Paper long abstract:

Modality and negation are universal categories. Negation in the Georgian language is a three-member system that involves neutral negation (particle ar - not), the negation of possibility (particle ver - can not) and the negation expressed by prohibition or request (particle nu - do not).

The article deals with the negation of possibility in the Georgian language. The analysis covers the aspects of negation and modality and points out the key feature related to the expression of negation and modality with the same form. Fields of application of the particle ver is wide. It is used with the forms of both indicative and subjunctive mood. The article provides the analysis of negation of possibility expressed by the particle ver, its collocations and semantics.

The expression of modality differs in the old and modern Georgian language: after grammaticalization a new modal system has been formed though the particle ver is the oldest form of expression of negation and dynamic modality in the Georgian language. The particle has retained this function in the language. The particle ver forms negative pronouns and adverbs that also have the modal semantics of negation of possibility. The scope of use of particle ver is determined/limited. It is not used with the verbs of perception, existential and static verbs. ver particle always precedes a verb. The Georgian language is characterized by the expression of double plural. Plural expressed by ver particle is intensified with the complicated forms by use of particles "ġa" (expresses limited negation) and "c" (expresses complementary function). Double negation in Georgian comprises both noun and verbal negation. As for the semantics of negation of possibility, it is extended with the complicated forms of negative pronouns and adverbs derived from ver particle. Analysis of the contexts with ver particle has revealed phrases with double modality. In double modality the scope of the first modal element is wider than the scope of the next modal element.

Key words: Modality, modal form, modal meaning, negation, negative particle.

Paper long abstract:

This paper describes a project of research and scholarly capacity-building by an international team of specialists of early modern Central Asian history, verbal arts, languages, and manuscript sources, related to oral-derived narrative sources in the Turki and Kyrgyz oral/literary milieu from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The materials, housed mainly in the archives of the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic, open pathways of research on ethnic, regional, and Islamic identities; the intertwining of oral and written modes of transmitting knowledge about the past; Central Asian Turkic linguistic fluidities; and Central Asian nomads' experience of the Russian Empire. The narratives were created within networks of changing oral and written genres including history, genealogy, and epic poetry, and thus lie at the intersections of different interpretive trends where historians, linguists, paleographers, philologists, and scholars of oral tradition require each other's insights and methods to do sustained work. Our main concern is to protect and develop intellectual capacity in an area where post-Soviet gains have been meager and progress may soon become more difficult without directed intervention. The project envisions both face-to-face and digital interactions of the working group and a wider scholarly community. Beyond Kyrgyz, we intend for our research to become a resource for scholars of the broader Central Asian region, and a site for discussing systemic questions of language and field concentrations in Central Asian historical and philological studies in relation to source collections and research conditions.

Paper long abstract:

Historic past of the North Caucasus reflected in narratives in which minority and majority peoples encapsulate their visions of human experience during World War II has spawned myths where an outright lie interspersed with half truths; so fictional and literal accounts of the past are worthy of sustained theoretical and practical consideration.

Narratives are subjective construals by which communities reinvent facts to build up identity, support their "own truth", maintain the feeling of unity and division from "others". My aim, as a linguist, is to produce the sociolinguistic analysis of narratives concerning the participation of highlanders in World War II and the deportation of some North Caucasus peoples to Central Asia. The objectives are to investigate the contents, concepts, structure of events and actions, the language and discursive forms of narrative texts explaining causal sequences and connections of past events in the North Caucasus. The study is based on thorough exploration of written history accounts and aural narratives of people from the North Caucasus.

The verbalized picture of the North Caucasus realities forms a distorted ideological image which presents story-objects, actions, events, time and place in a perverted way. To well-established myths belong idle speculations that during World War II most of Caucasians fought on the side of the enemy; that Caucasians massively left their parts, joined the ranks of armed gangs involved in robberies and murder; that Caucasians welcomed German troops with bread and salt; that only Caucasians fought in the Eastern legions of the Wehrmacht. These mythological narratives are not borne out by real facts.

Another conceptual domain of conflict-generating narratives that I will trace is deportation of highlanders. By governmental decrees of Stalin, entire communities of Karachays, Chechens, Ingush and Balkars were exiled to Central Asia. Mortality of the deportees amounted from 30% up to 50%. Biased narratives explain the reasons for deportation of entire populations of southern European part of the country: revenge, "punitive measure" for performances Highlanders had against authorities in different years, the collective punishment for the collaborations of some individuals with Germans, as well as securing and strengthening the southern borders of the State, etc.

The conclusion made postulates that history accounts are compelling language tools which connect past with present and future and lead to a better understanding of societal development.

Paper long abstract:

This study investigates the usage of the word initial [dʒ] sound in the place of the [j] sound in standard Uzbek among the three generations of Olmachi community speakers in Djizak, Uzbekistan. Analyzing the changes that occur in the community, I hypothesized that the oldest generation of 50-90 year old participants produce the initial [dʒ] sound in certain words most of the time. The middle generation of 31-50 year olds would produce the sound less than the older generation, and the youngest generation of 18-30 years old would produce the least. To test the hypotheses, two types of tests were used that helped to retrieve the usage of the initial [dʒ] sound: Picture Describing Task and Conversation with the research assistant. The differences in production of the initial [dʒ] sound that the two tasks yielded were calculated, and the gender differences in production of the sound were totaled. On the basis of judgment sampling, where the subjects are selected non-randomly based on the characteristics that define them to be the true community members, not influenced by other dialect speakers, the research assistant conversed with 12 participants (6 male and 6 female) from each generational group. Participants talked with an assistant about the years, pronounced as [jɪl] or [dʒɪl] they were born, good [jaχʃɪ] or [dʒaχʃɪ] or bad [jomon] or [dʒomon] things that have happened to them, and about other events that occurred in their lives. After the conversations were over, they were shown 27 pictures that represent words that start with the initial [j] sound in standard Uzbek. The words were such as yo'l [jol] 'road' yamoq [jamoq] 'patch' or yur, [jur] 'go or walk' and others. The conversations and picture-describing task utterances were recorded and a total of 36 participants' responses were transcribed, and the percentage of words that started with the initial [j] or the initial [dʒ] sounds used among the three groups were calculated. The results demonstrated that in the Conversation with the research assistant and in the Picture Describing Tasks the [dʒ] sound was used the most by the oldest generation, less by the middle generation and the least with the youngest generation. In addition, gender differences showed that females used the [dʒ] sound the most in both tasks, and younger generation males were in the forefront of the change towards the production of the initial [j] sound used in standard Uzbek.