Gurian Vocabulary in Giorgi Kekelidze’s „Gurian Diaries“

Abstract

The study of an author’s language is essential both for the exploration of literary language and for the investigation of individual dialects. Dialects preserve lexical forms that are often less common in the standard language, yet play a significant role in representing the history of the language. Against this background, the documentation and analysis of dialectal lexical units—whose usage is gradually declining and falling into oblivion—remains a crucial scholarly task.

The present research aims to analyze the Gurian dialectal vocabulary as reflected in Giorgi Kekelidze’s Gurian Diaries. From the analyzed material, we present lexical items that are attested not only in Gurian, but also across other Georgian dialects. These lexical units are of particular interest since the author often assigns distinct connotations to specific word forms. The study examines the semantic and morphological characteristics of the dialectal words, their contexts of use, and their significance for enriching the modern Georgian lexicon. Of special importance is the lexical diversity and the unique expressions employed by the author, many of which are artistically elaborated and frequently occur in literary texts.

The lexical units under study are provisionally divided into nouns (e.g., tsviti, metsunie, chonchkho, galantsuli) and verbs (e.g., gadavlek’e, vch’urt’avdi, putk’avs, itsrialebs, iropheba). These were compared with entries in the Explanatory Dictionary of the Georgian Language as well as various dialectal dictionaries. The analysis reveals that the dialectal vocabulary employed by Giorgi Kekelidze is attested not only in Gurian but also in other Georgian dialects.