The Kurdish language is an integral component of any conceptualisation of “Kurdishness”, but just what constitutes Kurdish remains highly disputed. In this introduction, we take up a number of key questions relating to Kurdish (e.g. whether it is one or more than one language, which varieties should be considered under Kurdish, what are its origins, etc.), discussing them in the light of contemporary linguistics. A critical assessment of the notions of “language” and “dialect” is followed by a review of different approaches to classifying Kurdish, and exemplified through the case-study of Zazaki. We suggest that a good deal of the confusion arises through a failure to distinguish different kinds of linguistic evidence (in a narrow sense), from the results of socially contracted and negotiated perceptions of identity, rooted in shared belief systems and perceptions of a common history. We then present an overview of recent trends in Kurdish linguistics and attempt to identify some of the most pressing research desiderata.
Archives
Post-Predicate Constituents in Kurdish
This chapter investigates the areal distribution of post-predicate constituents across Kurdish, primarily based on the MDKD. Although direct objects are rarely postposed, certain other constituents regularly follow the predicate, yielding an OVX word order. Semantics appears to be the best predictor for post-predicate placement: those constituents which express the endpoints of a state of affairs are overwhelmingly post-predicate, across all dialects (GOALs and RECIPIENTs), while the placement of ADDRESSEEs varies, basically according to a south-east vs. the rest split in Northern Kurdish. Other locational phrases, with no implication of movement, are overwhelmingly pre-predicate. The chapter maps the areal tendencies, assesses the relevance of different theoretical approaches in accounting for OVX in Kurdish, and considers its possible historical sources.
Structural and Typological Variation in the Dialects of Kurdish
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.
The synchrony and diachrony of New Western Iranian nominal morphosyntax
Northern Kurdish (Kurmanjî)
This chapter presents an overview of Northern Kurdish, or Kurmanjî (in various spellings), as it is spoken in eastern Anatolia. The material is largely based on two joint publications with Ergin Öpengin: Öpengin and Haig (2014), and Haig and Öpengin (2018), to which the reader is referred for further details. The variety of Kurmanjî spoken in northern Iraq (Behdinī, under various spellings) is treated in Haig (this volume, chapter3.3, §4). For the purposes of this chapter, “eastern Anatolia” is taken to coincide with the the eastern part of Turkey, extending south-eastward from a line beginning from Sivas, but excluding the Mediterranean and Black Sea coastal regions.
Noun-plus-verb complex predicates in Kurmanji Kurdish
Complex predicates (CPs) consisting of a noun (N) and a verb (V) are an ubiquitous feature of Kurdish, and of Indo-Iranian and Indo-Aryan languages generally. Mohanan (1997) has proposed an argument-sharing analysis for this type of CP in Hindi, according to which both the noun and the verb contribute to the argument structure of the CP In this paper the argument-sharing approach is assessed against the Kurdish data, but it transpires that it only accounts for a subset of N-FV CPs. Furthermore, for one specific type of CR an analysis in terms of syntactic incorporation is simpler and empirically more adequate. I conclude that no single model accounts for the totality of CP-formation in Kurdish and related languages. Finally, I address the question of why N+V CPs should have emerged in the eastern members of Indo-European, yet are almost completely lacking in the Indo-European languages of Europe.
Kurdish-English Dictionary
A Kurdish-English dictionary for Kurmancî Kurdish.