Abstract:
The purpose of this article is to update existing views on the Zazaki dialectology and answer these two questions: Are the Zazas Kurds? Is Zazaki Kurdish? To answer this question, methods of comparative linguistics and perceptual dialectology are used. The first part of this article deals with the background of Zaza studies. The second part, based on the perspectives of perceptual dialectology, attempts to provide a clear picture of the complex status of the identity of the Zazas from emic and etic perspectives. The third section focuses on comparative linguistics research and examines a number of typologically marked grammatical characteristics in several Iranian languages that are important for studying the classification of Zazaki. The last section provides a conclusion and answers the two main questions of this research.
This contribution provides an overview of the current state of knowledge on the dialectology of Southern Kurdish (hereafter SK). The introductory paragraphs discuss the concept of SK, survey existing sources and briefy address core issues of terminology. The bulk of the study reviews Fattah’s (2000: 9) proposed dialect classifcation, and complements it with the evaluation of language data from older sources, the author’s own research in Kermānshāh Province and other documentation activities recently carried out in the SK-speaking area, sketching possible directions for future research.
This chapter focuses primarily on Kurmanji and Sorani, which are the dialects of the Kurdish language. In Kurmanji, the infinitive is gotin. In Sorani, there are multiple forms of the infinitive: wutin/witin in Sulaimania and Kirkuk, kutin in Mukriyan and gotin in Erbil. Behdini, Behdinani or Badinani, the southern dialect cluster of Kurmanji, can be seen as a bridge between Kurmanji and Sorani. Seeing Kurmanji and Sorani as equal partners is not merely a linguistic matter: it is also a social matter. During the mandate period in Iraq, the British insisted that Sorani be the only Kurdish dialect taught in Kurdish schools, which engendered a fair amount of resentment among Kurmanji speakers. Choosing one dialect over another–or, to put it differently, imposing one dialect on a population which speaks another–is guaranteed to cause dissent.
Kurmanji Kurdish has both accusative and ergative alignment. It has accusative alignment in present tenses while ergative alignment is triggered in the past tense transitive sentences. Due to the characteristics of Kurmanji Kurdish verbs and due to the semi-accusative effect, different usages emerge in the ergative structure in Kurmanji. Synchronically, if the structure of the ergative is analyzed, many different uses can be found, due to some language internal and external factors (e.g. language contact), different patterns of ergativity emerges (e.g. double oblique pattern). Different forms are used not only for interlinguistic reasons, but also because of the multilingual backgrounds of Kurmanji speakers. This paper aims to analyze the ergative structure in a synchronic way. First, we will focus on the ergative structure analyzing it in detail. Then, we will examine the use of the ergative constructions in three dialects of Kurmanji Kurdish in terms of age and gender of the speakers. The purpose of this classification of Kurmanji variations and speakers is to see how speakers socially placed in different categories use the ergative structure. Again, by looking at these structures, we can understand the limits of the ergative structure in Kurmanji. The article was found that the ergative structure has gone beyond its canonical limits and different combinations and forms are used by different speakers.
This paper aims at verifying the traditional set of phonetic changes, defined by D. N. Mackenzie as the main distinctive feature of the Kurdish dialects, with regard to Lakī having yet no clear affiliation in the Iranian dialectology. It is usually considered to be a dialect of Kurdish, sometimes a transitional dialect between Kurdish and Luri, and even a separate idiom.
This book offers the first comparative discussion of variation in selected areas of structure in the dialects of Kurdish. The contributions draw on data collected as part of the project on Structural and Typological Variation in Kurdish and stored in the Manchester Database of Kurdish Dialects online resource, as well as on additional data sources. The chapters address issues in lexicon, phonology, and morpho-syntax including nominal case, tense and aspect categories, pronominal clitics, adpositions, word order (with special reference to post-predicate constituents) and connectivity and complex clauses. The materials that inform the analysis consist of a systematic questionnaire-based elicitation covering key features of variation in lexicon and morpho-syntax, and an accompanying corpus of free speech recordings, collected in over 120 locations across the Kurdish-speaking regions in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran and covering mainly the dialects of Northern and Central Kurdish (Kurmani-Bahdini and Sorani), with some consideration of Southern Kurdish. The book will be of interest to students and scholars in fields such as linguistics, linguistic typology, Iranian linguistics and linguistics of the Middle East, and dialectology.