"evropuli qartia saqarTvelo "European Charter for Regional or ...

for both the Svan –em/n marker and amnem "this person, he, she (erg.)"
form root: *aman>*aman-em>amn-ēm; where ēm is a secondary affixation
(B. Kikvidze, 1958¸ p. 91).
According to G. Machavariani, the narrative case was not formulated
during the differentiation period of the Kartvelian languages. In
Kartvelian languages this case developed on the basis of the common
principle – by use of pronominal elements. According to the researcher,
the Svan -m does not directly derive from the Georgian -man article;
there was an Old Georgian-type "defined declension" in Svan as well
(the article which derived from *-aman demonstrative pronoun served
as an attribute; due to the simultaneous declension of a substantive and
a postpositional article, the enclitically affixed particle merged with the
substantive: *mār-ad a-ma-n(a)/e-ma-n(a) > *mārāman/ *māreman
> *mārām/mārēm (G. Machavariani, 1960, pp. 102-103).
The Kartvelian (rather than the Adygei) origin of m marker of the
man Ergative is convincing: -m/-em of the Svan Ergative developed
through simplification of the common Kartvelian article *man/-iman
(as in literary Georgian and the Kartvelian so-called hissing dialects):
mara-iman>mareiman>marēman>marēm.
The -k of the Megrelian-Chan Ergative is explained in different
ways:
k- suffix is connected to the radical g of the pronoun i-g-i, e-g-e:
g>k (Arn. Chokobava, 1936, pp. 173-174).
-k ( ķočk ko mortu > ķočk komortu "a
man came" (affix formation on the basis of a particle is not untypical for
other languages (T. Putkaradze, 2008, p. 122).
The fact that formation of the Kartvelian Ergative is connected
with the category of definiteness is indicated in literature. Definition is
essential only for the 3rd person. Definition of a nominal root was possible
both by article -man derived from a demonstrative pronoun and an
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