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

mentioned lexemes preserved their original form (in terms of both structure
and semantics).
Some part of researchers explain the occurence of identical lexical
units in Megrelian and literary Georgian by the influence of the latter:
these units are either borrowings from literary language or modifications
resulted from the process of adapting to the relevant material of
literary Georgian (G. Rogava, 1960, pp. 161-168). We think, it is incorrect
to regard them as borrowings (from literary language) (as a rule, the
borrowing process occurs between unrelated language systems). Megrelian,
Chan and Svan are in the same relationship with the nation-wide
language as Kartlian, Kakhetian, Imeretian, etc. dialects.
At the same time, tremendous amount of word forms preserved in
Megrelian, have been lost in modern literary Georgian, though being
still attested in ancient literary sources; for instance: Megrelian: ċilua
"picking, gathering" (cf.: Od georgian moċilva "gathering fruit"); Megrelian:
ċinda "dirt" (cf.: Old Georgian ċina "dirt"); Megrelian-Chan:
gubua/gibua "boiling" (cf.: Old Georgian gboba "boiling"); Megrelian:
ċiķua "get dirty" (cf.: Old Georgian: mċiķ "dirt"); Megrelian: ķurta "underwear"
(cf.: ķvarti "outer clothes, shirt"), etc.
One part of the common Kartvelian lexical units is modified in
terms of form and semantics. Phonetic modifications can be positional
and historic (sound correspondences).
The basic archaic material mainly consists of lexis denoting kinship,
body parts, animals, birds, plants, natural phenomena, time. Also,
numerals, pronouns, adjectives, verbs.
The common Kartvelian roots are extensively covered in research
carried out by Al. Tsagareli, N. Marr, Iv. Javakhishvili, P. Charaia, Arn.
Chikobava, V. Topuria, G. Rogava, K. H. Schmidt, G. Klimov, G. Machavariani,
T. Gudava, K. lomtatidze, T. Gamkrelidze, B. Gigineishvili,
K. Danelia, H. Fenrich, Z. Sarjveladze, R.Abashia, M. Chukhua, etc.
The presented material clearly reveals systemic homogeneity in
Kartvelian linguistic units. Such linguistic similarity could only occur
between dialects of the same language, i.e. sub-systems of the same system.
Kartvelian dialects do not witness such phonetic-morphologicalsyntactic
phenomenon that has no analogue in literary language and
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