postposition on finite verb forms?

[Amiridze, Nino]

Dear colleagues,

thank you for replying to my question about postpositions.

David Palfreyman suggested the translation "She kind of apologized" for my
example (1) which is a better translation than mine.

I need to apology for glossing the case marker as DAT, in fact it is
genitive.

>(1) man mo-i-bodish-a-sa-vit
>   (s)he.ERG PREVERB-i-apologize-S3.SG.AORIST-DAT-like
>  ``(S)he uttered something like an apology"
>
>(2) man mo-i-bodish-a
>   (s)he.ERG PREVERB-i-apologize-S3.SG.AORIST
>  ``(S)he apologized"


Do you think the Turkish 'gibi' in the example offered by David Palfreyman
is a clitic? Can we place anything else in between the finite form and the
very item?

For Georgian the segment [-sa-vit] can further attach a quatation suffix as
any other verb form (3 vs.4):

(3) man mo-i-bodish-a-sa-vit-o
   (s)he.ERG PREVERB-i-apologize-S3.SG.AORIST-GEN-like-QUOT
  ``(S)he kind of apologized, (s)he/they said"

(4) man mo-i-bodish-a-o
   (s)he.ERG PREVERB-i-apologize-S3.SG.AORIST-QUOT
  ``(S)he apologized, (s)he/they said"

In a relative (to Georgian) Laz, spoken in Turkey, after Turkish influence
it is possible to have a dative marker cliticized to a finite form (5 vs.
6). But unlike the Georgian case plus postposition marking (1), the Laz
dative marker turns simple clauses into subordinate ones:

(5) ali oxori-sha mo-xt-u-shi
    Ali house-in PREVERB-come-S3.SG.AOR-DAT
  "When Ali came home(...)"

(6) ali oxori-sha mo-xt-u
    Ali house-in PREVERB-come-S3.SG.AOR
  "Ali came home"

But the Turkish locative marker which has been the source for Laz
development only attaches to non-finite items, as far as I know. Thus, the
Laz case itself is not a simple borrowing from Turkish.

I think the Georgian examples with the case plus postposition marking on
fully inflected verb forms look like the Canadian French examples by
Danielle Cyr. To be more precise, in Georgian such marking is used in two
cases, when one estimates something either objectively (7) or subjectively
(8):

(8) ilia-m xel-i ga-i-pxac"n-a-sa-vit
    Ilia.ERG hand-NOM PREVERB-i-scratch-S3.SG.AORIST-GEN-like
   ``Ilia kind of scratched his hand"
   [context: It is not a cut]

(9) ilia-m xel-i ga-i-pxac"n-a-sa-vit
    Ilia.ERG hand-NOM PREVERB-i-scratch-S3.SG.AORIST-GEN-like
   ``Ilia kind of scratched his hand"
   [context: It is a deep cut]

By (8) the utterer simply states that it is not a cut but a scratch. One can
even translate the sentence as "Ilia slightly scratched his hand". And by
(9) the uterrer whats to say that even if it is a deep cut it is not a big
deal and not important for him.

Nino Amiridze