--- "John <jdcroft@...>" <jdcroft@...> wrote:

>
> Hi Rob. I have seen it suggested that Kartvellian developed out of
> an Anatolian group called the Tabal, who occupied the Taurus
> Mountains after the fall of the Hittite Empire and caused difficulty
> to the Assyrians (Sargon II died fighting them).
>
> Flavius Josephus suggests these people moved northwards into the area
> known as Iberia in te Roman Empire. It is suggested Tblisi preserves
> the name Tabal.
>
> Comments anyone?
>
> Regards
>
> John
>

I've read that "Tbilisi" in Georgian means "warm." Do you have any information about the
grammatical development of Kartvelian? It seems to be (very) distantly related to PIE -- they
share a case in -m (-ma in Georgian) and a genitive in -s. The first person singular pronoun for
Georgian is "me", which is obviously related to PIE, Uralic, and Altaic (*men > Turkish "ben").
What I am most interested in is the development of the Kartvelian verbal and nominal systems of
inflection.

- Rob

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