Screeve is a term of grammatical description in traditional Georgian grammars that roughly corresponds to
tense–aspect–mood
Tense–aspect–mood (commonly abbreviated ) or tense–modality–aspect (abbreviated as ) is a group of grammatical categories that are important to understanding spoken or written content, and which are marked in different ways by different la ...
marking in the Western grammatical tradition. It derives from the
Georgian word ''mts’k’rivi'' (მწკრივი), which means "row". Formally, it refers to a set of six verb forms inflected for person and number forming a single paradigm. For example, the
aorist
Aorist (; abbreviated ) verb forms usually express perfective aspect and refer to past events, similar to a preterite. Ancient Greek grammar had the aorist form, and the grammars of other Indo-European languages and languages influenced by th ...
screeve for most verbal forms consists at least of a preverb (და ''da''-), a root (წერ ''ts’er
'', "write"), and a screeve ending (ე ''-e'', ა ''-a'', ეს ''-es''), and in the first and second persons a plural suffix (თ ''-t'') to form the inflection (დაწერეთ ''dac'eret''):
Similar constructions exist in Western grammars, but screeves differ from them in significant ways. In many Western languages, endings encode all of tense, aspect and mood, but in Georgian, the screeve endings may or may not include one of these categories. For example, the perfect series screeves have modal and evidential properties that are completely absent in the
aorist
Aorist (; abbreviated ) verb forms usually express perfective aspect and refer to past events, similar to a preterite. Ancient Greek grammar had the aorist form, and the grammars of other Indo-European languages and languages influenced by th ...
and present/future series screeves, such that წერილი დაუწერია ''ts’erili dauts’eria'' "He has apparently written the letter" implies that the speaker knows the letter is written because (for example) they have seen the finished letter sitting on a table. However, the present form წერილს დაწერს ''ts’erils dats’ers'' "He will write the letter" is simply neutral with respect to the question of how the speaker knows (or does not know) that the letter will be written.
See also
*
Georgian verb paradigm
*
Grammatical conjugation
In linguistics, conjugation () is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection (alteration of form according to rules of grammar). For instance, the verb ''break'' can be conjugated to form the words ''break'', ...
References
* Aronson, Howard I. 1990. ''Georgian : a reading grammar''. Corrected edition. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers.
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Grammatical conjugation
Georgian language