Family Resemblance and the Syncretism of Reflexive Marks: The Case of Georgian.

Abstract

Georgian verbal pre-radical vowel -i- raises many issues for generative and cognitive approaches to the syncretism of reflexive marks. The vowel bears medio-passive functionalities (Nash, 2002), occurring also in full reflexives (Amiridze, 2006) and as a perfective aspect marker for atelic verbs (Holisky, 1981). In this paper I show that any analysis based in valence reduction - the most obvious path for accounting for this kind of phenomenon - is uncapable of foreseeing the distribution of -i-. Alternatively, I propose that the vowel is distributed according to a Wittgensteinian Family Resemblance (Familienähnlichkeit) set.

Keywords

• Sincretismo. Voz-média. Reflexividade.