The current paper aims to investigate diferent morphosyntactic realization of the constituents (case vs. adposition) and their linear ordering (preverbal vs. postverbal) in a Kurmanji clause through an event structure analysis. Based on the data from Muş Kurmanji (MK), it discusses that there is a relation between the morphological form of the constituents and their status as encoded in the verb’s meaning in MK; that is, structural participants are realized with case morphology while constant participants are introduced with adpositions. It further argues that the reason why MK makes a distinction in the linear ordering of structural participants is indeed a word-order property (VG) retained from proto-Kurdish and further constrained by the morphosyntactic properties of Kurmanji
Archives
Case in Kurdish
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.
Case in Iranian
Differential case marking on adpositional complements in Zazakî
Research Questions of this thesis:
1) Under which circumstances do adpositional complements receive oblique
case marking?
2) Is animacy the sole determining factor or does definiteness play a role as
well?
3) Are there any regional differences for above-mentioned determiners?
For this purpose, 25 speakers of Zazakî have been interviewed using a translation task questionnaire that tests a subset of frequent adpositions with animate and inanimate nouns in different states of referentiality (definite or indefinite). Due to reasons of scope, the research at hand focuses on the Northern Dialect of the regions Dêrsim (Tunceli), Gimgim (Varto), and to some extent Qoçgîrî. After
introducing the language, its speakers, the numerous existing ethnonyms and glossonyms in Section 2, a theoretical overview of adpositional case marking, also known as flagging, are given both in a general sense and for Zazakî in particular in Section 3. Furthermore, the various effects of animacy and definiteness on differential case marking are examined. Section 4 describes the scope and methods of data gathering, the questionnaire design, and data evaluation necessary to address the research questions. The final results and a discussion are offered in Section 5. The results show the effects of animacy and definiteness per each adposition and complement before presenting the concluding remarks in Section 6.