Screeve is a term of grammatical description in traditional Georgian grammars that roughly corresponds to tense–aspect–mood marking in the Western grammatical tradition. It derives from the Georgian word მწკრივი mts’k’rivi 'row'. Formally, it refers to a set of six verb forms inflected for person and number forming a single paradigm. For example, the aorist screeve for most verbal forms consists at least of a preverb (და- da- 'PFV'), a root (წერ ts’er 'write'), and a screeve ending (-ე -e, -ა -a, -ეს -es), and in the first and second persons a plural suffix (-თ -t) to form the inflection (დაწერეთ dats'eret):
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| First person | დავწერე davts’ere "I wrote it" | დავწერეთ davts'eret "We wrote it" |
| Second person | დაწერე dats’ere "You (singular) wrote it" | დაწერეთ dats’eret "You (plural) wrote it" |
| Third person | დაწერა dats’era "He/she wrote it" | დაწერეს dats’eres "They wrote it" |
Similar constructions exist in Western grammars, but screeves differ from them in significant ways. In many Western languages, endings encode all of tense, aspect and mood, but in Georgian, the screeve endings may or may not include one of these categories. For example, the perfect series screeves have modal and evidential properties that are completely absent in the aorist and present/future series screeves, such that წერილი დაუწერია ts’erili dauts’eria "He has apparently written the letter" implies that the speaker knows the letter is written because (for example) they have seen the finished letter sitting on a table. However, the present form წერილს დაწერს ts’erils dats’ers "He will write the letter" is simply neutral with respect to the question of how the speaker knows (or does not know) that the letter will be written.
