A noteworthy feature of a number of Western Iranian languages, including Kurmanji Kurdish, is the presence of contrastive pharyngeal sounds in inherited vocabulary. These pharyngeals are considered by many linguists working on Kurdish to be the result of contact with Arabic, coming into the language through Arabic loan vocabulary (Haig & Matras 2002). The Arabic contact source of these sounds seems likely, particularly given the fact that most of the Western Iranian languages which contain pharyngeals are in contact with Arabic at present or historically.
However, as I demonstrate, the distribution of the majority of contrastive pharyngeals in inherited Iranian vocabulary in Kurmanji does not suggest a mere surface imitation of Arabic vocabulary, but a Kurmanji-internal phonological process modulated by familiarity with the phonetics of Arabic pharyngeals. A newly-identified sound pattern presented here is the association of what are arguably pharyngealized vowel phonemes in Kurmanji with pre-existing labial consonants and constraints determined by Kurmanji phonotactics. Following Blevins’ (2017) model of “perceptual magnets,” this effect is held to have emerged on a model of Arabic pharyngeals as external “perceptual magnets” for native speakers of Kurdish who had extensive exposure to Arabic sound patterns.
Kurdish is often portrayed as a linguistic unity, but an examination of phonological structures in the language reveals substantial internal variation. In this study, we examine the geographic distribution of vowels and consonants in the phonological inventories of 125 Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji) and Central Kurdish (Sorani) varieties in the Database of Kurdish Dialects, and their patterning in individual words from all of these data sets. The data reveal a stable set of core vowels and consonants, along with peripheral phonemes of both types that demonstrate a high level of variation in geographic distribution and frequency. Segments with significant distributional restrictions include front rounded vowels, uvular consonants, a contrastive aspirated stop series, emphatic alveolar obstruents, and pharyngeals ʕ and ħ. An analysis of these patterns gives modest confirmation of the well-known Northern vs. Central Kurdish dialect division, but shows that the phonological distinction between the two is best characterized in terms of tendencies rather than exact, regular correspondences. Beyond many other individual isoglosses in the data that cross-cut one another, there is a weak pattern of transition between the two major dialect areas; limited diffusion of phonological innovations to varieties at the geographic periphery of the language; and more direct influence of language contact on the phonological structures in certain regions. Alongside these various configurations of areal distribution, and in contrast to them, there is a strong, overarching pattern of non-directional phonological variability among varieties, which points to the local nature of phonological changes across the language area.
This paper presents some facts related to the syllable structure and the stress system of Bahdinani, a subdialect of Kurmanji Kurdish spoken in Iraq. Bahdinani does not have a complicated syllable structure or stress system. The strict conditions on complex consonant combinations and the high compliance of the available clusters with the sonority principle make its syllable structure rather simple. The strict ultimacy principle of stress placement, the binary iambic pattern of feet and the quantity-insensitive nature of stress assignment are basic characteristics of Bahdinani stress system. These facts are presented within the framework of distinctive features and Optimality Theory.