Let's have a look at the word მაკვარზალაია (makvarzalaia). It is equated in Kajaia's dictionary with the forms "makvarzaia" and "makvarzelia". The final "-a" is, according to Klimov, a former demonstrative pronoun, also known as a definite article. In the Kartvelian languages, this is already a rudiment, while in Basque it is a definite article to this day.
So, we need to be talking about "makvarzalai", "makvarzai" and "makvarzeli". With the last one, everything is clear. This is an adjective in its pure form, formed from a stem like "makvarzi"/"makvarze"/"makvarza". While in the first two forms, the suffix consonant is omitted. Which one exactly, is unknown, but it is clear that these are also adjectives "makvarzalari"/"makvarzalani" and "makvarzali"/"makvarzani".
The most interesting thing in this article is something else. Does anyone worry about the double formant of feminine adjectives in Russian? Indeed, if in Ukrainian or Polish it is absolutely enough to say "zelena" to exhaustively show the gender of the word, then why is it not enough in Russian (that is, in Old Ukrainian)? Why should there be an additional "-ya" - "zelenaya (зеленая)"?
Because "я" is a diphthong "ia". A weighting formant of adjectives in the Megrelian language, as we see above. Weighting, because the Megrelians themselves equate "makvarzali" with "makvarzalaia". Megrelians do not have genders yet (they will appear later, when Ukraine switches to Indo-Europeanism), therefore "makvarzali" ends with a neutral "-i". If there had already been the division into genders, it would have been an adjective "makvarzala" (feminine gender, in Ukrainian), weighted to "makvarzalaya" (feminine gender, in Russian). The masculine gender would have been "makvarzaliy".
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