Archives
Untersuchungen zum Westkurdischen: Bōtī und Ēzädī
Forschungen über die Kurden und die Iranischen Nordchaldäer
Grammaire kurde (dialecte kurmandji)
The History of Kurdish and the Development of Literary Kurmanji
This chapter tackles several interrelated issues around the Kurdish language. It provides a general internal classification of Kurdish varieties, proposing also a theoretically informed distinction between language history and collective identity perceptions of speakers to resolve the classification disputes around Zazaki and Gorani varieties. ‘Kurdish’ in this sense is considered more a sociolinguistic unit than a purely linguistic entity. The chapter then provides summary discussion of the position of Iranian philology on the history of Kurdish, whereby it is shown that Kurdish is not in a direct descendant relationship with any of the known languages of the Old and Middle Iranian periods. The chapter traces the history of written and literary Kurmanji Kurdish. The rise of literary or written code in Kurmanji is shown to have taken place in late sixteenth century within the wider sociopolitical context of, on one hand, the emergence of powerful Kurdish principalities and widespread madrasa education, and, on the other hand, a general trend in the vernacularization of local community languages in Kurdistan. Finally, the development of modern Kurmanji as a polycentric variety is discussed and the current approximation of written norms are projected to merge in a more comprehensive plurinormative Kurmanji standard.
Syllable structure and stress in Bahdinani Kurdish
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.
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.
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.
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.