Series Title: Languages of the World/Materials 139 Publisher:
Lincom GmbH Author: Kevin Tuite Paperback: ISBN: 3895861545
Pages: 58 Price: Europe EURO 36.00 Svan is the smallest and
least well-known of the Kartvelian (South Caucasian) languages.
The traditional Svan homeland is in the northwest highlands of
the Republic of Georgia, and the speech community comprises
35,000 to 40,000 people. In most recent respects, Svan retains
the principal features of a Kartvelian language: subject and
object agreement; verbal marking of aspect, evidentiality and
'version' [similar to active/medial opposition of Indo-
European]; and a complex split-ergative morphosyntax. On the
other hand, Svan morphophonemics has become far less transparent
than that of Georgian or Laz-Mingrelian. There is a great deal
of allomorphy in noun declension and in some verbal paradigms
(e.g. in the imperfect), and the pattern of Proto-Kartvelian
verbal ablaut has been restructured in a distinctive way.
Altough the sketch is primarily concerned wi