INDEXICAL OPERATORS AND SCOPE RELATIONS IN THE OLD GEORGIAN RELATIVE CLAUSE

Old Georgian distinguishes relative pronouns from interrogative pronou ns optionally by means of clitics called ''relative particles,'' inclu ding a three-term set of deictic elements, ese, ege, igi. Traditional accounts have claimed that the selection from among these particles is determined by the indexical category of person. In fact, the selectio n of ''relative particle'' is the result of the determinate interactio n of three sets of independent variables (person, tense, and orientati on). Each of these is an indexical, rather than denotational, clausal category. The selection of relative particle is thus sensitive to all and only indexical categories of the clause, and not such denotational categories as have a secondary indexical implication (aspect). These ''clausal indexicals'' interact, some (person) undergoing neutralizati on in the presence of others (tense), making this data very interestin g in the light of various theories in current syntactic theory about p ossible ''diagrammatic'' relationships between operator scopes and aff ix orderings (''the mirror principle''), based on a particular view of the relationship between grammatical categories and exponents, ''morp hemes.'' This paper argues that scope relations between substantive gr ammatical categories ought to be represented independently of their fo rmal exponents, as this provides a more flexible and empirical account of the coding relationship in language (''the coding view'').