I Gurian Lexicon in Relation to MingrelianI Mingrelian (Based on Gigo Sharashidze’s „Gurian Lexicon“)

Abstract

Gurian speech is highly diverse. Its immediate proximity to Adjara, Imereti, and Mingrelia has significantly shaped the richness of the Gurian dialect and explains the presence of similar linguistic phenomena.
This study examines Gurian lexicon in relation to Mingrelian and highlights the shared dialectal material between the two. The analysis draws upon Gigo Sharashidze’s Gurian Lexicon, presented in the volume Lexicons of Georgian Languages, I: Gurian, Upper Imeretian, and Lechkhumi Lexicons (Tbilisi, 1938).
Gigo Sharashidze (1848–1932) spent many years collecting lexical material in various villages of Guria, producing a corpus of considerable linguistic interest. As noted in the lexicon, “many words that have been forgotten over time due to changes in everyday life are no longer in use, yet they remain of great importance for the history of the language” (p. VII). The lexicon also contains words “that have no literary parallels or equivalents in the standard language” and includes loanwords from foreign languages such as Turkish, Greek, and Persian.
The study revealed several interesting results. As expected, the Gurian dialect contains a significant number of lexical units that are also characteristic of Mingrelian. In many cases, these words are similar both formally and semantically, though in some instances they exhibit distinct semantic nuances.
The paper analyzes forms such as burdgashi, gachichineba, dafranguli, dudga, komchi, koghona, mosargaleba, partqali, pichvi, kereto, tsakhtsi, chicho, khvantsali, among others. The shared lexicon between Gurian and Mingrelian can be explained both by common origins and by geographic proximity and interaction. Many of the words analyzed, besides occurring in Mingrelian, are also found in other Georgian
dialects (Imeretian, Gurian, Adjara, Kakheti, Tushetian), which is natural. These are generally of common Georgian origin and have maintained formal-semantic similarity across several dialects.
The common dialectal lexicon between Gurian and Mingrelian (and other dialects) demonstrates that these speech varieties are part of a single, unified Georgian linguistic system. Individual regional dialects, however, display unique characteristics, reflecting broader processes of divergence and convergence within the language.