Middle Georgian (საშუალი ქართული, sashuali kartuli)Kamarauli, pp. 45-46 was a literary language of the Georgian monarchies from the 12th century till 18th century, succeeding Old Georgian and developing into Modern Georgian. It is described as a transitional stage with an intrinsic structure for the Modern Georgian, that on a syntactic-typological level uses mixed features derived from Old Georgian.Kamarauli, p. 71 Middle Georgian was marked by greater genre-specific differencesGippert & Gehrke, p. 315 between epic, poetic and hagiographic, documentary texts, with degree of grammatical conservativeness.Gippert & Gehrke, p. 316
Periodization Middle Georgian periodization is linked with the literary textual production in terms of genres. Old Georgian literature contained mostly the ecclesiastical writings, created or influenced by the foreign translations. From the 11th-12 centuries, the diversity of the written literature in terms of genre and content sees a major moment of expansion. If the 11th century was the start of major translations of foreign philosophical works, the 12th century marked the moment of creation of non-ecclesiastical, secular literature. One of the main landmarks for this transition and emergence of Middle Georgian was an epic poetry of Shota Rustaveli, The Knight in the Panther's Skin.Kamarauli, p. 46
Noun phrase The noun phrase of Middle Georgian are similar to both, Old Georgian and Modern Georgian. The demonstratives in Middle Georgian show the same 3-way deictic differentiation; the forms, however are doubled.Kamarauli, p. 48 eseeses(e)nom.eseerg.amandat.amasgen.amis-(a)inst.amit-(a)adv.am-adnom.eserg. / dat. / gen. / inst. / adv.amnom.ese-n-ierg. / dat. / gen.ama-tadv.ama-t-a
In Old Georgian, the oblique case forms generally appear without an initial i (man, mas, mis(a), mit(a), mad), whereas they appear frequently with initial i in Middle Georgian (iman, imas, imis(a), imit(a), imad), thus representing a clear linguistic characteristic trait of Middle Georgian.Kamarauli, p. 49
Indefinite pronouns The most significant change of indefinite pronouns in Middle Georgian are observed in the declension of non-human interrogative pronoun ra, (what).Kamarauli, p. 54 nom. rame erg. rame-m dat. rame-s(a) gen. ram-is(a) inst. ram-it(a) adv. rame-d
The postnominal placement of indefinite pronouns is more dominant in Middle Georgian than the prenominal placement in Old Georgian.Kamarauli, p. 55 In contrast to Old Georgian, almost all determiners and modifiers of Middle Georgian move to the prenominal domain, while some of them still maintained the postnominal position.Kamarauli, p. 70 am-is shavshet-is-a ghado-ta shina gamochnda vin-me kats-i aspaanis-dze this (gen. sg.) Shavsheti (gen. sg.) mountain (gen. pl.) in appear someone (nom. sg.) man (nom. sg.) son of Aspaani
Notes
References
Bibliography Kamarauli, Mariam (2022) The Nominal Domain in Georgian: A diachronic analysis, Volume 5 of Folia Caucasica, Ludwig Reichert Verlag, Gippert, Jost & Gehrke, Ralf (2015) Historical Corpora, Narr,