Hello everyone!
I have two questions regarding details about verb conjugation:
- Some verbs have distinct singular and plural stems, notably ზი-ს vs სხედ-ან. On the Wikipedia page for pluractionality mentions such Georgian verbs, and most importantly, says that this distionction is not exactly parallel to -ს vs -ენ verb endings, and that a grammatically singular but truly plural subject (such as a noun introduced by a number) triggers a "mixed" form, which in this case I assume would be "სხედა".
This is quite interesting, but looking up such a form as სხედა on the Georgian Wikipedia leads no results, and სხედს gives only one result, which I don't understand too well but seems untrustworthy. Moreover, when generating Georgian sentences on Google Translate, I consistenly get ზის for sentences like "Two people are sitting over there". Further to that, googling theoretically impossible forms like "ვზივართ" gives a decent number of hits.
What is the explanation for this? When would you follow Wikipedia's rules of singular-plural matching? Does it not apply to this verb in particular? Any comments on this peculiar type of verbs?
- My second question is about a verb I encountered in the wild while looking for instances of the word "ვინა" as a variant of "ვინ". Nearly all of the relevent results I found on Wikipedia where sentences starting with "ვინა სთქვა?", and the verb form surprised me, as I was expecting თქვა.
I heard of similar ს vs no-ს alternations in words like თხოვს vs სთხოვს, which apparently have a distinction in meaning. I also heard the initial ს- is generally disappearing in verbs, and so that difference in meaning is weakening. Yet in this case, I don't see a difference between სთქვა and თქვა, and translating "'who said that..." in Google gives back "ვინ თქვა": is სთქვა then simply an older/archaic form?
While we're at it, anyone knows when exactly to add -ა to subject pronouns like ვინ(ა), თქვენ(ა) etc. ? I understand that it is probably optional in any case. Could it be when they are in direct contact with a personal prefix?