This chapter surveys the forms of case marking across the dialects of Kurdish, as represented in the MDKD. Structural and non-structural (semantic) cases are expressed through a range of different exponents: adpositions (pre-, post- and circumpositions), morphological case, and word-order properties. Structural cases are invariably non-adpositional across all dialects, with the major isogloss separating those dialects that make use of the Oblique case, which include all of Northern Kurdish and a few dialects of Central Kurdish, from those that have lost it. The marking of semantic cases is subject to considerable areal variation, following an approximate north/south cline with prepositional marking increasingly dominant in the south. The findings are illustrated with data from the MDKD, supplemented with reference to other major sources.
Archives
Lexical Variation and Semantic Change in Kurdish
The chapter examines variation in Kurdish among lexical forms for specific concepts in different regions. The findings can be summarized as follows: there are different degrees to which lexical variation may function as an indicator of linguistic division or transition; while about half of the items in our data are shared between all or most Iranian languages, there are also items that are unique to Kurdish varieties; and extra-linguistic factors that contribute most to lexical variation include geography, political division, population movement, cultural borrowing, and modernization. Finally, semasiological and onomasiological innovations are underlined. The chapter concludes with an account of the implications for further research.
Case in Iranian
Kurmanji complementation
Kurmanji clause-linking devices are generally a) finite, and b) subject to variation in respect of the choice of morphological device that marks the link. There are several options for marking complement clauses in the language: zero-marking (paratactic apposition of clauses), mood, simple and complex complementisers, and reinforcement of subject agreement through deictics and anaphora. The paper discusses the distribution of clause-linking devices, based on their occurrence in a corpus of tape-recorded and transcribed conversational narratives. The findings are related to the predictions on semantic-typological universale of complementation. A brief discussion of the areal position of Kurmanji follows, in conclusion of which I propose that the principal isogloss shared by the languages under discussion is their reliance on finite verbs even in the most tightly-integrated complex constructions.