessible to the research community via the TLA archive, see Corpus Resource: TLA, XTYP Lab, https://tla.mpi.nl/resources/data-archive/
One of the results of the project among others was also publication of the monograph "Morphological Aspects of Pontic Greek spoken in Georgia", in Series: Languages of the World 54, LINCOM, Munich 2017. The information about the book can be retrieved from the publishing house’s official web-site: http://lincom-shop.eu/LW-54-Morphological-Aspects-of-Pontic-Greek-Spoken-in-Georgia/en
Team: Stavros Skopeteas (PI, Bielefeld University), Konstanze Jungbluth (PI, Europa-University Viadrina), Svetlana Berikashvili (postdoc, TSU), Stefanie Böhm (PhD student, Bielefeld University), Johanna Lorenz (PhD student, Bielefeld University), Nutsa Tsereteli (PhD student, TSU), Evgenia Kotanidis (PhD student, TSU).
The online dictionary of idioms was developed with the financial support of Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation in 2014-2017, it contains 8500 entries, alongside with citations taken from the corpus and literary sources. The dictionary is intended for specialists of Georgian and Modern Greek, teachers and translators who deal with literary texts.
The dictionary is available here: http://idioms.iliauni.edu.ge/
Team: Irina Lobzhanidze (PI, ISU), Svetlana Berikashvili (PI, TSU); Shukia Apridonidze (Ed., ISU), Sophie Shamanidi (Ed., TSU); Irakli Gunia (Design and Programming, ISU)
but not limited to Parallel corpus of Georgian Chronicles, Corpus of the Georgian Periodicals of 19th and 20th centuries, Corpus of Georgian scientific language, Georgian legal corpus etc.
All corpora are available at: http://corpora.iliauni.edu.ge/
Team: Nino Doborjginidze (PI, ISU), Irina Lobzhanidze (PI, ISU), Svetlana Berikashvili (Coord., ISU), Giorgi Tadumadze (Coord., ISU), Tsira Khakhviashvili, Nato Bilanishvili (Coord., TSU); Irakli Gunia, Giorgi Mirianashvili, Merab Zakalashvili (Software Maintenance), assistants of the institute of linguistic research.
For the additional information on projects please see my full CV.
This section includes different presentations, slides and handouts mainly of original research work, but also some descriptive works based on different existed literature for teaching purposes.
Available at Glottothèque: Languages of Anatolia, Caucasus, Iran, Mesopotamia: https://spw.uni-goettingen.de/projects/lacim
Abstract available at https://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/summer+term+2021/651856.html
Abstract available at https://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/summer+term+2020/651859.html
Presentation of the book Morphological Aspects of Pontic Greek spoken in Georgia was held at Tbilisi State University, on 22nd of March 2018.
The program of the presentation included the speeches of:
Presentation of the book by:
Video-speeches of:
Letters with opinions / reviews:
Review of the book by Prof. of University of Patras Angella Ralli in Neograeca Bohemica 18: 106-109. 2018.
Presentation of the Online Dictionary of Idioms was held at the Book House Ligamus, at Ilia State University on 29th of May 2017.
The programm of the presentation included:
The link of the online dictionary of idioms: http://idioms.iliauni.edu.ge/
The international Lexicological Portal: http://www.lexilogos.com/georgien_dictionnaire.htm
The authors thank all the participants of the project: editors: Prof. Sh. Aphridonidze and Prof. S. Shamanidi, software designer I. Gunia and specially thanks go also to Chr. Charalambakis, Emeritus Prof. of Linguistics at National and Kapodistrian University of Athens for the permission to use the examples from the dictionary of Academy of Athens.
Conference: The Impact of Socio-Political Transformation of Language and Identity (ISPT) was held at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, on February 18-20, 2016.
The conference was part of the project "The impact of current transformational processes on language and ethnic identity: Urum and Pontic Greeks in Georgia" - funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. It was organized by the project members.
The information about the conference can be retrieved from the Bielefeld University web-site. Please, follow the link.
Click on the images below:
Ilia State University, Kakutsa Cholokashvili Ave 3/5, Tbilisi 0162, Georgia