Kurdish grammar

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Kurdish grammar has many inflections, with prefixes and suffixes added to roots to express grammatical relations and to form words.

Contents

Split-ergative system

Among all modern Iranian languages, only Yaghnobi and Kurdish are ergative, with respect to both case-marking and verb-agreement. [1] There are general descriptions of ergativity in Kurdish, [2] [3] as well as in specific forms of Kurdish, such as Sorani [4] and Kurmanjî. [5]

Kurmanjî and Sorani Kurdish have a split-ergative system. Transitive verbs show nominative/accusative marking in the present tense, and ergative marking in the past tense. [6]

Nouns

Summary

Kurmanji
Sing. M.Sing. FPauc.Plur.
Oblique-inan-an
Construct-a-inên/inêt-ên/êt
Vocative-o-inno/inine-no/ine
Sorani
Sing.Plur.
Indefinite-êk-
Definite-eke--ekan

Possession

Ezafe is used with nouns to indicate possession. Ezafe (-y) joins the possessive noun with its possessed noun

jēgā-y pāsā = the king's place (Lit: place of king)

Ezafe is also used alongside pronouns to show possession. Ezafe (-y) joins the possessor pronoun with its possessed noun. [6]

jēgā-y min = my place (Lit: place of me)

Pronouns in various Kurdish languages and other languages for comparison

Central Kurdish [7] Southern Kurdish [8] Modern Persian[ citation needed ]Kurmanji [9] Gorani [10] Zazaki [11] Talysh [12] [13] Avestan [14] Parthian [15] Middle Persian [15]
no distinction of nominative and oblique
nominative

1. person singular

minminmanezminezazazəmazan
2. person singulartotitotu, titotitvəmtuto
3. person singularewewū, ānewad (masculine), ade (feminine)o (masculine), a (feminine)əvhva- (masculine)

hā (feminine)

hooy
1. person pluralêmeîmeemêmemaəməahma- (accusative)amāhamāh
2. person pluralêweîweşomāhûnşimeşimaşıməyūšma- (accusative)aşmāhaşmāh
3. person pluralewaneewaneişān, inhāew / ewanaadêêəvon?hawinoy

Oblique

Kurmanji [16] Zazaki [17] Parthian [15] Middle Persian [15] Talysh [13] [18]
Oblique
accusative
minmi(n)manmanmıni
tetotototıni
eyhooyəvi
ayho
-
memaamāhamāhəməni
weşımaaşmāhaşmāhşıməni
waninanhawinawêşānəvoni

Adjectives

In Sorani, adjectives follow the head noun and may be joined by 'ezafe' or an open compound structure. The following example shows the Ezafe construction:

pyāw-ī  čak = a good fellow (Lit: man of good)

Demonstrative

Demonstrative pronouns when followed by postpositions (attached to the nouns) become demonstrative adjectives.

CaseNOM. SING.NOM. PLUR.OBL. SING.OBL. PLUR.
DistanceMASC.FEM.
nearev ... hanev ... anavî ... îvê ... êvan ... an
farew ... hanew ... anawî ... îwê ... êwan ... an

As demonstrative adjectives, Sorani Kurdish does not use OBL forms (though for demonstrative pronouns it does use OBL. plural forms); neither Kurmanji uses nominative plural forms.

Prepositions and postpositions

Verbs

Because the stress is distinctive in Kurdish, the acute diacritics (á) are used to denote the stressed syllables (normally not used in Kurdish) ( Thackston 2006a ).

General description

Kurdish verbs agree with their subjects in person and number. They have the following major characteristics:

Non-finite endings

InfinitiveEnds in -ín (consonant stems), -î́n (î-stems), -án (a-stems), or -û́n (û-stems).
Past participle
  • Ends in when the stem ends in consonants or (hatinhatî "come").
  • Ends in -yî when the stem ends in -a or (mán "remained").

Present and future

Present endings
ConsonanticVocalic
SingularPluralSingularPlural
1st-im-in-m-n
2nd-yî
3rd-i-∅

Present tenses for the verb zanîn ("to know"):

PositiveNegative
PersonSingularPluralSingularPlural
Indicative present
1stdízanimdizaninnázanimnazanin
2nddizanînazanî
3rddizanenazane
Subjunctive present
1stbízanimbizaninnézanimnezanin
2ndbizanînezanî
3rdbizanenezane

Past

Intransitive verbs

Past
  • Personal endings are similar to the present ones, except it always employs infinitive stems (hatinhátim "I came") and do not use any augments as it does in present tenses.
  • Negatives are formed by ne- (hatinnehatim "I didn't come").
Past habitual
  • Positive forms are formed by adding augment di- to the past, and it is almost similar to that of present tense (hatindihatim "I was coming").
  • Negative forms are formed by adding augment ne- directly to its positive counterparts instead of the stem (hatindihatim "I was not coming", not *néhatim).

Past tenses for intransitive verb of hatin (to come).

Person1st2nd3rdPlural
Intransitive past
Simple pasthatimhatîhathatin
Imperfective preteritedihatimdihatîdihatdihatin
Perfecthatimehatiyîhatiyehatine
Pluperfecthatibûmhatibûy(î)hatibûhatibûn
Subjunctive preteritehatibimhatibîhatibehatibin
Past Conditionalhatibamahatibay(î)hatibahatibana

If a past transitive verb accepts a nominative personal suffix, it agrees with the object of the sentence. Transitive past verbs in Sorani have OBL connected/dependent(not independent) personal pronouns on the object, if object is not mentioned they are on prefix or first part of the verb if the verb was compound, if there were not any prefix so they will be on the same place as th NOM ones. OBL connected pronouns: -m, -t, -y, -man, -tan, -yan.

Word order

The normal word order in Kurdish is Subject-Object-Verb (S-O-V). Modifiers follow the nouns they modify.

See also

Notes

  1. "Welcome to Encyclopaedia Iranica".
  2. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-01-29. Retrieved 2013-07-30.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  3. Theodora Bynon. 1979. The Ergative Construction in Kurdish. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies Vol. 42, No. 2, pp. 211–224.
  4. John Haiman. Ergativity in Sorani Kurdish. Essais de typologie et de linguistique générale : mélanges offerts à Denis Creissels. Ed. Franck Florici et al. Lyon: ENS Editions, 2010. 243–250
  5. Abstract on origins of ergativity
  6. 1 2 Friend, Robyn C. 1985. Some Syntactic and Morphological Features of Suleimaniye Kurdish. Ann Arbor: UMI. (Doctoral dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles; 240pp.)
  7. Thackston, W. M.: http://fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/Sorani/ Archived 2015-05-10 at the Wayback Machine – Sorani Kurdish. Iranian Studies at Harvard University. 2006. (Page 27)
  8. Celîliyan, ʻEbasî: Ferhengî başûr: Kurdî-Kurdî-Farisî. 2004. (Page 26, 80, 85, 86, 706)
  9. Windfuhr, Gernot: The Iranian languages. Routledge Language Family Series. 2009. Ernest N. McCarus'un makalesi. (Page 629)
  10. http://www.royalacademy.dk/Publications/High/737_MacKenzie,%20D.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
  11. Windfuhr, Gernot: The Iranian languages. Routledge Language Family Series. 2009. Ludwig Paul. (page 551)
  12. Aboszodə, Müəllifi-Fəxrəddin: Talıçca-Türkçe Luğət. 55 min kelimə. Bakı. 2011. Yeniden neşri. Bakü. 2015. (page 24, 210, 211, 214, 441, 501)
  13. 1 2 Wolfgang, Schulze: Northern Talysh. Lincom Europa. 2000. (Sayfa 35)
  14. Bartholomae, Christian: Altiranisches Wörterbuch, Strassburg. K. J. Trübner. 1904. (page 225, 295, 660, 1303, 1718, 1844)
  15. 1 2 3 4 Windfuhr, Gernot (13 May 2013). The Iranian Languages. ISBN   9781135797034.
  16. Windfuhr, Gernot: The Iranian languages. Routledge Language Family Series. 2009. Ernest N. McCarus. (page 629)
  17. Windfuhr, Gernot: The Iranian languages. Routledge Language Family Series. 2009. Ludwig Paul'un makalesi. (page 551)
  18. Aboszodə, Müəllifi-Fəxrəddin: Talıçca-Türkçe Luğət. 55 min kelimə. Bakı. 2011. Yeniden neşri. Bakü. 2015.

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References