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
The indivisibility of the nation and its linguistic divisions
Kurdish has four “geographical” dialects divided arbitrarily and forcibly among five neighboring countries of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Armenia. It has three literary dialects, two standardizing varieties, numerous norms and three alphabets. Further complicating this linguistic landscape since 1918 is the crisscrossing of dialect areas by international borders and subjecting them to state policies ranging from linguicide (Turkey, Iran, Syria) to officialization on the local (Iraq before 2005; USSR) and national levels (Iraq since 2005). Under these conditions, dialect divisions were overshadowed by the linguicidal situation which threatened the survival of the language. The formation of the Kurdistan Regional Government in 1991 and the officialization of Kurdish as one of the two state languages of Iraq in 2005 have removed the external (state) threat, and raised, once more, the question of the dialect base of the standard language. While Iraqi rulers had in the past used dialect pluralism as justification for denying Kurdish official status, now the Kurds themselves have to cope with the linguistic fragmentation of their nation. This article examines the conflict over the adoption of one or two of the major dialects, Sorani and Kurmanji, as the official standard language in Iraq.
Calibrating Kurmanji and Sorani
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
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.
Variation in the ergative pattern of Kurmanji
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.
Kurmanji Kurdish
The Dialects of Kurdish
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.
Phonological Variation in Kurdish
Kurdish is often portrayed as a linguistic unity, but an examination of phonological structures in the language reveals substantial internal variation. In this study, we examine the geographic distribution of vowels and consonants in the phonological inventories of 125 Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji) and Central Kurdish (Sorani) varieties in the Database of Kurdish Dialects, and their patterning in individual words from all of these data sets. The data reveal a stable set of core vowels and consonants, along with peripheral phonemes of both types that demonstrate a high level of variation in geographic distribution and frequency. Segments with significant distributional restrictions include front rounded vowels, uvular consonants, a contrastive aspirated stop series, emphatic alveolar obstruents, and pharyngeals ʕ and ħ. An analysis of these patterns gives modest confirmation of the well-known Northern vs. Central Kurdish dialect division, but shows that the phonological distinction between the two is best characterized in terms of tendencies rather than exact, regular correspondences. Beyond many other individual isoglosses in the data that cross-cut one another, there is a weak pattern of transition between the two major dialect areas; limited diffusion of phonological innovations to varieties at the geographic periphery of the language; and more direct influence of language contact on the phonological structures in certain regions. Alongside these various configurations of areal distribution, and in contrast to them, there is a strong, overarching pattern of non-directional phonological variability among varieties, which points to the local nature of phonological changes across the language area.
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.
Kurdish-English Dictionary
A Kurdish-English dictionary for Kurmancî Kurdish.