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Pharyngeals in Kurmanji Kurdish

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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.

Great Expectations, Trivialised Gains

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Multilingualism is being embraced more and more rhetorically in Germany, yet the language policy approach put into practice in schools shows a hierarchical order within which languages are treated unequally. While some are viewed favourably, some others are either marginalised or largely ignored. Analysing the newly introduced Kurdish heritage language teaching in Berlin, this article seeks to explore how language hierarchies function in schools and how teaching Kurdish is confined by such hierarchies. Drawing on field notes and observations collected as part of a larger project, the article pinpoints the structural limitations and challenges faced by Kurdish heritage language instruction in Berlin and why it might contribute to the reproduction of hierarchical attitudes towards multilingualism rather than challenge them

One Language, Two Contexts: Kurdish in Bakur and in Western Turkey’s Metropolises

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When Kurdish emigrants from Eastern Turkey are studied, one first thinks of the Kurdish emigrants in Europe and the Americas. And yet, a particularly large Kurdish diaspora from Eastern Turkey can be found within Turkey itself, having resettled in western Turkey’s metropolises. This article seeks to discuss recent sociolinguistic developments both in the Kurdish-speaking regions of Eastern Turkey (Northern Kurdistan/Bakur) and in the Kurdish communities in western Turkey (i.e., in the diaspora). My focus is on the two largest so-called ‚minority languages‘ of Turkey: Kurmanji and Zazaki—with the guiding issue of interest being language policy. And here again, my interest is twofold: first, Turkey’s language policy towards its minorities, particularly towards Kurdish, is at stake; and second, the language policy within the Kurdish movement towards Kurdish is depicted, including its recent paradigm shift, and with particular consideration of gender aspects. Recent developments give rise to doubts and yet hope that Kurdish will continue to serve as a language of private life, but also spread to everyday public visibility and prestige in Turkey.

Grammatica e vocabolario della lingua kurda

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The earliest scientific European studies on the Kurdish language and civilization, which date back to the late 18th century, were carried out by missionaries (first by Italian Catholics and later by Anglo-Saxon Protestants). The pioneer of European Kurdish studies was Maurizio Garzoni (1734-1804), a member of the Order of Black Friars, who reached the region of Mosul (Mowsel) in 1762. Two years later he settled in ʿAmādiya, the capital of the principality of Bahdinān, to the northeast of Mosul. There he collected materials for his Grammatica e vocabolario della lingua Kurda, which was published in Rome in 1787. The first of its kind, it remained an important source of information on the Kurdish language until the end of the 19th century.

Calibrating Kurmanji and Sorani

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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.

Constructing ditransitivity in literary Kurmanji

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This study takes a corpus-driven approach based on a collection of contemporary novels and short stories in order to explore various options for realising ditransitive constructions in Kurmanji, discussing some phenomena that pose a challenge to clear categorisation. Semantically, “ditransitive constructions” can be defined as constructions expressing “three-participant events”, involving verbs with three participants, as often referrred to in typological literature: an agent, a theme and a recipient (or recipient-like) participant. Cross-linguistically typical instances are verbs of giving (e.g. dan in Kurmanji), showing (nîşan dan) and saying (gotin), as well as their contraries (pirsîn ‘ask’), and other semantically related verbs. In an interplay between flagging, indexing and word order, Kurmanji reveals a rich formal repertoire that presents a number of challenges to systematisation. It makes use of several morpho-syntactic devices, applied alternatively and generally in combination with oblique case: a postpredicative position, adpositional constructions, a verbal suffix indicating the presence of an indirect object, and light verb ezafe constructions that link an indirect object to the lexical nominal. The study aims at uncovering factors which determine the choice of a construction. The use of formally identifiable ditransitive constructions, on the other hand, clearly transcends the original concept of a “physical transfer”, extending into non-animate, abstract and metaphorical contexts. Depending on the construction at hand, cognitive contents, images, landscapes, sounds, and other non-human core arguments may end up in an agentive role, while humans are frequently expressed as verb complements, particularly undergoers of a self-caused movement. Recipients, on the other hand, can be inanimate entities and even abstract ideas.

Analîzek Li Ser Avaniya Ergatifê

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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.

Variation in the ergative pattern of Kurmanji

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Kurdish-Kurmanji (or Northern Kurdish) belongs to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. This study is dedicated to a deeper understanding of a specific grammatical feature typical of Kurmanji: the ergative structure. Based on the example of this core structure, and with empirical evidence from the Kurmanji dialect of Muş in Turkey, I will discuss the issues of variation and change in Kurmanji, more precisely the ongoing shift from ergative to nominative-accusative structures. The causes for such a fundamental shift, however, are not easy to define. The close historical vicinity to Turkish and Armenian might be a trigger for the shift; another trigger is language-internal (diachronic) change. In sum, the investigated variation sheds light on a fascinating grammatical change in a language that is also sociopolitically in a situation of constant change, movement, and upheaval.

The Dialects of Kurdish

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The project aims to provide a comparative structural and typological survey of the dialect continuum of Kurdish, covering sample locations from across the major Kurdish speaking regions between the eastern Anatolian regions of Turkey, through northern Syria and Iraq and on to north-eastern Iran. The varieties covered include primarily those known as Kurmanji-Bahdini (Northern Kurdish) and Sorani (Central Kurdish), with some limited coverage of varieties belonging to the group known as Southern Kurdish.

The survey covers selected structures in lexicon, phonology and lexical phonology, morphology, and morpho-syntax, with a strong focus on the interaction of morphological alignment with verb semantics.

The data obtained through the survey’s questionnaire elicitation are presented in a Database that can be searched by location, structural tag, English translation of the elicitation phrase, and Kurdish word forms. For more information on the elicitation method please consult the Pilot and extended survey page.

A collection of Maps present the geographical distribution of selected variants that have been extracted from the questionnaire database.

A set of Free Speech Samples are presented in the form of audio files accompanied by a transliteration and English translation, and are linked to the Database entries that document the results of questionnaire elicitation with the same speakers. These are short samples of typically around 5 minutes that have been extracted from longer stretches of recordings of connected speech. The topics covered include biographical narration about village life, customs and traditions, and local history, as well as traditional tales, and provide a rich resource, so far unparalleled online, of documentation of Kurdish cultural traditions presented by ordinary people from across the Kurdish speaking regions, in their own local dialects.

The academic evaluation of the project data is currently underway (2017), led by the project’s Principal Investigator, Professor Yaron Matras, with the participation of a group of international leading researchers in Kurdish linguistics.