My research focuses on the ways in which grammatical  and lexical  items lose in meaning and change in function. In particular, this research analyses the process grammatical  items undergo when they lose their original  functions, and take on new grammatical functions, known as  grammaticalization. While lexical items are also grammaticalized, this research concentrates on grammatical items.

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The research takes the grammatical items – raġac(რაღაც)/something, sadġac(სადღაც)/somewhere –  as the primary units of analysis.  These items are grammaticalized in Georgian in many cases and require understanding of the various functions they adopt in different instances. For example:

Raġac (რაღაც) - Something

(a) Traditional Grammatical function

"if we want to do something, Police’s management style should be changed”

In this case raġac - Something is pronoun.

(b) New Grammatical function

“ Somehow I can’t remember…”

In this case I translated raġac as  ‘Somehow’ – Thus the previous function is changed, raġac is not pronoun anymore.

Sadġac (სადღაც) - Somewhere

(a) Traditional Grammatical function

“I wanted to be in the village”

In this case sadġac - Somewhere is adverb.

(b) New Grammatical function

“I don’t remember exactly the date, but it was around last year, in November”

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In this case I translated ġac as ‘Around’ – the previous grammatical function is changed

These units of analysis serve to illustrate   problems of semantic ambiguity in the Georgian National Corpora (GNC) and Georgian Reference Corpora (GRC), which is extensively investigated in this study.

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 The aims of this research are to analyze the grammaticalization – ie; extension, decategorization, desemanticalization & erosion - of the study’s selected lexical items in the Georgian Reference Corpora , to gain a detailed understanding of how and to what degree these items are grammaticalized in the GNC, and finally to troubleshoot and propose potential solutions to problems concerning ambiguity in the Georgian National Corpora.

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We used the following methods to analyze the aforementioned aspects of extension, decategorization, desemanticalization & erosion: Questioning, Substitution, Pronominalization, Permutation, Comparison of Parallel Texts.

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The research shows that Grammaticalized  raġac - Something is used as an adverb and its semantic is like – raġacnairad (რაღაცნაირად) Somehow. Grammaticalized item – sadġac - Somewhere is still adverb but it does not refer to location anymore and its semantic is something like Around and it becomes Approximant.