Why Is It Necessary to Restore the Predicative Case?

Abstract

The centuries-old Georgian literary language has gone through an interesting path of development. In Old Georgian, in contrast to New Georgian, a certain type of declension was distinguished, which is called tsrfelobiti or the predicative case. It is unmarked since it is the base of a noun. ""The predicative case is one of the oldest (first) cases. In the development of the Georgian language, there was a time when we did not have the nominative case and the predicative case had its functions"" (Iv. Imnaishvili). In today's Georgian, under the influence of foreign languages as we cannot blame the restoration of the traditions of ancient Georgian (it is doubtful that they took this into account), we often find words and expressions, titles and names written as a base presented on signs or printed in the press. The words were used in the form of a base (the predicative case) when the nominative case did not exist yet, and after the emergence of a new case, the activity of the predicative case decreased and it gradually disappeared. Therefore, we consider it completely unacceptable and unjustified to revise the established rules and to go back to the process of writing names without case markers under the influence of foreign languages. "