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Kurdish Studies Archive
Editor-in-Chief
Prof. Martin van Bruinessen, Utrecht University, Netherlands
Associate editors
Dr Welat Zeydanlolu, Kurdish Studies Network, Sweden (managing editor)
Prof. Ibrahim Sirkeci, Regent’s University, London, UK (managing editor)
Dr Joost Jongerden, Wageningen University, Netherlands (book review editor)
Dr Janet Klein, University of Akron, USA
Assistant editor
Wendelmoet Hamelink, Netherlands
Copy-Editor
Naomi Houghton, Sweden
Editorial Advisory Board
Prof. Christine Allison, University of Exeter, UK
Prof. Joyce Blau, Kurdish Institute of Paris, France
Prof. Hamit Bozarslan, (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales), Paris, France
Prof. Michael Gunter, Tennessee Technological University, USA
Prof. Amir Hassanpour, University of Toronto, Canada
Prof. Keith Hitchins, University of Illinois, USA
Prof. Robert Olson, University of Kentucky, USA
Prof. Tov e Skutnabb-Kangas, Åbo Akademi University Vasa, Finland
Prof.d, University of Exeter, UK
Prof. Abbas Vali, Boaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey
Prof. Lale Yal n-Heckmann, Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
Editorial Review Board
Dr Mohammed M. A. Ahmed, Ahmed Foundation for Kurdish Studies, USA – Dr Minoo Alinia,
Uppsala University, Sweden – Dr Bilgin Ayata, Free University, Berlin, Germany – Dr Osman
Aytar, Mälardalen University, Sweden – Dr Bahar Baer, University of Warwick, UK – Dr Derya
Bayr, , Queen Mary University of London, UK – Prof. Ofra Bengio, Tel Aviv University,
Israel – Dr pek Demir, Leicester University, UK – Prof. Vera Eccarius-Kelly, Siena College, USA –
Dr Barzoo Eliassi, University of Lund, Sweden – Dr Andrea Fischer-Tahir, Zentrum Moderner
Orient, Berlin, Germany – Dr Zeynep Gambetti, Boaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey –
Dr Cengiz Gunes, Open University, UK – Dr Gülistan Gürbey, Free University, Berlin, Germany –
Prof.g, University of Bamberg, Germany – Dr Choman Hardi, University of Oxford,
UK – Prof. Almas Heshmati, Korea University, South Korea – Dr Chris Houston, Macquarie
University, Australia – Dr Dilek Kurban, Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation
(), Istanbul, Turkey – Dr Michiel Leezenberg, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands –
Prof. Shahrzad Mojab, University of Toronto, Canada – Dr Liza M. Mügge, University of
Amsterdam, Netherlands – Prof. Leyla Neyzi, Sabanc University, Istanbul, Turkey – Dr Kerem
Öktem, Oxford University, UK – Prof. Hakan Özolu, University of Central Florida, USA –
Prof. David Romano, Missouri State University, USA – Dr Clémence Scalbert-Yücel, University
of Exeter, UK – Thomas Schmidinger, University of Vienna, Austria – Dr Prakash Shah, Queen
Mary University of London, UK – Dr Farhad Shakely, Uppsala University,
Sheyholislami, Carleton University, Canada – Dr Motasam Tatahi, Regent’s University, London,
UK – Prof. Jordi Tejel, The Graduate Institute, Geneva, Switzerland – Dr Uur Ümit Üngör,
Utrecht University, Netherlands – Prof. Nazan Üstünda, Boaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey –
Dr Östen Wahlbeck, University of Helsinki, Finland – Dr Nicole F. Watts, California State
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Kurdish Studies
Archive
Editorial
Martin van Bruinessen |
Emeritus Professor of Islamic Studies at Utrecht University, The Netherlands
m.vanbruinessen@uu.nl
The recent developments in Syria, Iraq and Turkey have brought the Kurds
to the headlines and on prime time television as major actors on the Middle
Eastern scene. Not since the dramatic exodus from Iraqi Kurdistan in the spring
of 1991 had there been so much media coverage of the Kurds and Kurdistan.
At that earlier time, the Kurds were primarily represented as victims, who
m’s murderous regime; their plight led
to an international humanitarian intervention to create a “safe haven” and
ultimately to a self-governing Kurdish region in Northern Iraq protected by a
zone. This time around, the image of the Kurds is that of guardians of
moderation and stability, the only force in the region willing and able to take
on the so-called Islamic State (). The Kurdish region in Iraq has been the
only stable and peaceful part of that country, and it has provided a safe haven
to hundreds of thousands of Christians, Yezidis, Turcomans, -
ing the onslaught of e. In Syria, the three
Kurdish enclaves were,i, the parts
r. Press coverage of the ’s tak-
ing control of Kirkuk and the participation of guerrillas in the defence of
Kobani has been remarkably sympathetic.
Kurdish Studies has no intention to regularly cover and comment on recent
events. However,s, based on
n, that provide important background
or new insights relevant to understanding these events.
encourage colleagues who could contribute to deepening our understanding
of the developments in Syria (or, for that matter,
Kurds of Iran, who rarely if ever hit the headlines and who are the most seri-
ously under-studied part of Kurdish society).
Kurdish studies and what are the criteria for deciding what sort of contribu-
tions t” the journal. Kurdish Studies wishes to be a medium of communication
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for all scholars in the humanities and social sciences whose work focuses on
Kurdish society, history, and culture in the broadest sense. This includes stud-
ies of minorities in Kurdistan as well as the Kurdish diaspora; studies of the
political economy of Kurdistan and social and political movements past and
present, as well as those of literary or religious texts, of dialect variation or
the politics of language. Some of our contributions will appeal more to the
newspaper reader than others; but all should be informed by dispassionate
n.
This special issue of Kurdish Studies is dedicated to studies of the Kurdish
language, the oldest branch of Kurdish studies,
of academic institutionalisation. Compared to other major Middle Eastern
languages, Kurdish has received relatively little serious investigation, but there
is a gradually growing corpus of empirical and theoretical research, of which
the guest editors give a useful overview in the introduction. Although there
is no unambiguous correlation between language and ethnicity, the Kurdish
language has been the most important marker of Kurdish identity, and lin-
guistic studies have often been vitally important to identity politics.
polemics concerning Kurdish nationhood, its demarcation from other peoples,
-
ent. The most passionately contested issue no doubt concerns the relationship
-
(Laki,
Lori, and of course the various dialects described as Gurani) have also major
implications outside linguistics. The contributions in this issue address ques-
tions that are less politically contentious, but certainly also of interest to oth-
ers than linguists alone. We thank our guest editors,
Öpengin, for putting together an interesting collection of papers and providing
an insightful introduction.
Utrecht, September 30, 2014
Editors’ Acknowledgment
Kurdish Studies dedicated
to the study of the Kurdish language, which we believe will make a solid con-
e. We
Öpengin, the
authors as well as the anonymous reviewers for producing this special issue.
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As always, we are grateful to our colleagues on the editorial board and all those
scholars passionate about Kurdish studies who continue to contribute, support
l. Special thanks go also to Ergin Öpengin
and Fateh Saeidi who kindly translated all the abstracts into Kurmanji and
Sorani. We would also like to take this opportunity to welcome on board our
new assistant editor Wendelmoet Hamelink.
Ibrahim Sirkeci
Joost Jongerden
Janet Klein
Associate Editors of Kurdish Studies
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Kurdish Studies
Archive
Introduction to Special Issue Kurdish: a Critical
Research Overview
Haig |
Professor of Linguistics at the Department of General Linguistics,
University of Bamberg, Germany
y.haig@uni-bamberg.de
Ergin Öpengin |
Postdoctoral researcher and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft fellow at the
Department of General Linguistics, University of Bamberg, Germany
ergin.opengin@uni-bamberg.de
Abstract
The Kurdish language is an integral component of any conceptualisation of “Kurdish-
ness”, 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 criti-
cal assessment of the notions of “language” and “dialect” is followed by a review of
h, case-study
of Zazaki. We suggest that a good deal of the confusion arises through a failure to dis-
(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.
Keywords
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Awirvedaneke rexneyî li lêkolînên li ser
zimanê kurdî
Zimanê kurdî parçeyeke bingehî yê her çi têgihitineke “Kurdînî”yê ye, lê belê hêj jî
pirsek e ka kurdî bi xwe ji çi tekîl e. Di vê gotara seretayî de em berê xwe didine çendîn
ji wan pirsên kilîlî yên derheq zimanê kurdî de (wek, ka kurdî yek ziman e an ji yekê
zêdetir ziman in, kîjan wezar divê di bin kurdî de bêne hesibandin, reh û binetarên
zimanê kurdî çi ne, hd.), û li jêr ronahiya zimannasiya hevçerx de li wan pirsan diko-
lin. Li dû nirxandineke rexneyî ya têgehên “ziman” û “zarava”, hin boçûnên tesnî-
rina wezarên kurdî hatine raçavkirin, û bi pêdeçûneke dirêjtir li ser rewa wezarê
Zazakiyê hatine tetbîqkirin. Em diyar dikin ku para pirtir a aloziyê ji wê yekê dertê ku
delîlên zimannasî (bi menayeke berteng) bi duristî nayêne cudakirin ji sehên huwiyet
û xwanasandinê yên axêveran ku di nav jiyana civakî de durist dibin û rehên wan di
pergaleke baweriyê û di tarîxeke hevbe de ne. Em pa meylên taze yên di zimanna-
siya kurdî de pk dikin û hewl didin hin mijarên lêkolînê yên pêdivî destnan bikin.
“”
(
).
“” “”
)(
.
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Introduction
This volume of Kurdish Studies is dedicated to research on the Kurdish lan-
guage. While language issues have always been integral to academic and pop-
s, much of the relevant linguistic
research either does not feed into the broader discourse,
distorted in various ways. We therefore welcome the initiative of the journal
editors in accepting a cross-section of current research in Kurdish linguistics,
-
matics,
the larger context of Kurdish studies.
Although the term “language” is a deceptively familiar item in most people’s
daily vocabulary, “language” -
ent facets, yielding a multiplicity of varied conceptualisations: language can be
seen as a complex, self-organising semiotic system, as the repository of cultural
memory, an emblem of group identity, or a biologically endowed instinct that
triggers acquisition in early childhood, to name but a few. Our perspective, as
linguists, is primarily in terms of language as a complex, self-organising sys-
tem, but we are sympathetic to an approach that sees the linguistic system as
embedded in a social matrix, of which it is both product, and producer. In this
introductory essay, we will take up both systemic linguistic aspects as well as
social ones in an attempt to develop a reasonably coherent account of what
constitutes “Kurdish”.
h/the Kurdish language(s) is an undertak-
ing beset with controversy.-
ter is therefore to clarify certain conceptual matters concerning the notions
of “language” and “dialect”, before tackling some of the thornier issues that
h, or “the Kurdish language”. We
then review some recent approaches to classifying Kurdish, before presenting
some proposals of our own. We suggest that a good deal of the confusion arises
(in a nar-
row sense), from the results of socially contracted and negotiated perceptions
of identity, rooted in shared belief systems and perceptions of a common his-
tory. We do not argue for the precedence of any particular kind of evidence in
y; on the contrary, a language is
always at the nexus of a social construct with a set of linguistic facts. What we
emphasise, however, -
s. In the second part of the introduction, we present an
overview of recent trends in Kurdish linguistics, though we make no claims
to exhaustive coverage. Instead, we discuss what we consider to have been
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the most salient trends, based on a selective cross-section of the literature,
and attempt to identify some of the most pressing research desiderata. Our
treatment focuses on more recent developments; we refer to Haig and Matras
(2002) for a summary of earlier research. Finally, in the third section, we sum-
marise the other contributions to this issue and how they relate to the broader
n.
There are two principal inter-relatedh: (i)-
e, and which speech varieties should be included
under the label “Kurdish”; (ii) t, i.e. from which
proto-language(s) are the Kurdish varieties considered to have descended?
Though related, these issues are logically distinct. In practice,
relates mainly to the question whether Zazaki and Gorani (along with a few
other varieties like Laki and sections of what is generally called Luri) are part
of Kurdish, or independent languages. The second issue relates, on the one
hand, to whether a common ancestor can be postulated for all the varieties to
be considered under Kurdish, and, on the other hand, to the relationship of this
putative common ancestral Kurdish to a Middle or an Old Iranian language.
We begin with a discussion of the conceptual and methodological dimensions
entailed in these two broad issues.
Dialect vs. Language: Conceptual Issues
In spite of their apparent simplicity in daily usage, distinguishing between
“language” and “dialect” t, since
linguistic factors are inextricably entwined with sociological, political and eth-
nic ones. The most widespread diagnostic has been that of “mutual intelligibil-
ity”
dialects of the same language, whereas varieties that are not mutually under-
standable are assigned to distinct languages. Intuitive as it may seem, it is far
from being a reliable diagnostic in several respects. In methodological terms,
it is the speakers of the varieties who understand each other or not, not the
varieties themselves. Thus speaker attitudes may weigh more than “objective”
measures of linguistic similarities/ds. It has also been pointed out
many times that this notion fails to account for chains of mutually intelligible
dialects (dialect continua), where speakers of contiguous varieties may under-
stand each other, but those at either end of the continua cannot. Where, then,
does one language stop and next begin? Furthermore, intelligibility is often a
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dynamic process:y, one may understand
very little, but within a short space of time, intelligibility in one, or both, direc-
tions, may increase dramatically. Again, this poses considerable methodologi-
cal problems when attempting to assess mutual intelligibility.
In practice, there are numerous examples worldwide where the criterion
d. For instance, Swedish
and Norwegian are mostly mutually intelligible, both in spoken and written
forms, but they are standardly considered to be separate languages. On the
reverse side, mutually unintelligible varieties of Mandarin (Standard Chinese)
and Cantonese (the variety of Hong Kong, Macau, and Guangdong province),
s, are considered to be dialects of Chinese
(cf. Wang, 1997: 55). In these and many other situations around the world (e.g.
Urdu-Hindi, Croatian-Bosnian-Serbian, Moldavian-Romanian), what is a “lan-
guage” and what is a “dialect” are determined on social and political grounds.
-
ences (is, known as Levenshtein
distances) to degrees of mutual intelligibility, undertaken by linguists working
at the University of Groningen (see e.g. Gooskens, 2007). The research has been
conducted with speakers of Germanic languages such as Danish, Dutch and
Swedish, working in the contexts of written, standardised languages in indus-
trialised societies.m, promising
though it may be, can be readily transferred to the Kurdish context. In short,
the oft-cited and supposedly “objective” criterion of mutual intelligibility has
to date been of little value in distinguishing languages and dialects.
Recognising these shortcomings, a number of scholars have tried to go
beyond mutual intelligibility towards more socially-informed
language and dialect. Crystal (1997: 248) has added “common/d
history” to “mutual (un)intelligibility”. In a situation where these two criteria
do not match, it is considered not possible to decide on the status of the given
varieties. Trudgill’s (2000) distinction of “autonomous” vs. “heteronomous”
varieties addresses an important insight: an autonomous variety would be an
independent code, recognised as such for purposes of media and education
without necessary reference to an over-arching variety. A heteronomous vari-
ety on the other hand is perceived as a variant of some autonomous code. The
intuition here is that when we use the term dialect, there is always the sense of
“dialect of X”, with X being some independently recognised linguistic unit of a
larger order. While this distinction is moderately useful in the context of lan-
guages with state-sanctioned status, it is of restricted relevance for the cluster
of varieties that constitute Kurdish, and many other languages with restricted
s.
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It is thus a sobering fact that to this day, the science of linguistics has noth-
“language” (cf. Fromkin et al.,
2003: 446; Trudgill, 2000: 3–5). Within mainstream generative linguistics, one
“a language”
entirely, and to focus solely on the abstract linguistic abilities of the individual
speaker. Under this conception, linguistics “becomes part of psychology, ulti-
mately biology”, and the notion of “a language” (which implies a community
of speakers sharing that language) is simply sidestepped (see Chomsky, 1986:
30–3 t). Sociolinguists, however, for
whom the notion of speech community, or communities of practice, is indis-
pensable, (e.g. Fasold, 2005; Romaine, 2001), conclude that language and dia-
lect are fundamentally social, and not linguistic constructs: “a language is a
language if it has been so socially constructed” (Fasold, 2005: 698). The view
that a language is in some sense a tangible, homogenous entity with a more
m, most suggestively fostered in the case of large national lan-
guages, is likewise untenable. As Linell (2005: 45) puts it:
there is no single system of spoken language corresponding to the idea of
a unitary national language; instead there are overlapping regional and
-
tive activities and genres. The notion of a unitary national language is
s,
including linguists’s.
Let us consider how some of these issues would relate to the Kurdish case. It
should by now be evident that there is no simple answer to the question of
whether Kurdish is “one language”, and if so, which varieties should belong to
it. d, as we have
pointed out above, and would almost certainly yield contradictory results if
applied to Kurdish. In fact,
of language, the question of whether Kurdish is a language is vacuous. We can,
however, meaningfully investigate what speakers of the varieties concerned
perceive about their own variety in relation to others. In this case, there seems
to be a relatively broad consensus among speakers of Sorani/Central Kurdish,
and speakers of Kurmanji/Northern Kurdish that their respective varieties can
larger-order entity Kurdish/Kurdî. Similar perceptions may
hold for speakers of Southern Kurdish (Fattah, 2000), and for some varieties of
Gorani (see below). We can then proceed to explore the histories, sources and
variations in these self-perceptions: where do they originate, how have they
shifted, how they correlate (or not) with other principles of social organisation
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(tribal, religious, means of subsistence, political). A perception of “Kurdish”
is in fact historically well-attested in the Sharafname of Sharaf Khan Bidlisi,
who some 420 y
c/cultural grounds. Reference to
Kurds, and to Kurdistan, feature regularly in the sources of the Ottoman era;
it is evident that a notion of group identity that preceded the modern era was
well established,
establish in retrospect.
In practice, there is relatively little controversy with regard to Sorani/Central
Kurdish, and Kurmanji/Northern Kurdish. The litmus test for approaches
to Kurdish are Zazaki, and Gorani. In the case of Zazaki, the discussion has
become regrettably politically charged, and the linguistic arguments are regu-
s, rendering rational debate
t. The case is, however, extremely instructive, and there-
fore worth dwelling on in some detail here (below we take up the arguments
from historical linguistics on Zazaki). Reliable information on the historical
self-perceptions of Zaza speakers is hard to come by. Evliya Çelebi, the cel-
ebrated Ottoman traveller, in his account of his journey from Bitlis to Van,
refers to the “Zaza” among a list of Kurdish tribes grazing the alpine pastures
of the Suphan Mountain north of Lake Van (Bulut 1997: 221). In this part of
his travelogue, Çelebi regularly refers loosely to “Kurdistan” and the “Kurdish
people” (qavm-i ekrad), but has otherwise little to say of the Zazas. According
to Özolu (2004: 34–35), in general Çelebi, like the historian Sharaf Khan men-
tioned above, treats the Zazas on a par with other tribal (and dialectal) groups
among the Kurds, concluding that “since Evliya gathered his information
among local sources from the region, one can conclude that the Zaza speakers
were considered Kurds by Evliya’s sources”. In more recent times, when Kurds
mobilised as a political entity as in the Sheikh Said uprising of 1925, Zaza and
Kurmanji speakers were collectively implicated (and the leader of the revolt
himself was a Zaza speaker). Finally, it is worth recalling that one of the most
widespread traditional self-designations for the Zazas and their language is
Kirmanj/Kirmanjkî We can reasonably assume that this is the same word as
Kurmanj/Kurmanjî;
(the short centralised vowels are frequently interchangeable in a number of
words)-kî-î are the regular equivalents of each other in
Zazaki and Kurmanji respectively. If this is the case, we can assume a common
self-designation for both groups, possibly in the sense of a generic term for
people associated with particular kinds of livelihoods, rather than terms tar-
geting ethnic or linguistic identities (see Asatrian, 2009: 28–30 for a discussion
of the term “Kurmanj”). Thus although we are far from anything approaching
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a reliable ethno-linguistic characterisation of premodern identity perception
among the Zazas, and although there are undoubtedly considerable local wrin-
kles that more general statement would fail to capture, there is certainly good
evidence for an inclusive perception of “Kurds” which generally subsumed
the Zazas.
At the turn of the 20th century, western philologists began to analyse the
structure of Zazaki.
Mann. Mann pointed out a number of phonological and morphological dif-
ferences between Zazaki and Kurmanji, which led him to the claim that the
two should be considered quite distinct languages. On his view, Zaza did
not belong to Kurdish (cf. discussion in Mann and Hadank, 1932: 19–23, and
below). Mann’s views were entirely based on linguistic/philological facts;
they actually entail no consequences in terms of speakers’ perceived identi-
ties, and initially,
to Iranian philology. The speakers themselves were unaware of these evalua-
tions of their languages up until the 1980’s, when Kurdish intellectuals in the
diaspora came to be informed about the discussions. Subsequently, a small
number of Zazaki-speaking exile intellectuals, applying a positivistic notion
s, began to adopt the idea. As a result,
some Zazaki-speaking intellectuals who had previously referred to Zazaki as
part of Kurdish, and the Zazas as Kurds, rephrased their discourse in favour
of an exclusivist Zazaki language and identity distinct from Kurdish. Given
the many political stakeholders in the contested arena of Kurdish identities,
it is hardly surprising that this debate has long since left the purely academic
domain, and the originally purely philological arguments have been entirely
s. Our point here is that
(from Kurdish to an exclusivist Zaza(ki) identity) happened
in a relatively short period of time, as illustrated in the case of Zülfü Selcan, the author of the
book Grammatik der Zaza-Sprache (1998). The author was an activist in pro-Kurdish progres-
sist circles at the turn of 1980s. In an article that he published in the Hêvî magazine, publica-
tion of the Paris Kurdish Institute, he freely uses the terms Kurd and Kurdish language to refer
to Zaza people and Zazaki, considering the latter under “Kurdish”. This is apparent also in the
title of the article, as “Folklorê Kurdî ebe zaravayê dimilkî”, which can be translated as “Kurdish
folklore in its Dimilkî dialect”. Some years after, the author adopted the view of Zazaki as a sep-
arate language and the Zazas a distinct people from the Kurds. Recently, the author shared his
e, however, in the new version of his article he
replaced all of the occurrences of the terms “Dimilkî dialect” and “Kurdish” with “Zazaki lan-
guage” and “Zaza people”, deleting quite a few other references to Kurdish including those in
the title of the work. For the original version of the article see Zilfî (1983)
recent version of the same article see: http://www.tunceli.edu.tr/akademik/fakulteler/edebi
yat/bolum/doded/zaded/EdebiyateZazay1.pdf (Accessed: November 25, 2012).
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the arguments from philology, which we take up below, were never intended
as statements regarding perceived identities, and are in fact largely orthogonal
to that debate.
Reconstruction of Language History
The analysis of the more or less “hard”n, the phonol-
ogy,s, involv-
ing the reconstruction of language history (commonly known as “comparative
method”). The comparative method works on the comparison of phonologies
in a set of languages, and seeks to identify systematic correspondences as evi-
dence of shared history. In addition, features of morphology and syntax may
also be compared which again can yield clues regarding innovations shared
among the varieties investigated. The underlying assumption is that certain
kinds of change are regular, and the systematic comparison allows one to
identify changes shared in some varieties, but absent in others. From this, the
-
able picture. Thus we can arrive at a relative measure for degree of relatedness
among the varieties concerned: the more closely related two varieties are, the
shorter the time span that has elapsed between now and the point in time at
which the two varieties split from their common source. However, the suc-
cess of this method depends in part on the time depth of attestation of the
languages concerned. Note that this method works solely with observable lin-
guistic data, with little or no relation to the social conditions of the speech
communities themselves. Thus the results of the comparative method can-
“language” or “dialect”
(and indeed, nothing in the comparative method is contingent on these con-
cepts). Of course we would expect a degree of correlation between socially
determined identity perception, and degree of linguistic relatedness: a group
sharing a close-knit social structure and a common identity is unlikely to
speak varieties that are only distantly related, and conversely, we would not
expect groups speaking only very distantly related varieties to share a common
group identity; but these are only rough tendencies, and there are numerous
examples worldwide where degree of social identity of the speakers does not
match linguistic relatedness of their speech. For example, many Black African
Americans legitimately claim a group identity distinct from, for example, the
descendants of the British invaders of North America. Linguistically, however,
it is a simple fact that today,
varieties of a Germanic language. The issue of language origins is logically dis-
tinct from the issue of perceived group identity, and should not be confused
with it, though in many cases the two do go hand in hand.
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be “objective”, we should note that it is far from secure, and the available evi-
dence leaves considerable scope for interpretation.
some evidence from phonology, as it relates to the position of Zazaki vis-à-vis
Kurdish. In Zazaki, words such as werd-“eat”, or weš “good, e” exhibit an
initial [w-], whereas Kurmanji and Sorani have the velar fricative [x-] (with
additional labialisation in some varieties). In this feature, Zazaki patterns with
Hawrami/Gorani (see below). However, although this piece of evidence points
Kurmanji, Gippert (1996) concludes that on the whole, the evidence from pho-
origins of Zazaki.
Potentially more revealing is the evidence from morphology. Perhaps the
-
mation of the present indicative. In Zazaki, -
ment, containing the nasal [-n], which attaches to the present stem: we-n-o
(eat-.-.) “he eats”, (cf. Paul, 1998: 74–76 for details). In
Kurmanji and Sorani, on the other hand, no stem- augment is possible in
the present tense. Instead,s, for
example di-i, as in di-xw-e (-eat:-) “s/he eats”,
de-a-i, and so on. It is generally assumed that the stem-augment
of Zazaki goes back to an old participial form,
participle in either Sorani or Kurmanji. However, close parallels are found in
West Iranian languages of the Caspian region, for example Mazanderani (Haig,
in print), or Semnani (Gippert, 1996). These facts, taken at face value, speak
for a Caspian origin of Zazaki. However, the interpretation remains contro-
versial; Gippert (1996), and following him Jügel (this volume) suggest that the
present-stem formation based on a participle may be a “recent”e,
citing North East Neo-Aramaic and East Armenian as possible sources. In the
case of North-East Neo-Aramaic, this does not seem particularly plausible,
as it is by no means clear where, or when, Zazaki would have been exposed
e. East Armenian is a
much more likely contender. But why should all varieties of Zazaki, regard-
less of their geographic setting, have undergone a contact-induced develop-
ment of this type, whereas none of the surrounding varieties of Kurmanji
did, although they were exposed to Armenian and Neo-Aramaice?
Finally, the simple fact remains that in order to develop a participial-based
present stem formation at all, the original participial-forming morphology
must have been retained in Zazaki. It is the retention of this morphology in
h, and this can hardly be explained
e. Rather, it would seem more probable that
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precisely this point distinguished the ancestor of Zazaki from the ancestors of
the other varieties considered to constitute Kurdish, and the development of
the participial-based present tense (and the extension of the nasal augment
to the past imperfective) are early innovations, hence found in all varieties of
Zazaki.e, but its source is more likely to
be found in the formative stages of Zazaki, possibly prior to its spread to its
current location.
It is often suggested that Zazaki is in fact more closely related to Gorani
than to either Kurmanji or Sorani. The most prominent advocate of this view
was Oskar Mann, who went as far as to claim “near identity” of Zazaki and
Gorani (Mann and Hadank, 1932: 25). Hadank himself, however, who was
entrusted with posthumously preparing Mann’s work for publication, had
already pointed out that his predecessor’s assessment was exaggerated (Mann
and Hadank, 1932: 25–26). Above we noted the presence of an initial [w-] in
words such as “eat” and “read/study” in Zazaki, which is also shared in Gorani.
However, it is not an exclusive factor uniting Zazaki and Gorani; it is also found,
for example, in Balochi (Korn, 2005: 122). It is therefore fairly thin evidence on
which to base a Zazaki/Gorani group, as is often assumed (see below). Indeed,
although we still await a detailed systematic comparison of Gorani and Zazaki
(a surprising desideratum), we are currently unaware of a truly convincing
historical demonstration of the viability of this subgrouping. It is true that
each display features common to other languages outside of Kurdish, and not
shared by Sorani and Kurmanji. Zazaki, for example, shows obvious parallels
to Iranian language of the Caspian region. But from this it does not follow that
they can be meaningfully grouped together within a putative historical group
of “Kurdish”. It simply follows that historically,
Sorani and Kurmanji.
The concept of “Southern Kurdish”s. One issue
concerns where the borders of Southern Kurdish in relation to geographically
contiguous West Iranian languages, such as Luri, should be drawn. Anonby
(2003), for example, suggests that Luri is part of a language continuum span-
ning northwest Iranian Kurdish, and southwest Iranian Persian. Such a state-
s.
southwest Iranian split, and would essentially dissolve Southern Kurdish as
a viable genetic group. The question of “Southern Kurdish” has been most
extensively treated in Fattah (2000), who defends the coherence of the group.
(2003) combines observations and interviews regarding levels of mutual intelligi-
bility, with lexicostatistics. However, although both methods are of considerable interest
in their own right, neither method will reliably yield genetic sub-groupings, and nor will a
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Fattah recognises a group which he refers to as kurde du sud, which covers
most of what is traditionally included under “Southern Kurdish”, but he sub-
sumes this group under a larger group of dialectes kurdes méridionaux. Within
the latter, Fattah includes Laki, but considers it distinct from kurde du sud.
The most salient linguistic feature distinguishing Laki from kurde du sud is the
presence of ergativity in past tenses in Laki (Fattah, 2000: 61). The position of
Luri within this scheme is discussed at some length (Fattah, 2000: 40–55), with
the general conclusion that it lies outside of the dialectes kurdes méridionaux,
although within Luri itself there are internal divisions that remain problematic
h/non-Kurdish.
s, Kurmanji and Sorani are uncontro-
“Kurdish”. The question of their relationship
to each other has, however, seldom been explicitly discussed (see Jügel (this
volume) for references). In Haig and Öpengin (forthcoming), it is noted that
although there are intermediate varieties exhibiting typical properties of both
(e.g. Suri, discussed in MacKenzie, 1961), in general the boundary between
Sorani and Kurmanji is relatively clearly delineated. There is a long list of dis-
tinctive morphological features that distinguish them (cf. Haig and Öpengin,
forthcoming), and for any given variety,
to either Sorani or Kurmanji. This fact is rather surprising; it is certainly not
what one would expect if Sorani and Kurmanji had originated from a single
source, and then gradually spread into their current localities. Such a scenario
would have yielded a dialect continuum, with each variety gradually shading
into the next. Instead,s,
sharing a fairly narrow ribbon of overlap in which there are varieties exhibit-
ing the typical features of both. What this suggests is that Sorani and Kurmanji
evolved in geographically distinct regions, and later came into contact. This is
not to deny the obvious relationship between the two, but it suggests that we
require a more sophisticated account of the genesis of these two varieties than
is currently available.
In sum, historical linguistics can help unravel the relationships between
related languages (oe).
s, which are seldom as
clearcut as the family trees that are traditionally used to represent them (see
Jügel, this volume). But again, the problems here are not restricted to Kurdish,
but are endemic to historical linguistics, regardless of the language family
concerned. For example, in Oceanic linguistics the term “linkage” is regularly
combination of the two. Anonby (2004/2005)-
tion of one variety of Laki.
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used to refer to geographically contiguous groups of related languages which
exhibit certain similarities, but cannot be reliably traced to a common ances-
tor, hence would not be representable on a traditional family tree (Lynch
et al., 2011)
Zazaki and Gorani in this respect, noting that from the perspective of histori-
cal linguistics, there is no doubt that these two are less closely related to Sorani
and Kurmanji. However, we also note that this does not imply that Zazaki and
Gorani ever formed a historical unit. But perhaps the most important point is
that the comparative method yields a hypothesis regarding the ancient history
of the languages; its results cannot be simply translated into claims regarding
social identity constructions of the speakers.
Having discussed two major approaches to identifying language,
h. It is noteworthy that most clas-
d, but draw on a mix of geographic, socio-
historical, ethnic and linguistic criteria. This is particularly true of Hassanpour
(1992) and Izady (1992)(2000) is based on a more
detailed discussion of linguistic and extra-linguistic criteria, with a focus on
Southern Kurdish.y:
Hassanpour’s (1992: 20)
Izady’s (1992)
varieties
. Kurmanci Kurmanji group Pahlawani group
. Sorani . North Kurmanji . Dimili (or Zaza)
. Hawrami . South Kurmanji
(or Sorani)
. Gurani (including
Laki and Hawrami). Kirmashani
s, some merely ter-
minological but others more substantial. For example, in Hassanpour’s-
cation the term Hawrami,
and Iraqi Kurdistan (see MacKenzie, 1961, Mahmoudveysi et al., 2011: 2–4), is
intended as a general term encompassing both Gorani and Zazaki. Given the
linguistic (see above) and geographical distance between the two varieties, it is
at best odd to subsume one of the varieties under the other. Izady’s
involves an initial division into two major groups, “Kurmanji” vs. “Pahlawani”.
Gurani are often considered rather archaic in the sense that they have preserved
certain features found in Parthian. But it is not clear if this is intended, nor is
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it clear why Laki should be included in this putative grouping. It will be seen
that in Izady’s n, there is no obvious equivalent to Hassanpour’s
“Kirmashani”s, and
r. But even this perfunctory compari-
s.
-
cation is proposed by Fattah (2000):
Kurdish group Kurdo-Caspian group
. Northern Kurdish or Kurmanji . Zazaki
. Central Kurdish or Sorani . Hawrami (Gorani)
. Southern Kurdish
In particular, Fattah discusses in considerable detail the nature of “Southern
Kurdish” in relation to Laki, and also to Gurani. His suggestion of a Kurdo-
Caspian group is developed at some length (2000: 62–70), and it is worth
e. Fattah concedes to the majority view of Iranian
philologists, who concur on assigning Zazaki and Gorani to a peripheral status
vis-à-vis the rest of Kurdish, but argues that this does not necessarily imply
their exclusion from Kurdish as a socio-linguistic unit (Fattah, 2000: 65):
En admettant l’hypothese de l’origine caspienne des Gurân, qui remon-
terait à des époques très anciennes, et de leur installation, ensuite,
d’une part dans la grande région de Kirmânshah-Hamadân, et d’autre
part, pour une partie d’entre eux tels que les Zâzâ, vers l’ouest dans le
Kurdistan de Turquie, celle-ci n’est pas forcément en contradiction avec
leur appartenance et leur implication dans les processus de formation
du peuple kurde, ou du moins leur fusion trés ancienne avec eux, et leur
participation dans la constitution de l’identité politique, culturelle et
sociologique du peuple kurde. [footnote omitted]
This is a view we would generally comply with, though as linguists, we have
some reservations regarding the postulation of a distinct sub-group for Zaza and
Gurani, for the reasons outlined in the preceding section. Our own, more cau-
tious approach would be the following, which avoids sub-grouping Zazaki and
Gorani (at least until positive evidence in favour of such a move is forthcoming)
s, whose approximate localities are shown in Figure 1:
1. Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji): It is often divided into Badini (spoken
principally in Duhok and Hakkari provinces) and Kurmanji (in the rest of
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Northern Kurdish speech zone) varieties; both include a number of other
regional dialects (see Öpengin and Haig, this volume).
2. Central Kurdish (Sorani): Its main regional dialects are Mukri (Mahabad),
Hewlêrî (Erbil), Silêmanî (Suleimaniya), Germiyanî (Kirkuk) and Sineyî
(Sanandaj).
3. Southern Kurdish: It includes the varieties such as Kelhuri, Feyli,
Kirmashani, as well as some dialects of what is called Laki, in Ilam and
Kermanshah provinces of Iraq and the town of Khaneqin in Iraq (see
above on Fattah’sn).
4. Gorani: It covers what is known as Hawrami or Hawramani, with the
well-known dialects of e.g. Paveh and Halabja, and includes the old
transdialectal literary koine, the language of religious rites among some
Yaresan groups. In this sense, “Gorani” would include several varieties
spoken in present-day Iraq, e.g. Bajalani. (cf. Fattah, 2000: 62–70, and
Mahmoudveysi et al., 2012 for discussion of “Gorani”).
5. Zazaki: Its three main dialects are Northern Zazaki (Tunceli-Erzincan
provinces), Central Zazaki (Bingöl-Diyarbakir provinces) and South
Zazaki (Diyarbakir province and Siverek town).
Map of language varieties spoken by the Kurds
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In sum, g,
and classifying “Kurdish”. Again, this is not a particularly surprising, nor by any
s. A closer look at most of the supposed clear cases
of “languages” on a global scale yields a similar picture. The exercise is never-
approaches yield methodological and conceptual challenges. In our view, the
s, and
to explicitly recognise the limitations of any kind of static taxonomy.
We certainly acknowledge, however,
academic exercises, but have quite concrete repercussions. Consider for exam-
ple the online discussion on whether Zazaki should have an independent entry
in Wikipedia, as opposed to a sub-entry under Kurdish. The arguments posted
provide interesting insights into how ideological arguments impact on suppos-
edly democratic forums. What should have emerged from this section, among
other things, is that it is perfectly possible to accept both the conclusions of the
historical linguists (Zazaki is historically not closely related to Kurmanji), and
the conclusions of many native speakers (Zazaki speakers are Kurds, and their
language belongs to a larger-order entity “Kurdish”). There is not necessarily
any contradiction here.
Current Trends in Kurdish Linguistics
Taken in the broadest sense, linguistic research on Kurdish runs back several
centuries, starting with the grammar of Ali Taramakhi (see Leezenberg, 2014)
towards the end of 17th or 18th century and the grammar of Maurizio Garzoni
in 1787. However, we are concerned here with work that has been undertaken
in an academic context within the disciplines of Iranian philology, or gen-
eral linguistics, and we consider only work undertaken since 2000. We also
exclude the numerous studies conducted in the realm of standardisation, and
the large number of pedagogical works on Kurdish that have appeared in the
last decade. Within European and North American academia, Kurdish linguis-
tics remains institutionally poorly represented; at best, Kurdish linguistics is
an ancillary sub-discipline within another department, as in the department
of General Linguistics at the University of Bamberg, or at the Department of
Empirical Linguistics at the University of Frankfurt, or it is undertaken within
the framework of comparative Iranian philology at the departments of Iranian
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Zazaki.
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Studies in Hamburg and Göttingen. The Kurdish Institute in Paris continues
a long tradition of invaluable descriptive work on Kurdish, but their main
research output is concentrated in political science and sociology. Somewhat
paradoxically,s. In
particular, the Mardin Artuklu University has recently undertaken moves to
establish a section on linguistics as part of its existing Kurdish programme. In
Iran work on various varieties of Kurdish has been undertaken within Iranian
studies, though much of it remains relatively inaccessible to scholars outside
the country. In Iraqi Kurdistan, there are Kurdish departments at the many
recently-grounded universities, -
tional cooperation, though we are not in a position to sketch these develop-
ments here.
Despite some positive developments, research on Kurdish linguistics con-
tinues to be hampered by a lack of institutional support in domains such
as post-graduate or PhD programmes, and a lack of secure teaching posi-
tions. Current research on the Kurdish language is thus largely carried out
in a piecemeal fashion by individual researchers from a disjoint set of disci-
plines, without an overarching institutional framework. There is also a lack
of dedicated journals or regular conferences that treat the topic. However,
following the International Workshop on Variation and Change in Kurdish
(August 2013, Bamberg), the organisers have decided to establish the event on
a regular annual basis (in 2014 the conference is held at the Mardin Artuklu
University).
(2005) refer to as
Mainstream Generative Grammar, a number of studies have appeared on
Kurdish syntax, starting with Fattah (1997), and work in the generative tra-
dition is continued for Sorani in a number of papers by Karimi on the ezafe
(2007) and agreement (2010), while Karimi-Doostan (2005) discusses com-
plex predicates. For Kurmanji, ongoing work by Gündodu (2011, forthcoming)
continues the tradition of generative-inspired research on syntax. -
ent framework (Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, ) is utilised by
Samvelian (2006, 2007) in her work on clitics in Sorani, while an alternative
approach drawing on prosodic phonology is developed by Öpengin (2013).
More theory-neutral approaches are adopted by Franco et al. (2013) on ezafe,
Haig (2002) on complex predicates, and Öpengin (2012b) on adpositions
and argument structure in Sorani. Pragmatics and relevance theory has been
explored with reference to the Badini dialect of Kurdish extensively by Unger
(2012, and this volume).
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Apart from the numerous pedagogical works that have been produced in
the past decade (not discussed here), two interesting grammars (Sorani and
Kurmanji respectively) have been published on the internet by Thackston (not
dated). However, undue reliance on the model of Persian has led to some dis-
tortions, particularly in the Kurmanji grammar, which needs to be treated with
caution. A short grammatical sketch, intended primarily for linguists, is Aygen
(2007). Regrettably, it contains numerous factual and analytical errors, and
appears to be based on data gathered from a single native speaker, with some
supplementary explanations from Bedir Khan and Lescot (1970); we mention
it solely for the sake of completeness,t. A
lengthy overview of “Kurdish” by McCarus (2009) is useful, but treats almost
exclusively Sorani. Fattah (2000) is a monumental study of “Southern Kurdish”,
h. Relevant to the concept of
“Southern Kurdish” are the articles by Anonby (2003 and 2004/2005), which
discuss the place of Luri and Laki. An overview of Kurmanji in Turkey is Haig
and Öpengin (forthcoming)
now available in Öpengin and Haig (this volume). Haig and Öpengin (in print)
provide an updated synthesis of structural and sociocultural aspects of gender
in Kurdish.-
opments in general linguistics is research on endangered and under-studied
languages. Within the framework of a Volkswagen-Foundation funded project,
two dialects of Gorani from West Iran were documented (see Mahmoudveysi
et al., 2012, and Mahmoudveysi and Bailey, 2013). In a similar spirit, Öpengin
(2013, forthcoming) provides the most comprehensive treatment of a dia-
lect of Central Kurdish available to date in any European language, based on
extensive original texts and combined with a theoretically informed discus-
sion of person marking in this variety. Published research on the
acquisition of ergativity in Kurmanji is now available in Mahalingappa (2013),
while Mohamad (2014) investigates Kurdish-German code-switching among
pre-school children in Austria.
The history of Kurdish syntax, with particular reference to alignment,
is discussed in Haig (2004a, 2008 and forthcoming b) within the context of
West Iranian. An overview of grammatical changes is provided in Jügel (this
volume). For Zazaki, since the comprehensive grammars of Paul (1998) and
Selcan (1998), very little substantial linguistic research has appeared. An over-
view of linguistic and socio-cultural aspects of the Zaza is provided in Keskin
(2010), and Paul (2009). Our overall impression is that within linguistics, Zazaki
remains sorely underrepresented, both in terms of descriptive and more theo-
retically oriented research.
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Kurdish is nested in a complex multi-lingual context,-
guage contact continue to be a key topic in Kurdish linguistics. Following the
pioneering work by Dorleijn (1996) on ergativity, a number of topics have been
investigated. The vowel system is studied in Özsoy and Türkyilmaz (2006) and
evidentiality in Bulut (2000). A perspective on Kurdish as part of a putative
Anatolian linguistic area is Haig (2001, 2006, 2007, in print, forthcoming a),
Matras (2002, 2007, 2010). While the impact of Turkish, Persian and Arabic
on Kurdish has been emphasised in a number of publications, there is also
Neo-Aramaic (e.g. Khan, 2007,
and Noorlander, this volume), and on vernacular varieties of Arabic (Talay,
2006/2007). These studies are important as they provide valuable linguistic
evidence regarding the role of Kurdish as a lingua franca across large areas
prior to the spread and increasing dominance of the national languages.
The highly complex social and political dimensions in which the Kurdish lan-
guage is evolving have been treated in a number of recent works. Of particular
importance is the special issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of
Language, in 2012, dedicated to various questions of Kurdish in the countries it
is spoken. A number of publications by Salih Akin have created an important
body of literature in French, of special interest are Akin (2000, 2002, 2004).
Recently, some sociolinguistic research has investigated the
linguistic vitality of Kurdish in Turkey (Öpengin, 2012a, Çalayan, 2014), the
language attitudes of the speakers (Cokun et al., 2013), but there has been
surprisingly little work within variationist sociolinguistics. A large number of
articles, on the other hand, have documented the language policy in Kurdistan,
to name only a few Zeydanlolu (2012), Sheyholislami (2012), Hassanpour
(2012), Haig (2004b and 2012). Hassanpour (2001) has dealt with the gendered
language in Sorani Kurdish, while Asadpour et al. (2012) discusses the address
terms in the same variety.
As is evident from this short overview, Kurdish linguistics has continued
to develop despite the paucity of institutional support. There is an increasing
level of theoretical sophistication in much of the more recent work, carried
by a growing number of highly-trained younger scholars, which bodes well for
d. Nevertheless, certain areas remain somewhat under-
represented,e: within sociolinguistics,
the dominant paradigm remains a more abstract socio-political one, drawing
on identity, nationalism, and ethnicity theories rather than data-driven varia-
tionist approaches to sociolinguistics and multilingualism. With regard to the
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history of Kurdish, given the continued popular interest in the topic, we are
surprised to note how little research is actually dedicated to disentangling
the linguistic facts; as mentioned, one topic which obviously demands atten-
tion is the nature of the historical relationship between Zazaki and Gorani.
Currently, most researchers are content to repeat opinions originally formu-
lated 100 years ago,n. Given the advances
in historical linguistics over the last decades, we would welcome an applica-
tion of more recent methodologies to these questions. Finally, there is still a
need for well-grounded descriptive work on the numerous regional varieties
within Kurdish, which would provide the raw material for a more comprehen-
sive assessment of central issues regarding the nature of Kurdish as a linguistic
and socio-cultural entity, and its historical evolution.
Synopsis of the Contributions
In his contribution, Thomas Jügel takes up the question of the relationship
of Kurdish to the rest of the West Iranian languages and attempts to develop
a relative chronology of the changes that led to Kurdish becoming a distinct
group. As Jügel notes, reconstructing the history of Kurdish is hampered by the
lack of reliable attestation beyond a couple of centuries. Thus any attempts to
trace the history of Kurdish need to rely in part on inferences gleaned from the
histories of better-attested, closely related languages, in this case, Parthian and
Middle Persian. The other confounding factor in reconstructing the history of
t. The state of any particular variety, at
any given point in time,
t. Kurdish is a
particularly challenging case due to the multi-lingual environment in which it
is traditionally spoken, and also to the mobility of its speakers over many cen-
turies.s,
so Jü
synthesise both “vertical”
of language contact. Jü
h, including the pres-
ence versus absence of pronominal clitics, the presence versus absence of
oblique case marking on nouns, or gender on nouns. On this basis, he proposes
a relative chronology of grammatical changes that led to the current distri-
bution,
better-attested Middle Iranian languages Parthian and Middle Persian. This is
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an important contribution as it demonstrates both the potentials, and the limi-
tations, of historical reconstruction in the case of Kurdish.
Regional variation in Kurmanji is the topic of Öpengin and Haig’s contri-
bution. While an awareness of regional variation and the ability to negotiate
around it are part of informed native speakers’ competence, to date there is
virtually no serious research dedicated to the topic. The authors propose a
s, and then proceed to apply a combination
of established methodologies, targeting the lexicon, the phonology and the
morpho-syntax, with the intention of identifying the main linguistic features
s. Given the size of the region and
lack of previous research, they emphasise the tentative nature of the proposed
n, -
persons’ perceptions,
varieties. The authors identify “Southeastern Kurmanji”, the variety of Hakkari
province, and including the Badini variety of Iraqi Kurdistan, as the most dis-
tinctive, in that it possesses the largest number of features not shared by any
other variety. In some respects, these properties can be related to Southeastern
Kurmanji’s proximity to Sorani, but this cannot be the whole story, as some of
the features concerned contrast sharply with Sorani. The authors also identify
a Northwestern Kurmanji, e.g. of Elbistan, which displays a number of diver-
gent features, many of which have scarcely been documented, to say noth-
ing of being analysed. Along with presenting an initial framework for future
research on regional variation in Kurmanji, the authors aim for a reconciliation
between dialectal/philological research and more general work on Kurmanji,
which has primarily focussed on issues of standardisation. Rather than seeing
regional variation as an obstacle to standardisation, it can also be seen as the
repository of rich linguistic resources, and a legitimate source for enriching the
available register repertoire in Kurmanji.
In Christoph Unger’s contribution, a novel approach to the interpretation
of the so-called “future tense” in Badini Kurmanji is adopted, based on Sperber
and Wilson’s Relevance Theory (1995). Along with an analysis of the Badini
Kurdish facts,
between Badini Kurdish and the more widely-known Botan-based “standard”
variety of Kurdish with regard to tense and modality marking. Unger notes that
the so-called future marker of Badini, dê, is not only used to indicate future
time reference, but also for a number of modal nuances. The question is, can
these apparently divergent semantic functions be related to each other in a
coherent manner, or should we simply accept a disjoint list of temporal and
modal meanings.dê, framed in terms
of procedural semantics:
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listener’s interpretation of a particular linguistic item, on the assumption that
her interpretation. In the case of dê, a procedural semantic account involves
dê lies outside the range of
e, but the speaker nevertheless commits herself to
their factuality.
can reasonably assume to come about, but other kinds of events that are not
o. The particle dê in
Badini contrasts with another modal particle, da (not present in other dialects
of Kurmanji), and this opposition also serves to delineate the function of dê
in Badini. The Badini system contrasts with most other dialects of Kurmanji,
which allow the dê particle (or its variants wê, ê etc.
kinds of verb forms, including past subjunctives. Unger relates these formal
dê
the procedural semantics associated with the particle in Badini, and with its
counterpart in the rest of Kurmanji. Thus what appears to be a minor, and
often overlooked,
plausibly related to distinct underlying semantics of the particles concerned.
h, Persian and Arabic
on Kurdish, both in the lexicon and the grammar, have been regularly noted in
the literature, and are a recurrent target of disapproval in some circles. What is
much less well-known is that Kurdish itself has had a deep impact on another
language of the region, Neo-Aramaic. Neo-Aramaic is
the topic of Paul Noorlander’s richly illustrated contribution, which draws
on Matras’ functional-communicative theoretical framework for analysing
language contact. Neo-Aramaic is most evident in the
lexicon, but it runs much deeper than merely the borrowing of a large num-
ber of Kurdish words. It is generally agreed among Neo-Aramaicists that the
emergence of ergativity in the past/perfective verb system of Neo-Aramaic
largely follows a Kurdish model; the structural parallels are so striking, and
e, although
not actually provable, can hardly be discounted. This is perhaps the most
remarkable indication of the long-standing and intense contact between the
two language communities. A number of syntactic parallels include patterns
of clause combining, negation, and ezafe constructions, while in the realm of
some Neo-Aramaic dialects,
also being adopted in varieties of Neo-Aramaic. While the history of Kurdish
has tended to be cast against the backdrop of the emergence and increasing
domination of the national languages in the last century, Noorlander’s article
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is a timely reminder of the centuries of co-existence between Kurds and mem-
bers of other stateless minorities in the region prior to the era of nation states,
a history which left an indelible mark on both languages.
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Kurdish Studies
Archive
On the Linguistic History of Kurdish
Thomas |
Postdoctoral researcher at the Institut für Empirische Sprachwissenschaft,
Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Institutionen föi, Uppsala University, Sweden
juegel@lingua.uni-frankfurt.de
Abstract
Historical linguistic sources of Kurdish date back just a few hundred years, thus it is not
possible to track the profound grammatical changes of Western Iranian languages in
Kurdish. Through a comparison with attested languages of the Middle Iranian period,
this paper provides a hypothetical chronology of grammatical changes. It allows us
to tentatively localise the approximate time when modern varieties separated with
regard to the respective grammatical change. In order to represent the types of linguis-
tic relationship involved, distinct models of language contact and language continua
are set up.
Keywords
Li ser tarîxa zimannasî ya zimanê kurdî
Çavkaniyên tarîxî yên zimanê kurdî bes bi qasî çend sedsalan kevn in, lewma em
nikarin di zimanê kurdî de wan guherînên bingehî yên rêzimana zimanên îranî yên
rojavayî destnan bikin. Ev meqale kronolojiyeke ferazî ya guherînên rêzimanî yên
kurdiyê dabîn dike bi rêya muqayesekirina bi wan zimanên xwedan-belge yên serdema
îraniya navîn. Bi vî rengî, em dikarin bi awayekî muweqet dem û serdemeke teqrîbî
diyar bikin ku tê de ziman û wezarên nû ji aliyê guherînên rêzimanî ve jêk cuda
bûne. Ji bo berçavkirina awayên têkiliya zimanî di navbera zimanan de, modêlên cihê
yên temasa zimanî û dirêjeya zimanî hatine danîn.
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.
.
Introduction
The oldest attested Kurdish texts date back to the 15th century (Omarkhali,
2013). Ground breaking changes, however, occurred in Iranian languages dur-
ing the transition of Old to Middle and of Middle to New Iranian. Historical
(4th c. ), and
the fall of the Sasanian Empire for the second transition period (7th c. ).
How shall we account for the historical evolution of a language which is not
attested in these relevant periods?
This paper attempts to set up a chronology of grammatical changes for sev-
Kurdish. This will be done in comparison with attested Middle Iranian lan-
guages (see the last section). The chronology will allow us to determine when
the varieties under investigation must have become distinguishable from one
another with respect to a particular grammatical change. Whether this distinc-
tion separates dialects or languages is a question that will not be addressed
here (see the introduction to this volume). Needless to say,-
cation is much more complex than the cautious approach of this study, and
involves taking all linguistic parameters into account such as the phonological
system, the lexicon, etc.
Öpengin, whose many helpful comments improved
y.
(1961b) and Korn
(2003).
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broad term. This does not imply that all languages discussed in this article
t. They happen to be spoken in, or close
to, an area which is called Kurdistan. Regardless of the speakers’ identity, a
“Kurdish” -
ters. Dialects may be seen as closely related varieties of a language, while a
sprachbund (area of linguistic convergence) is a bundle of areally contigu-
ous languages which may or may not be genetically related, but share spe-
s. However, whether we should speak of Kurdish dialects or of a
Kurdish sprachbund, or whether we should abandon Kurdish as a linguisti-
r, is not relevant for the aim of this study. In the
same way, terms such as “Kurmanji” refer to the corpora I took the data from,
while ignoring dialectal variation within “Kurmanji” itself (see Haig and
Öpengin in this volume). In order to avoid confusion, I will refer to Kurmanji
as “Botan-Kurmanji” and to Sorani as “Slmani-Sorani” whenever necessary.
Information on the respective varieties were mainly gathered from the follow-
ing sources: Gorani (Mahmoudveysi et al., 2012; Mahmoudveysi and Bailey,
2013), Hawrami (MacKenzie, 1966), Kurmanji (Bedir Khan and Lescot, 1970),
Sorani (MacKenzie, 1961a), Southern Kurdish Dialects (Fattah, 2000), and
Zazaki (Paul, 1998a and 2009).
On Classifying Iranian Languages
s, which is still widely used,
follows the tree model, i.e., Proto Iranian is divided into two groups (Proto West
and Proto East Iranian), and then further into Proto Northwest and Southwest,
and Proto Northeast and Southeast Iranian.
on observations of Middle Iranian languages, e.g., accent shift and sonorisa-
tion of voiced plosives. The accent shift in Middle West Iranian languages
resulted in the loss of endings, while the Middle East Iranian languages usu-
ally retained them. Voiced plosives become fricatives or approximants in all
positions except for word initial position in West Iranian. However, neither
feature yields a clear-cut division of West and East Iranian. The “heavy stems”
e, Old Iranian nominative *axrah > Sogdian vs. accusative *axram >
Sogdian vs. invariant Parthian r.
e, Old Iranian *- vs. Parthian/Sogdian ; Old Iranian
nominative (attested)n/Parthian vs. Sogdian t.
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of the East Iranian language Sogdian also show a loss of endings and only two
s: direct and oblique. This subsystem corresponds
to the earlier stages of Middle Persian and Parthian (see the section on the
nominal system). However, several case systems of New West Iranian lan-
guages can be related to Old Iranian case forms (e.g. Cabolov, 1997: 54). Hence,
Iranian language. Likewise, the shift of voiced plosives to fricatives or approxi-
mants does not occur in a uniform manner in the attested languages, cf. the
development of /g/ in the following table.
Development of voiced plosives in Middle Iranian
West Iranian East Iranian
Old Iranian Middle Persian Parthian Sogdian
g (initial) gg
g (intervocalic) y
In the initial position West and East Iranian are clearly separated. In the
intervocalic position, s. We may describe
(P * y). The preservation of the manner of articulation in ini-
tial position in West Iranian may be attributed to the phenomenon of accent
shift.
more discernible than in East Iranian so that in East Iranian the initial posi-
tion would only appear after prosodic boundaries. This could be why initial
plosives were sonorised as well in East Iranian.
The tree model, which assumes discrete and absolute separation between
its branches, is obviously not well-suited as a representation of the kind of
overlapping features previously discussed. Serious problems also occur if the
classical tree model is applied to a division of Old Iranian languages. Since the
took place during the transition of Old to Middle Iranian, its criteria are not
valid for Old Iranian languages. There has been considerable debate regarding
“wave theory” (cf. Schmidt, 1872: 27).
of the languages. However, the Middle Iranian isoglosses do not respect the Old Iranian
division.
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the position of Avestan vis àis the East/West distinction, and with the discov-
ery of Bactrian documents in the 1990s, it became clear that Bactrian occupies
an intermediate position. Such observations, among others, led Sims-Williams
(1996) to propose a language continuum and for Old Iranian a division into a
centre and a southern and northern periphery. Figure 1 gives a schematic rep-
resentation of this view (adapted from Jügel, 2013: 301).
The Old Iranian trichotomy can be represented by the tree model. The
inter-relationship of Old Iranian varieties should be understood as one of
dialects in a continuum with the peripheries being the continuum’s furthest
anchors. From the Old Iranian period onwards, migration and areal phenom-
ena superimpose on the older division in varying ways.
When modern varieties are linked to the Old Iranian stage, factors like
migration and areal phenomena need to be considered in order for the rep-
y’s history (and
not merely a division according to a few selected isoglosses)t, it is best
to take each variety individually and to trace its development in a dynamic
scheme. In a second step, one can identify those varieties which share so many
features that they can be considered the continuation of a particular variety
through time, hence linked by a single line, cf. Fig. 2.
The Old Iranian trichotomy is represented by (Southern Periphery),
Centre, and (Northern Periphery). The shaded bars represent contact areas
or the transition zones in the sense of language continua. In reality, these
zones will have moved, expanded, or shrunk over time. Each box stands for
one variety. The circles group varieties together. If the varieties can be iden-
s, one can interpret such groups as languages. If the varieties
represent languages, these groups may be called sprachbunds.
s, which were known before, were rather opaque.
Combining the tree model with areal phenomena
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above, only two varieties remain in one group, while other varieties come and
go. Consequently, these two varieties might be understood as dialects of one
language,-
ment (so the circles represent sprachbunds here). The chart can be expanded
by the representation of sub-, ad-, or superstratum, e.g.
Persian.
or longer arrows and paler or darker colouring, as in Fig. 3.
The Kurdish development could be represented as in Fig. 4. An assumed
with others (represented by the two circles). The variety in the intermediate
position is historically the intermediate variety of the Kurdish dialect con-
tinuum and nowadays a contact area of the two sprachbunds. Instead of one
Proto Kurdish language (Fig. 4a), we could also assume an original Kurdish
sprachbund (Fig. 4b). In addition, one of the Kurdish varieties may in fact be
an older lingua franca,n.
MacKenzie (1961b)y.
According to him, Kurdish moved northwest and came into contact with
Zazaki. From the northern position it spread south and “overran” Gorani
speaking territory. The absorption of Gorani led to the deviation of Central and
Southern Kurdish, while Northern Kurdish, i.e., Kurmanji, preserved to a much
greater extent its “purity” (p. 86). This scenario seems to be primarily based
on two assumptions, viz. Kurmanji is prototypical Kurdish, and the Gorani
“speech islands in a sea of Kurdish” (p. 73) are the remnants of an earlier con-
tiguous Gorani speaking area. However, language communities may split and
Localising varieties in space and time
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Representation of sub, ad-,
or superstratum
Hypothetical development of Kurdish
migrate, and whether all Kurdish varieties are related to one language requires
further investigation. If Kurmanji spread into Gorani speaking territory and
m, it
is hard to explain why today’s Sorani does not have morphologically marked
case, because today’s Kurmanji and Gorani still preserve it.
Finally, one last issue will be addressed here. In a continuum of variet-
ies, -
ences. s, so that
y.
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Over time, these peripheral varieties may shift their locations through migra-
tion, and then come into contact with each other. In such a scenario, the two
r,
of language phenomena that are typical of any contact situation involving two
distinct languages.m, over-
laid with a secondary region of language contact, which can be further com-
plicated by contact from neighbouring languages. If we hypothetically transfer
this model onto Kurmanji and Sorani in order to make it more concrete, some
areas in between Kurmanji and Sorani might be contact areas, while in other
areas we could detect a continuum of gradual dialectal changes, assuming
these two varieties have a common ancestor at all. In the next sections, I will
identify and evaluate selected grammatical features against the background of
the model sketched above.
Grammatical Features
I will mainly focus on the following grammatical features: grammatical gen-
der, case, and article systems in the nominal system; verbal agreement, verbal
stems, and encoding patterns of clausal arguments (e.g., object marking) in the
verbal system.
Proto Old Iranian had seven cases (eight with the vocative), and three gram-
matical genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter). In Middle Iranian we usu-
ally see the result of a reduction of the system. For West Iranian languages we
can reconstruct a two-case system: an unmarked direct case, and a marked
oblique case. Together with number (singular and plural)
systems among others (cf. Stilo, 2009 for New Iranian).
Case-number system of Middle Iranian
sg. pl. sg. pl. sg. pl. sg. pl.
direct case -Ø -X -Ø -Ø -Ø -Ø -Ø -Y
oblique case -X -Y -X -Y -Ø -Y -Ø -Y
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This schema, taken from Jügel (2012/: 169), displays the most common
systems that can be found in the Middle Iranian languages such as Bactrian,
Parthian, and Middle Persian. While types 1–3 allow for a distinction of case
and number, type 4 displays a pure number system.
As a rule, the oblique case sg. shows a palatal vowel. It is most likely deriv-
able from the genitive singular of the a-stems, i.e., *-ahya. The plural (some-
times only used as an oblique plural as in types 2 and 3) goes back to the genitive
plural of the a-stems, i.e., *-. In Middle Persian and Parthian the oblique
singular was lost and the oblique plural was generalised as a plural marker,
regardless of case. The only remnants of oblique case were the enclitic pro-
nouns and a few forms of free pronouns. In Middle Persian, these are an for
the direct case, and mann. The
direct case is only attested in the inscriptions, early Manichaean texts, and in a
few quotations of older text in Zoroastrian Middle Persian (Jügel, 2012/: 220).
In Parthian, the case distinction of the 1st singular is maintained throughout
the corpus: az for direct case, man for oblique case. With respect to gender,
Middle Persian and Parthian texts were composed. This is foreshadowed by
the sporadic coalescence of declension classes in late Old Persian and Young
Avestan. Pronominal case is retained in Parthian longer than in Middle Persian.
However, both preserve the enclitic pronouns as oblique forms.
In New Western Iranian, morphological case systems can be found, roughly
speaking, more in the north, while the Southern varieties tend to abandon case
with the exception of some Gorani varieties. Case and gender distinction can
be observed in Botan-Kurmanji and Zazaki. Pronouns have two forms. The 1st
and 2nd persons show an inherited suppletive paradigm (e.g., 1sg. ez vs. min),
while the 3rd ps.
In this respect, Kurmanji, Hawrami, and Zazaki are more archaic than Middle
s, we cannot be certain
about the exact pronunciation.
f. Livšic (apud Rastorgueva and Molanova, 1981: 188), and Huyse (2005: 52).
There are remnants of i- and u-stems in Middle Persian: --) and --).
In some languages, one of the two long vowels was shortened (e.g., in Avestan -, i.e.,
*-).
The ending was orthographically recycled as a marker of the end of word (Huyse, 2005).
It is unclear whether the 2nd singular had two distinct forms, i.e., for direct case, and
for oblique case. The Manichaean orthography is not conclusive, and the inscriptional
attestations are disputable (with for t, and for a).
Kurmanji ‹i› represents (approximately) the close, central, unrounded vowel, which is
written ‹› for the other varieties.
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Persian and Parthian. Southern dialects of Zazaki developed a special oblique
ending with a “kinship-r” (Paul, 2009: 548), which goes back to the oblique
forms of Middle Iranian kinship terms, e.g., Middle Persian direct singular
vs. oblique singular “brother”, Zazaki direct singular vs. oblique
singular “brother”. In contrast to the attested Middle West Iranian lan-
guages, Kurmanji and Zazaki have lost enclitic pronouns.
There are Iranian varieties which exhibit pronominal and nominal case
distinction as well as enclitic pronouns (e.g., Taleshi, Tati, Vafsi), which is also
true for Mukri and Hawrami with the exception of the 1st and 2nd persons of
the free pronouns, which are invariant (MacKenzie, 1966: 24; Öpengin, 2013:
Sections 2.3.2.5.3 and 2.3.5.1.1). Central and Southern Sorani, the Gorani lan-
guage of Gawra, and the Southern Kurdish Dialects, on the other hand,
have lost case marking completely and conform to New Persian in this respect.
The marking of grammatical gender yields a similar picture. Kurmanji
retains gender as well as case, though gender is only visible within ezafe (ez
e) constructions and in the two distinct forms of the singular oblique case,
which are still preserved in most dialects of Kurmanji (Bedir Khan and Lescot,
1970: 104). According to MacKenzie (1954: 537), the gender distinction in
Kurmanji is inherited. The same would also hold true for Hawrami, Zazaki, and
others. Again, languages in the Southeast (except for Hawrami) do not show
Cf. Cantera (2009) for a historical explanation of the oblique ending.
Such a reanalysed -ar for the oblique of kinship terms is found in Middle Persian
and still in Early New Persian. For instance, the hnme makes use of duxt besides dux-
tar “daughter”, and of pus besides pusar “son” (cf.f, 1935). Thus the preservation of
this alternation is an archaism, which allows one to distinguish these Zazaki dialects, but
it does not give any indication of when this group became distinct from its relatives.
For the Gorani dialect of Zarda, Mahmoudveysi and Bailey (2013: 30) state “Some of the
pronouns can be followed by the oblique case - (-y following vowels). The forms of the
min, second person singular to, and the third
person singular (-y)
examples in the grammatical section on pronouns (p. 31f.) or on verbal forms (pp. 43–59),
nor in the glossed text 6 (pp. 79–90). However, in the section on oblique case (p. 23),
(1pl. oblique) and (3sg. oblique), both
governed by prepositions. Note that for the Gorani language of Gawra, the authors opt
to analyse a comparable “sx”, viz. -ay, which seems to generally appear after certain
prepositions, as a part of a circumposition (Mahmoudveysi et al., 2012: 12). At least, the
1pl. could be reanalysed as or n, oblique case marking might
only be attached to pronouns of the 3rd person, as it is expected.
Mahmoudveysi et al. (2012: 12, 17).
For the Mukri variety of Central Kurdish see Öpengin (2013: Chapter 2.3.2.1.1).
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r.
(MacKenzie, 1961a: 57)s.
Languages which lie more to the South on our scale exhibit another distinc-
tive feature: an article system, which is a rather exceptional development for
an Iranian language. Sorani has a fully marked system: zero marking,-
nite sg.-aka and pl.-,g.-yak and pl.- (with phonological
m). Also Hawrami, Gorani,
s.
Considering their geographical position, it is likely that Semitic languages
like Arabic and/or Aramaic had their share in this development. Since we do
not have historical data for the development of an article system in Western
Iranian languages, it is impossible to locate this development in time.
m: in the
expression of future events, of passiveness, and in the alignment in the past
domain. For the passive voice, Kurmanji makes use of the auxiliary hatin “to
come”e, e.g., ez hatim girtin “I was taken” (lit.
“I came to take” or “I came to be taken”). In this respect Kurmanji resem-
bles New Persian, where the auxiliary šodan “to become (originally: to go)” is
used together with the past participle, e.g., man gerefte šodam “I was taken”.
On the other hand, Zazaki, Gorani, Hawrami, and Sorani display a synthetic
way of passivisation or intransitivisation by means of stem-formings:
Zazaki -i(y)-/-ey-, Hawrami -i-, Gorani (Zarda) -y- and (Gawra, past) --,
Sorani -r-, Southern Kurdish Dialects -y- or -r-.
Future sense can generally be conveyed by the present indicative. In the
north,e. Kurmanji
No such distribution is attested for the vocative in Southern Kurdish Dialects (Fattah,
2000:f.(Mahmoudveysi
et al., 2012; Mahmoudveysi and Bailey, 2013).
Article systems in Iranian languages are not unheard of, though. See, for instance,
Wendtland (2011) on Sogdian.
(Jügel, 2012/:
Section 4.3.2).
Cf. Mahmoudveysi et al. (2012: 46) “resultative, with passive semantics” and see the
explicit note in Paul (2007: 292). Gorani -- surely is a contraction of -t. This seems to
be implied by Paul (l.c.) as well.
The palatal vowels may be linked to the Old Iranian derivative ya- forming
intransitives.
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uses the enclitic particle -, besides d, e.g., ez-ê bikevim “I will fall” (see Unger,
this volume, on the future markers of Kurmanji). This is similar to Zazaki, where
the particle do is used, e.g., “you will go”. Sorani, Gorani, Hawrami, and
the Southern Kurdish Dialects do not have a distinct future expression.
A more complex feature is the alignment of core arguments in past tense
constructions of transitive verbs.
and of verbal agreement. Kurmanji and Zazaki usually display ergative con-
structions, i.e., the logical subject appears in oblique case, the logical object
in direct case, and the verb agrees with the logical object. However, several
dialects show mixed patterns like double oblique constructions. Either subject
and object show both oblique case marking, or the logical object receives an
adpositional marking,
direct object . Furthermore, verbal agreement can become opaque. These
changes point to a shift from ergative constructions towards accusative con-
structions with marked logical objects. Such a development can be tracked in
younger texts of Middle Persian (cf. Jügel, 2012/:f.). Sorani, Gorani, and
t. The use of enclitic pronouns
became obligatory for logical subjects in the past of transitive verbs. They
could occur together with a coreferential noun, forming what one may call
“topic agreement”. Such topic constructions are attested in Middle Iranian as
well (Jügel, 2012/:f.). Hawrami displays agreement of logical object and
verb, and of logical subject and enclitic pronouns, cf. ex. 1. The logical subject
and object can both be expressed additionally, cf. ex. 2.
(1) =š
see: - =:
“he saw me” (MacKenzie, 1966: 52)
(2) =m -à di -éna
girl =: see: - before
“I have seen that girl before this” (MacKenzie, 1966: 61)
See Bedir Khan and Lescot (1970: 163), and Haig and Öpengin (this volume).
Fattah (2000: 374 footnote 143) notes an occasionally attested calque from Arabic:
“je (m’en) irai”, with translated by “est allée”.
Mahmoudveysi and Bailey (2013: 43,f.) claim ergative alignment for the Gorani lan-
guage of Zarda. However, note that in their examples the logical object is never expressed
by a full noun phrase when it is indexed by personal endings. Hence, the dialect of Zarda
also seems to follow the rules set up for Sorani and the Gorani language of Gawra (see
in what follows).
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Whether the relation of the object with personal endings still is truly verbal
agreement and the relation of the subject with enclitic pronouns truly topic
agreement, remains to be investigated. The function of the various indexing
patterns might have changed over time. In Slmani-Sorani and Gorani, only
the former topic agreement of logical subject and enclitic pronouns remains.
Logical objects (as well as any other oblique constituent, at least in Sorani) can
only be indexed by personal endings if they are not expressed nominally (Jügel,
2009: 148), i.e., either or (dialectal ) “I sent
you”. The obligatory appearance of the (morphologically speaking) enclitic
pronouns is identical with the obligatory appearance of agreement markers
in non-past constructions (and in past constructions of intransitive verbs). In
both cases, the subject can be encoded by noun phrases, free pronouns, or it
can be dropped. Confer the following examples taken from Haig (2008):
(3) min -im
come: - to here
“I came here”. (Haig 2008: 279)
(4) min =m
=: see:
“I saw you”. (Haig, 2008: 279)
In ex. 3, the personal ending -im agrees with min, in ex. 4, it is the enclitic pro-
noun =m. Hence, subjects of intransitive as well as transitive verbs agree with
person markers in past tense. -
e. Since subjects of
intransitive as well as transitive verbs pattern alike,r, one
can conclude that transitive verbs pattern accusatively. Southern Kurdish dia-
-
tions and always pattern accusatively (Fattah, 2000: 284f.).
area, as is the preservation of ergative constructions. The Southern area is dis-
tinguished by the change of agreement patterns. The passive formation does
n: Zazaki, Gorani, and Hawrami
Mahmoudveysi et al. (2012: 37) note this characteristic for logical objects only.
On reanalysis of topic agreement as verbal agreement see Givón (1976).
The agreement markers of transitive verbs are rarely attached to the verb (cf. Haig, 2008:
f.).
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seem to preserve an old formation, which does not, however, permit a closer
grouping of these languages.
takes a closer look at Zazaki, Gorani, and Hawrami. If we check the features
discussed so far, we notice that Zazaki agrees in many respects with Kurmanji.
Both of them retained case and gender distinctions, and both of them lost
enclitic pronouns. The ergative construction is generally preserved in Zazaki,
as it is in Kurmanji. On the other hand, Sorani, Gorani, and Hawrami share
the article system and the peculiar agreement patterns in the past of transi-
tive verbs. Thus, we may erroneously conclude that Zazaki and Kurmanji on
the one hand, and Sorani, Gorani, and Hawrami on the other, are more closely
related. In fact, this conclusion is incorrect as it ignores other features which
clearly separate Zazaki, Gorani, and Hawrami from Kurmanji and Sorani.
The stems of Zazaki are tense stems just like in most of the Iranian lan-
guages, but the present stem is derived from a participle, i.e., from a diachronic
perspective, it is a nominal form (Gippert, 2009: 92). In fact,
distinction in the 3sg. and in some dialects also in the 2sg. of the verbal endings
even in present tense, e.g., “y(m.) do” vs. “y(f.) do”, and keno
“he does” vs. “she does” (Paul, 1998a: 84). This characteristic of Zazaki,
which reminds us of Semitic languages, is highly uncommon for an Iranian
language. The demonstrative pronouns of the far deixis are identical in form
with the personal endings of the 3sg.: o“that one”(m.), “that one”(f.). It is
possible that the gender distinction in the 3sg. results from the development of
demonstrative pronouns as agreement markers. This could also be true for the
2sg. if we can postulate a demonstrative with deixis to the place of the addressee
(the so-called “you-deixis”) as its source. Alternatively, we may assume that
pronouns became the stem of the copula.
explained by the pronominal part of the ending,
the copula. The reanalysis of pronouns as agreement markers is attested for a
number of Iranian languages. This feature clearly separates Zazaki from the
other varieties discussed here. However, the grammaticalisation of participles
as verbal stems could have happened at any given time. Gippert (2009: 96)
considers the assumption of a younger areal phenomenon possible. There
A few Iranian languages show gender distinction in the 3sg. of past tense forms.
Cf. Wendtland (2011: 86f.) for Sogdian and Pashto.
Cf. Korn (2011).
“ein areales Phänomen der jüngeren Zeit”.
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are similar formations in several non-Iranian varieties of the region as well, in
New East Armenian, and Syriac Aramaic (l.c.). Neither Hawrami and Gorani,
nor Kurmanji and Sorani would have belonged to that sprachbund.
Hawrami is very archaic with respect to the verbal stems. While most of
the Iranian languages reinterpreted the Old Iranian aspect stems as tense
stems, Hawrami still uses the inherited imperfective stem to form the pres-
ent and imperfect tense, e.g., 1sg. present indicative kar-u (MacKenzie, 1966:
37), 1sg. imperfect indicative kar-ene (p. 38). The other past tenses have the
historical verbal adjective as a base like other Iranian languages, e.g., 1sg. past
indicative kard (p. 38), 1sg. perfect indicative (p. 39). When we
look into our historical corpus of West Iranian languages,
of the Old Iranian imperfect in the Middle Persian inscriptions (Skjærvø, 1997;
Henning, 1958: f.). In later texts, no morphologically distinct imperfect
forms can be found, but it seems possible that the present tense was also used
as an imperfect (Jügel, 2012/:f.). So, the verbal form “present tense” still
bore aspectual functions and could be used as an imperfective which was
e.
x: - in
Hawrami, ma- in Gorani. In Hawrami its use is limited to some verbs in pres-
ent tense (MacKenzie, 1966: 37), while in Gorani present as well as imperfect
x. This is in contrast to Kurmanji, and Sorani,
l: Kurmanji di-, Sorani de- (besides e-). Most
(as with Zazaki),
i, Sorani,
and Gorani: a-, (-a) ma-, -(Fattah, 2000:f.).
Summary and Evaluation
Table 3 combines most of the discussed features of Gorani, Kurmanji, Sorani,
Southern Kurdish, and Zazaki. What catches the eye is that Kurmanji and
Zazaki on the one hand, and Sorani, Southern Kurdish, and Gorani on the
other, cluster together in many respects.
The Old Iranian imperfective stem (so-called “present stem”) became the non-past stem
(still called “present stem”) and the perfective stem (so-called “aorist stem”) was substi-
tuted by the Old Iranian verbal adjective in -ta- (later functioning as a past participle),
which developed to the past stem.
Mahmoudveysi and Bailey (2013: 40) note the variant mi- for present tense.
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Synopsis of grammatical features
case/gender i, Zazaki, Gorani Slmani-Sorani, Southern Kurdish
encl. pron. i, Zazaki i, Southern Kurdish, Gorani
Article i, Zazaki i, Southern Kurdish, Gorani
Future i, Zazaki i, Southern Kurdish, Gorani
passiveinherited: Gorani, Southern
Kurdish, Zazaki
newly formed: Kurmanji, Sorani,
Southern Kurdish
agreement-: Botan-Kurmanji, Zazaki -: Slmani-Sorani, Gorani
a Southern Kurdish features in both columns, because some varieties employ the inherited
y-, others the newly developed r- (cf. the section on the verbal system).
b “-” means that the personal endings agree with the logical object, “-” means that
the enclitic pronouns agree with the logical subject. Some Sorani dialects show object-verb
agreement for 3pl. objects.
features which clearly separate them from the other varieties under investiga-
tion. Thus the grouping of Kurmanji with Zazaki, and of Sorani and Southern
Kurdish with Gorani, can be taken to be an areal phenomenon. If we consider
varieties between Kurmanji and Sorani, we form the impression that they
share features of both. For instance, Mukri shows gender and case distinction
as does Kurmanji, and enclitic pronouns and an article system as does Sorani
(MacKenzie, 1961a:f., 57, 76).
Do such varieties emerge primarily as the result of contact between two
(quite dissimilar) varieties, or are they part of a dialect continuum that encom-
passes both Kurmanji and Sorani,
of gradual changes from each other? In the latter case, one could postulate
one language “Kurdish” with the dialects Kurmanji and Sorani, which are con-
nected by transitional dialects like Mukri. If on the other hand we consider
them to result from language contact, then we would be dealing with two inde-
pendent languages which converged in linguistic features due to their close
contact. Mukri could represent such a contact zone or it could even be an inde-
pendent variety in between Kurmanji and Sorani. The term “Kurdish” would
then refer to a sprachbund (cf. Fig. 4).
Be that as it may, the varieties which share features of both areas show that
there is not a clear-cut boundary between the Northern and Southern Kurdish-
speaking regions. Taking up Paul’s (1998b: 171) term of “scale of northern-
ness” s, as Blau
(1989: 330) indicated for case and gender: “Lérenciations des cas et de
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genre disparaissent progressivement”. Whether this grammatical scale can
be transferred to a geographical one requires further investigation. As a ten-
dency, languages in the Northwest show pronominal and nominal case dis-
tinction, but lack enclitic pronouns. Languages in the Southeast make use of
enclitic pronouns, but do not have other means for expressing morphological
case. However, when inserting further varieties into this grammatical scale,
the result is not straightforward, because some varieties, like Hawrami and
Vafsi, seem to be dislocated. It remains an open question, whether this is due
to migration of Sorani to the West or of Vafsi to the east and Hawrami to the
South, or,l. The fol-
lowing table shows which varieties exhibit case for nouns (“case N”), case for
free pronouns (“case Pron”), and enclitic pronouns (“encl. Pron.”). Note that
Parthian is a Middle Iranian language. On this scale it is close to Persian.
The editors of this volume brought to my attention that enclitic pronouns
could be lost in a language, but subsequently borrowed from a neighbouring
one, while it is unlikely that gender-sensitive case would reappear after it has
been lost.
feature. However, at least in the case of Sorani and Southern Kurdish on the
one hand, and Gorani with Hawrami on the other, borrowing of clitics can
be excluded. In Old Iranian two Sandhi forms of the 3sg. existed, cf. Avestan
genitive/dative - and - (i.e., *-šai and *-hai). We can be certain that these
Sandhi forms were common throughout the Old Iranian languages, but in their
further development, individual languages continued either one, or the other
Grammatical scale of case marking
Kurmanji,
Zazaki
Taleši,
Tat i,
Vafsi
Hawrami,
Mukri
Parthian Bakhtiyari, Persian,
Southern Kurdish
case N + + + – –
case
Pron
+ + rd ps.) sg.) –
encl.
Pron.
– + + + +
a The Gorani language of Zarda exhibits case for nouns and for 3rd ps. pronouns (see fn. 16),
and enclitic pronouns. It is comparable to Hawrami. The Gorani language of Gawra belongs
into the same column as Southern Kurdish and Slmani-Sorani.
b In Mukri it is the 3sg. alone, that is marked for case (Öpengin, 2013: Section 2.3.5.1.1).
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set of pronominal forms. Southern Kurdish and Sorani continued *-hai-/-y,
while Gorani and Hawrami continued *-šai-š (like Persian). Thus Sorani and
Southern Kurdish preserved enclitic pronouns independently from Hawrami,
Gorani, and Persian.
The investigated features do not imply genetic relations, but some of them
speak in favour of long contact of the respective varieties. In this paper, we also
addressed the issue of chronology of grammatical changes. As mentioned in
the introduction, the investigated varieties are not attested at the time when
the respective changes took place.
languages that are attested in the relevant periods. The problem with this
approach is that the New Iranian languages under consideration need not have
developed with the same pace, as becomes evident when we compare closely
related languages such as English, Dutch, and German. Nevertheless, in the
absence of direct testimonies, I use the attested Middle Iranian languages as
indicators for the chronology of grammatical changes, and, as long as there are
e,(which them-
selves are not easy to pin down) will serve as benchmarks for the grammati-
cal development (cf. Fig. 5). Needless to say, the chronology presented here is
merely hypothetical.
Since there are no traces of grammatical gender in Middle Persian and
Parthian, it is certain that this grammatical category disappeared before these
two languages were attested, i.e., before the 3rd c. in the case of Middle
Persian and before the 1st c. in the case of Parthian. In the 3rd/4th c. ,
remnants of case are still found in the texts. In the case of Parthian, a case
distinction is preserved for the free pronoun of the 1sg. throughout its attesta-
tion. Enclitic pronouns remain as well (in Middle Persian and Parthian) and
are used as oblique counterparts of the free pronouns. After the 3rd c. , the
Middle Iranian evidence increasingly suggests that a process came to an end
which had already started in the Old Iranian period: the transition of the ver-
bal system with stems marked for aspect to one with stems marked for tense.
In Middle Iranian languages, (most
common is present --, past - in Middle Persian) appear. Most modern
“passive” x. Sorani -r- is considered
an innovation due to analogy (MacKenzie, 1961b: 84). The shift from an erga-
tive to an accusative construction seems to have gradually proceeded after the
4th c. in Middle Persian, Parthian, Bactrian, and Sogdian (Jügel, 2012/: 462).
According to the Middle Persian data, it seems likely that initially, agreement
changes into account.
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of verb and object was replaced by agreement of verb and subject, before a
new way of marking the logical object was grammaticalised.
When we relate the New Iranian data to the Middle Iranian observations,
we can set up the following hypothetical chronology. All those varieties which
preserved grammatical gender cannot be direct descendants of Middle Persian
or Parthian. So we can make a distinction in Western Iranian languages, which
goes back to the Early Middle Iranian period at least. In Hawrami verbal stems
did not shift from aspect to tense stems. If Hawrami developed with compara-
ble pace, then it would have become distinct around the 4th c. . At approxi-
mately the same time, ergative constructions began to become ambiguous so
that they could be reinterpreted as accusative constructions. Hawrami, Gorani,
Sorani, and Southern Kurdish would become distinct if they developed with
comparable pace. However,
respect. In a prototypical ergative construction, the logical object agrees with
the verb by means of personal endings. In another step, topic agreement of
the logical subject with coreferent enclitic pronouns evolves, which later is rein-
terpreted as verbal agreement. This stage seems to be represented by Hawrami.
The forerunner of the corresponding construction in Slmani-Sorani, Gorani,
and several other West Iranian varieties would have been similar to the
Hawrami one. However, object-verb agreement is abandoned. The northern
varieties kept the ergative construction to the present day, though dialectal
tendencies towards abandoning the ergative construction can be observed in
Kurmanji (cf. Dorleijn, 1996; Haig, 2008:f.), generally by double-oblique
constructions and the loss of object-verb agreement. The remaining features
cannot be temporally localised on the basis of the Middle Iranian data. They
only allow us to set up subgroups (e.g., future formation in the north). As a
If the verb still appears as a participle, agreement can also include grammatical gender
and number.
Chronology of grammatical changes
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whole, one gets the impression that the varieties under investigation have
been in close contact for a long time, and more or less positioned in the same
relations on a Northwest-Southeast scale along the Zagros mountains.
A conventional tree-model assumes a common proto-language, and a series
of discrete splits yielding the descendants of that common ancestor. However,
in reality splits are seldom discrete, as speech communities will generally
remain in contact after a split, even if they no longer constitute a single lan-
guage community, r. This is almost
certainly the case for the languages under consideration here. Therefore,
description of the historical developments (cf. Figures 2–4). It allows us to
assume a proto language that divided, the formation of several varieties as a
new language, which may later divide again,
ad-, sub-e.
-
opment. The picture outlined here is just a glimpse of the complex linguistic
co-relations. Nevertheless, I think that the investigation of selected gram-
s. The
comparison with Middle Iranian data gives us an idea of the possible temporal
localisation of Kurdish grammatical changes. Connecting such information
with lexical and phonological analyses of the respective varieties, together
with a history of migration, would allow us to answer questions on the linguis-
tic unit of “Kurdish”.
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Published with license by Koninklijke Brill
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the
brill.com/ksa
Kurdish Studies
Archive
Regional Variation in Kurmanji: a Preliminary
Ergin Öpengin |
Postdoctoral researcher and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft fellow at the
Department of General Linguistics, University of Bamberg, Germany
ergin.opengin@uni-bamberg.de
Haig |
Professor of Linguistics at the Department of General Linguistics,
University of Bamberg, Germany
y.haig@uni-bamberg.de
Abstract
Investigation of the regional variation in Kurmanji, especially its varieties spoken in
Turkey, has been almost entirely neglected in the existing literature on Kurdish. In addi-
tion to earlier isolated examinations of Kurmanji dialects (cf. MacKenzie, 1961; Ritter,
1971, 1976; Blau, 1975; Jastrow, 1977), native-speaker researchers have recently provided
a substantial amount of dialect material across the Kurmanji-speech zone. However, a
methodologically-informed -
tion is yet to be undertaken.
Kurmanji-internal variation into major regional dialects, based on lexical, phonological
y.
Keywords
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Cihêrengiya zimanî ya navxweyî di kurmanciyê de:
tesnîfeke seretayî ya zaravayan
Di nav xebatên li ser zimanê kurdî de, heta niha, vekolîna cudatiyên devok û zara-
vayên kurmanciyê, bi taybetî ewên di nav sînorên Tirkiyeyê de, hema bi temamî hatiye
pitguhkirin. Ji bilî çend xebatên serbixwe yên ptir li ser zaravayên kurmancî (wek
MacKenzie 1961; Ritter, 1971 û 1976; Blau, 1976; Jastrow 1977), di nav van salên dawî
de vekolerên kurdîziman qewareyeke mezin a dane û materyelên ji gelek zaravayên
kurmanciyê berhev kirine. Lê belê, hêj ev çavdêriyên berbelav bi rengekî metodolojîk
nehatine nirxandin ku tesnîfeke zaravayan jê bi dest bikeve. Ev meqale dil dike tes-
nîfeke seretayî ya zaravayên serekî yên kurmanciyê pk bike li ser bingehê daneyên
peyvî û fonolojîk û rêzimanî yên li pênc deverên barrojhilatê Tirkiyeyê berhevkirî.
][
(
.
Introduction
Like any other natural language, Kurmanji encompasses a considerable spec-
trum of regional variation. Yet within academia, regional variation in Kurmanji
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has been almost entirely neglected. There are many reasons for this, not the
least the obstructive policies of successive Turkish governments in their refusal
all. More generally, much of the Kurmanji speech zone has been character-
ised by insecurity and violence over the past decades,
the region a hazardous undertaking, generally for mainstream aca-
demic funding.
e. Neither of the two major
available studies of regional variation in Kurdish, MacKenzie’s two volumes
on Kurdish dialects (MacKenzie, 1961, 1962), and Fattah’s (2000) extensive sur-
vey of Southern Kurdish, treats Kurmanji in any detail. Fattah deals entirely
with Southern Kurdish (Kelhuri, Feyli, etc.), while MacKenzie focussed on
Central Kurdish (Sorani); his brief treatment of Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji)
was entirely restricted to the Badini dialects of Iraqi Kurdistan. The bulk of
the Kurmanji speech zone, covering most of southeastern Turkey and parts of
Syria and northwest Iran, has thus remained uncharted territory. More recent
overviews (McCarus, 2009) likewise treat Sorani in considerable depth, but
have almost nothing to say on Kurmanji. Most recent work on Kurmanji essen-
tially adopts the Bedir-Khan standard, and makes only passing reference to
regional variation (e.g. Thackston, 2006). A few isolated studies of individual
varieties have been published (cf. Ritter, 1971, 1976 on Midyat; Blau, 1975 on
Amadiya and Djabal Sinjar; Jastrow, 1977 on Van), the Kurdish Institute of Paris
has produced numerous short sketches, word lists, and collections of proverbs,
etc. from local varieties (cf. Enstîtuya Kurdî ya Parîsê, 2010), and an increas-
ing number of native-speaker enthusiasts working on “their” local dialect (e.g.
Kömür, 2003) have brought much interesting data to light. But we lack any
kind of synthesis for integrating these observations into a larger overall pic-
ture, cast in a more consistent linguistic framework.
Our objective with this contribution is thus to provide an initial classi-
i, based on lexical, phonological and morphosyntactic
s. Given the sheer number of
speakers, and the territorial extent of the Kurdish speaking region, the present
r, later revealed as Erik Anonby, for his meticu-
lous review, which prompted us to revise the original version in several respects. We would
also like to thank Musa Ekici, Musa Aydn, Serdar Ay, aziye ahin for providing us with the
data from their dialects. Finally, we thank Nils Schiborr and Maria Vollmer for their assis-
tance with the map and with a number of other formatting matters. The authors alone bear
the responsibility for the remaining errors and shortcomings.
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coarse-grained. Nevertheless, the
implications of this work go beyond a mere exercise in linguistic taxonomy;
the patterns discerned can shed considerable light on the historical processes
such as population movements and cultural contacts that have shaped the
Kurmanji speech community over the last 1000 years. While we certainly
Kurmanji, we believe that the framework presented here forms a useful pro-
this direction.
Our focus is solely on the variation internal to those varieties that are con-
sidered to constitute “Kurmanji”. Within the entirety of “Kurdish” (see Haig
and Öpengin, this volume, and Jügel, this volume), Kurmanji itself constitutes
a relatively well-delineated group; with the exception of some of the south-
easternmost varieties of Kurdish such as Sur (MacKenzie, 1961: 150), ana-
Kurmanji or not (see Haig and Öpengin, forthcoming,-
ences between Kurmanji and Central Kurdish). There is in fact considerable
variation internal to Kurmanji, but it is no more than would be expected for
any natural language spread across a comparable geographic region. Although
mutual intelligibility between Kurmanji varieties has not yet been systemati-
cally investigated,
years is that Kurmanji-internal dialectal variation is seldom a serious obstacle
s. The dialects of the
extreme southeast (our Southeastern Kurmanji) and those of the extreme
northwest (our Northwestern Kurmanji) show the greatest divergence from
the others, and mutual intelligibility between these peripheral dialects and the
others may in fact be restricted; this remains to be investigated.
Today, the existing dialect divisions are progressively blurring due to mas-
sive population movements out of Kurdistan, with accompanying language
shift and language attrition (see Öpengin, 2012), and also to the emergence of
a trans-national urbanised Kurdish culture fuelled by the internet and satel-
lite television. It is therefore a matter of considerable urgency to document as
much as possible of the rich regional variety embodied in the dialects before
they disappear entirely.
t, speakers may in fact be resorting to some kind of
inter-dialectal, neutral variety when communicating with speakers from other regions, creat-
ing the impression that mutual intelligibility is higher than is actually warranted. Whatever
the actual mechanisms involved may be, however, we have found little evidence for serious
impairment of face-to-face s. The same does not
hold, however, between Zazaki and Kurmanji.
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The paper is organised along the following lines. In the second section, we
introduce the main geographical divisions that form the basis for our analysis,
and outline data sources and means of data compilation. In the third section,
variation:s.
In section four, we deal with variation in morphosyntax,
s, both
the Kurdish case. The raw data that form the basis of our analysis are compiled
in the Appendices.
Methodology and Data
A Note on Transcription
At this point a note on the transcription used is in order: when referring to a
particular word in Kurmanji,t,
we use the standard Roman-based orthography originally developed by Jeladat
Ali Bedirkhan at the beginning of 1930s, disseminated in the Hawar magazine
(cf. Hawar, 1998; Bedir Khan and Lescot, 1991), and widely used in contempo-
rary written Kurmanji, as the neutral pan-regional representation for a word.
When discussing actual dialect forms, we deploy the transcription based on
the philological tradition of Iranian linguistics (e.g. Mahmudveysi et al., 2012),
but we add n. The transcription
used here is broad and generally phonemic; for more phonetic detail on indi-
vidual regional varieties see Jastrow (1977), Kahn (1976), MacKenzie (1961) and
Haig and Öpengin (forthcoming.) The most important conventions employed
are the following:
Transcription Description/ symbol
a open, front, unrounded vowel, may be phonetically long [a, a:]
æ near-open, front, unrounded vowel [æ]
i short, central, unrounded vowel, varying degrees of height and
backness
e open-mid, front, unrounded, vowel (there is considerable variation
in realization) []
close-mid, front, unrounded vowel, may be phonetically long [e, e:]
closed, front, unrounded vowel, may be phonetically long [i, i:]
u short, close-mid, slightly centralised, rounded vowel []
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(cont.)
Transcription Description/ symbol
close, back, rounded vowel, may be phonetically long [u, u:]
ü close, front, rounded vowel, may be phonetically long [y, y:]
o close-mid, back, rounded vowel, may be phonetically long [o, o:]
open-mid, back, rounded vowel, may be phonetically long ]
superscript h indicates aspiration of obstruents
voiceless pharyngeal fricative []
voiced pharyngeal approximant/fricative
j
š voiceless post-alveolar fricative
voiced post-alveolar fricative
voiced uvular fricative
central trill
Main Regional Divisions
yet exist, there is a considerable body of perceptions regarding regional varia-
tion, and many speakers are familiar with terms such as “Serhed”, “Badini”, or
“Botan/Boti”, etc., as designations of regions exhibiting purportedly character-
istic linguistic features. To what extent speakers’ perceptions of dialectal divi-
s,
cultural/perceived social realities, is a moot question (cf. Preston, 2003), but
although the match of speakers’ perception to measurable linguistic diver-
sity is not perfect, it is also not entirely random. Therefore, we have initially
s, based on our
consensus of Kurmanji speakers regarding dialect divisions.
are our points of reference when presenting the data, and we will in fact con-
clude that they do represent a reasonably well-founded division of Kurmanji
into regional dialects. Having decided on the major regions to sample, we
proceeded to compile standardised data sets (see below) from a speaker (and
sometimes more than one speaker)s. The data sets
form the basis for various kinds of analysis, each providing a related, but dis-
tinct, measure of linguistic distance.
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g:
Southeastern dialect region (abbreviated ). This region includes the
Hakkâri Province of southeastern Turkey and Duhok Province of Iraqi
Kurdistan, and includes what is traditionally called the Badini dialect.
We have taken the dialect of emdinli (Kr.n), a district in the
southeast of the Hakkâri Province, as the representative of .
author of this article, as a native speaker of the dialect, male, 29 years-old,
provided the data.
Southern dialect region (). This region includes the central-southern
section of the Kurmanji speech zone, including the Kurmanji of Mardin
and Batman Provinces in Turkey, as well as sections of rnak (Kr. irnex),
some districts of Diyarbakr (Kr. iyarbekir) and anlurfa (Kr. Riha)
provinces in the Kurdish region in Turkey as well as in Hasaka Province
in Syria and the region of Sincar in Iraq. The data for this dialect came
from a 28 year-old educated male from the Mardin region.
Northern dialect region (). This dialect is commonly referred to as
“Serhed” Kurdish, and in Turkey includes the Provinces of Mu (Kr. Mû),
Ar (Kr. Agirî or Qerekilîs), Erzurum (Kr. Erzerom) and some districts of
the Provinces of Van (Kr. Wan), Bitlis (Kr. Bilîs/Bedlîs), Bingöl (Kr. Çewlig)
and Diyarbakr. The informant is a 40 year-old educated male from Varto
(Kr. Gimgim), who grew up in the district but has been living outside the
language area for the past ten years.
Southwestern dialect region (). This region includes Adyaman
(Kr. Semsûr), Gaziantep (Kr. Entab) and the western half of anlurfa
Provinces of Turkey as well as the northern section of the Aleppo
(Kr. Heleb) Province in Syria. The data was collected from a 25 year-old
educated male from a village in Gaziantep.
Northwestern dialect region (). This region includes the Kurmanji
varieties spoken in Kahramanmara (Kr. Mera), Malatya (Kr. Meletî) and
Sivas (Kr. Sêwaz) provinces. The data was collected from a 25 year-old
educated female from the Elbistan district of Kahramanmara.
Standard Kurdish is generally associated with the dialect of Botan region,
centred on the town of Cizre (Kr. Cizîr), which would be placed between our
and , and it does in fact show characteristics of both. But although
r. is the abbreviation for Kurdish.
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Standard Kurdish is loosely based on the Kurdish of a certain region, it is not a
regional dialect on a par with the others discussed here, as its function as the
basis for the emergent cross-regional standard (e.g. in print media and satel-
lite )s. The dynamics of the development of
Standard Kurdish are playing themselves out in a discourse space that cannot
be reduced to purely geographic terms, and we therefore refrain from assigning
Standard Kurdish to any particular geographic region.
The map in Figure 1s, and
the origins of the speakers from whom the data were collected.
We would like to emphasise the provisional nature of the graphic represen-
tation at this stage. First, we are only able to estimate the extents of the respec-
tive dialect regions;
to make a more precise localisation possible, and we have therefore left some
of the Kurdish-speaking regions unassigned to any particular dialect (e.g. west
of Diyarbakr). Second, there are regions, e.g. southwest of Lake Van, which
appear to lie at the intersection of more than one dialect region; again, resolv-
ing the complexities here would require much sampling than we
have been able to accomplish, and we defer this to later research. Finally, there
is a profound problem inherent in this kind of research, particularly in view of
the mobility of the Kurdish community and increasing exposure to other vari-
eties of Kurmanji in the last decades, namely that of variation within a speak-
er’s speech (cf. Kahn, 1976 on variation in Kurmanji phonology). MacKenzie
Map of major regional dialects in Kurmanji
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(1961) “pure” dialect speak-
ers. In fact, the ideal of the “pure dialect speaker” is probably an illusion of
the analyst, and the precisely localisable isoglosses of traditional dialectology
likewise (see Auer, 2005 for a critique of the traditional dialectological notion
of isogloss).
Data Types
From each region, a, which are out-
lined below and available in the Appendices. The data was collected through
earlier, gathered with speakers who were living in or near Paris in September–
October 2012.
The Basic Lexicon
from neighbouring languages than others. These words constitute a relatively
stable core vocabulary which, all other things being equal, is less likely to be
replaced over time than other parts of the lexicon. Typically, this vocabulary
includes words for body parts, salient and frequent natural phenomena, verbs
for basic activities such as “eat”, pronouns, and numerals under 10. A list of 200
such items was originally compiled by the American linguist Morris Swadesh,
later reduced to 100 items (the “Swadesh List”, cf. Swadesh, 1955). The Swadesh
list has been widely applied in a technique known as “glottochronology”, a (very
controversial) technique in historical linguistics. The underlying assumption is
that vocabulary items are replaced at a constant rate across time. Therefore,
if we compare the Swadesh vocabulary list in two related languages, we can
calculate how many items are shared, r, which yields a
rough indication of the time-span that has elapsed since the two languages
split from their common ancestor (Swadesh, 1959). Glottochronology has been
severely criticised (cf. Dixon, 1997: 35–36; Campbell, 1998: 177–186; Fox, 1995:
279–291), and few would now take the calculation of absolute dates seriously.
In particular, the assumption of a constant rate of vocabulary replacement has
been disproved in a number of studies. However, as a method for quantifying
“relative” historical distances between related languages or dialects, it retains
its value. Furthermore, most linguists concur that some reference to the con-
cept of basic or core vocabulary is relevant for assessing degrees of relatedness,
and more sophisticated applications have since been developed (cf. Heggarty,
2012 for an overview). Comparison of the basic lexicon has thus since become
one of the tools in the linguists’ toolkit for comparing languages, though the
(see
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Anonby, 2003, 2004/2005 for an application of basic lexicon comparison to
Luri and Southern Kurdish).
For our investigation, we used a basic vocabulary list, but rather than use
the original Swadesh list, which was based entirely on the intuition of Morris
Swadesh, we have adopted the Leipzig-Jakarta list (Haspelmath and Tadmor,
2009). The latter results from a large-scale cross-linguistic investigation of loan
words, and is a list of those word-meanings which emerged as the least likely
to have been borrowed across the languages in the sample. It is thus an empiri-
cally validated/established representation of “basic lexicon”. The list used in
this study comprises the 100 items of the Leipzig-Jakarta list, supplemented by
s, yielding
159 in total. The full list can be found in the Appendix A.
Phonological Variation
In this list we have included 21 items which are known to show a high degree
s, noting their pho-
(see Appendix B).
Lexical Variation
variants across Kurmanji (see Appendix C).
This list includes 14 basic verbs conjugated for 2nd and 3rd person singular in
indicative present and simple past, as well as in imperative and subjunctive
moods (Appendix D).
Analysing Variation in Lexicon and Phonology
Variation can occur in a number of distinct domains. In this study, we focus on
three types: (a)
concepts (lexical variants); (b)
related words (cognates); (c) x. Each kind of data
has its own advantages and limitations, which is precisely why it is expedient
s. If an analysis based on results
“cognate” is a conservative one, reserved for words which are
under investigation. In other studies, “cognate” may also include loanwords which have com-
parable form and meaning in the related languages under investigation (cf. Gooskens, 2007).
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from one method is replicated by the results of an independent method, then
d. Below we outline the methodol-
(lexicon and phonology), and in sec-
tion four we take up variation in morphosyntax. In the conclusions we discuss
some of the shortcomings,
methodology.
Assessing Lexical Variation
We use the term “lexical variants” to refer to distinct lexical items expressing
the same meaning. With “distinct lexical item”, we mean that to express any
particular meaning in the word list, two dialects use words that can be plau-
sibly assumed to have distinct historical origins, i.e. which are not cognates.
words with the same assumed historical origin (cognates), which are dis-
cussed below. It would in fact be possible to collapse the distinction between
these two data types (e.g. by working with Levenshtein distances, cf. Gooskens,
2007), but we have opted to preserve the division at this stage. The division will
become clearer in our discussion of actual examples.
In order to assess levels of lexical variation, we conducted a pair-wise com-
parison of each item in the basic vocabulary list from each regional variety
with each other variety, and calculated the percentage of the basic lexicon
which each pair shared. Thus the percentages in the Table 1 refer to the per-
centages of the total of 158 items in our basic vocabulary list.
Percentages of shared lexical items (cognates) in the 158-item word list across the
“lexi-
s”. We see this basically as a disagreement in terminology; the conceptual dif-
ference between cognates and non-cognates, which is behind our distinction,
uncontroversial, regardless of the labels chosen to refer to it.
s.
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Table 1 are actually
lower than what one could expect for supposedly mutually intelligible dialects.
For example, Girdenis and Maiulis (1994: 9), working with the Swadesh list on
Slavic languages, show that Bulgarian and Macedonian share 86% and Polish
and Russian 77% of their basic vocabulary. Similarly, Dyen et al. (1992) show that
shared basic vocabulary between Spanish and Italian on one hand and French
and Italian are at 80% and 79% respectively. A naï-
ures with ours for Kurmanji would suggest, for example,
between and (80%, cf. Table 1) is comparable to that between Spanish
and Italian. However,
s. First, our investigation is not based on the Swadesh
list,g/Jakarta list, rendering direct com-
parison invalid. Second, we have been extremely conservative in considering
two words to have the “same” meaning. Thus a relatively slight semantic shift
between cognate words in two dialects (e.g. “nose”“nostril”
us to treat those two dialects as having distinct words for that item on the list,
thus lowering the overall percentage of shared items.-
lytic procedure also impact on the results and it is often not possible to see
s. What Table 1
provides, then, is not an absolute measure of distance, which would be directly
comparable to other investigations, but a measure of relative historical dis-
tance among the varieties considered in this investigation.
s, the “closest” dialect pairs are
Northwestern Kurmanji () and Southwestern Kurmanji (), which
share 87% of items in the word list, and Northern Kurmanji and Southwestern
Kurmanji (), likewise with 87% shared common lexicon. The compari-
son of shared lexical items in fact already yields a broad
into three main dialect groups: the three western and northern varieties ,
Table 1 that the “Kurmanji dialects them-
selves are not mutually intelligible, but that speakers have learned how to communicate by
using interdialects”. This claim is based on the questionable assumption that there is some
“mutual intelligibility”. In fact, exist-
-
ences and intelligibility is “nt” (Gooskens, 2007: 461); a better match is obtained
through phonetic distance based on Levenshtein distances; this is obviously a promising
avenue for further research. However, other factors also impact on mutual intelligibility, and
actually testing them turns out to be an exceedingly complex task. It is therefore not clear
how the reviewer is interpreting the range of values in Table 1 (72–87%) in terms of mutual
intelligibility. Given the rather obscure nature of the construct “mutual intelligibility”, we
Table 1 in this manner, but simply to take them as an
e.
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and cluster together, in distinction to Southeastern Kurmanji ().
Intermediate between these two is Southern Kurmanji (), with between 77
and 80% shared similarities to all other varieties.
Table 2 gives a selection of the data, showing examples of variation and
s. The lexical items that set one dialect
apart from the others are in italics.-
nations emerge, depending on the lexical item. For instance the words ber
“stone” and p “hair” set apart from all other dialects; the word baš
“good” bundles and s,
which share as equivalent the word rind; the word mezin “big” bundles the four
which has gir as the corresponding
word. t, therefore, yield congruent
isoglosses. However, and pattern as the ends of
a southeast/northwest continuum, showing distinct lexical items, while the
intermediate dialects align for some items with , for others with , and
in a few cases exhibit unique forms (e.g. “rain”).
main mechanisms. The most important is semantic shift: the cognates undergo
(or a change in one
variety, while in another the meaning remains unchanged), leading over time
to distinct meanings. As an example, consider the word for “nose” in , n.
Examples of lexical variants in Kurmanji dialects
Stand.K
kevir ‘stone’ ber kevir kevir kævirkævir
por ‘hair’ p pov por por por
‘hit’ lxistin lxistin lxistin lxistin
zarok ‘child’ zaok zar zar
poz ‘nose’ poz poz poz
baš ‘good’ baš baš rind rind rind
ling ‘leg’ ling ling nig
baran ‘rain’ baran baran baran baran
per ‘wing’ pepepe pil
mezin ‘big’ mezin mezin mezin mezin gir
a We use the symbol [æ] to indicate a more open realization of Standard Kurdish [], which is
rendered in Standard Kurdish orthography as (as in Standard Kurdish ez “I”). If a dialec-
tal realisation of this vowel is close to the Standard Kurdish one, we transcribe it with .
However, the two-way distinction in our transcription is certainly an
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In , the word for “nose” is poz (cf. Table 2). However, the word does in
fact exist in (and probably in other dialects), but it has a more specialised
meaning than just “nose”, namely “nostril”, hence it is not included in this list.
Further examples of semantic shifts include the words for “stone”: in all dia-
lects it is kevir except for ,ber. In a cognate of kevir does
exist, but it has undergone a semantic shift to “sf”. Similarly, the word
for “hair” is p in but por in all other dialects. The word por exists in
“lock of hair above the forehead” while,
in turn, the word p
“the hair on the body of human beings”.
Many similar examples can be found outside of the basic vocabulary (cf.
Appendix C). For example, the verb exists in and with the
meaning “learn/teach”, but in , it refers to “bringing up (a child)”. The word
pez is used as the lexical variant of “sheep” in , but in all other dialects
pez is the generic term for all types of sheep. Similarly, the word “dog” in
and ,kudik in ,-
cally to refer to a “young dog, whelp” in and . The word “child” in
is found in all the other dialects, but with the conceptually-related mean-
ing of “small”. Finally, the word girs, but only in
is it the general-purpose adjective meaning “big”, while in other dialects
it bears a semantic nuance akin to “bulky”.
One might conjecture that variation caused by semantic shifts would be less
detrimental to mutual intelligibility because the relevant words are available
to the other speakers,t.
varieties, whether dialects or languages. With increasing time of separation of
related varieties, semantic change may cause cognates to diverge considerably
in their meanings. Consider the Germanic languages English and German; in
deer, which has the cognate in German Tier “animal”.
Likewise English thatch has the German cognate “roof”, and English fowl
has as cognate in German Vogel “bird”.
-
bouring languages, mainly from Arabic and Turkish but sometimes also from
Armenian, Persian and Sorani (t
item has been “borrowed” from the latter into Kurmanji). However, most of
the clear instances of borrowing occur outside the basic lexicon, as we have
e. One of the reasons that appears to diverge most from
the other Kurmanji dialects is that it shares many words from neighbouring
Sorani (e.g. ber “stone”, bezir “lost”, sotin “burn”, “melon”). Whether these
are actually “borrowings” or shared retentions that have been retained due to
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the relative proximity with Sorani, can probably not be established with any
certainty. It should be noted that they are found throughout the region
(areas like Çatakin, Van), so are certainly not the result of recent direct contact
with Sorani.
In ,c, including common
verbs such as “speak”, “get tired”, “learn”, or
šuxulandin “work”, fairly obviously triggered by the long-standing coexistence
with Arabic-speaking groups in the region. In ,
obvious,t, for example expressions
like belli kirin “learn” based on a Turkish word belli “obvious”, or the wide-
spread use of Turkish verb-forms with - coupled with Kurmanji light
verbs, amply attested in Le Coq’s texts published in 1903 (Le Coq, 1903). The
“potato” g: kar-
tol in is from a Slavic language, while in is presumably via
Turkish. However, while language contact has contributed to lexical variation
in Kurmanji, it is noteworthy that few items on our list of basic vocabulary
(borrowings include
sert “hard”, “sand” and “thigh”, from Turkish, and “to stop”
š “work” from Arabic)
assumption behind the Leipzig-Jakarta -
side the basic vocabulary.
The most divergent dialect with regard to lexical variation is , which
shares less than 80% of its basic lexicon with the other dialects. We should
note that our includes what is commonly referred to as Badini, the
Kurmanji of Iraqi Kurdistan. As such, it exhibits many lexical items not found
elsewhere in Kurmanji, such as axiftin “say”, šiyan “be able”, “potato”,
“be tired”, bezir/berze “lost”. These items are often considered the hall-
mark of Badini, y. However,
we would like to emphasise that there is no sharp dialect border correspond-
ing to the national border Turkey/Iraq, and that the Kurmanji of Southeastern
Turkey and in the area across the Iranian border shares most of the lexical and
grammatical features of the neighbouring varieties of North Iraq. We there-
fore refer to a broader unit “”, which includes both Badini and the neigh-
bouring Kurmanji varieties of southeastern Turkey and across the border in
Iran (cf. Fig. 1 above). In this context it is all the more remarkable that some
items in , such as “knee” and “now”, are shared with Sorani, and
šæ kirin “can, be able” is reminiscent of the archaic form šiyan. Whether
these words are hints of an old-layer of migration from further southeast, or
retentions that happen to be shared by these two varieties, cannot be readily
decided on the basis of the little data available.
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In sum, the instances of variation observed in the comparison of the basic
lexicon are typical examples of natural processes of language change: semantic
shifts, and borrowing.n,
e, and ultimately lead to
the emergence of distinct languages. There is, however, no generally accepted
“languages”. However, the concept of “language” involves not
only matters of lexical and morphosyntactic similarity, but also meta-linguistic
issues of perceived unity and shared cultural heritage, as discussed in Haig and
Öpengin (this issue), and it would be premature to engage in that discussion
here.l, and
fairly rough, gauge of historical distance among the dialects investigated. The
n: the geograph-
ically most peripheral dialects, and , are also those that share the
least cognates (72%), which can be read as indicating greatest time-depth of
separation. -
ered below.
Regular Sound Correspondences
Cognates are words in related languages and dialects that are considered to
have been inherited from the same word in the common ancestor language
(cf. Campbell and Mixco, 2007: 33). In this section, we investigate a selection
of cognate words, both within and outside the basic vocabulary, which exhibit
systematic phonological variation (Appendix B). Issues of semantic shifts are
ignored in this section. Most of the systematic phonological variation found
in these words concerns the vowel segments,
(2010: 142) conclusions from her investigation of Bulgarian dialects. This is of
course precisely what one would expect in a comparison of closely related
varieties/dialects:s, i.e.
e, with unstressed
vowels the least stable of all. Consonants, on the other hand, are relatively
stable across related dialects, as Proki (2010) s. Again in keep-
ing with what is known about comparisons of closely-related varieties, we
(Proki and Cysouw, 2013), and most of them concern vowels. Table 3 provides
a selection of the correspondences that can be observed.
The Stand.K vowel a, phonetically [a:], is realised distinctively in as a
mid-low back rounded vowel ]. Özsoy and Türkylmaz (2006: 304) suggest
e, although a change of this nature could
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e, and it
d. In accor-
dance with the principles of chain shifts in vowel systems (Labov, 1994), this
change is accompanied by a lowering of e [] to a [a:] in . Accordingly,
the items seen in Stand.K and other dialects as agir e” and kevir “stone” are
seen as and kavir. This latter change,(or æ), is also seen in but only
and rarely elsewhere (see fn. 10).
The Stand.K , phonetically [u:], is fronted into , phonetically [y:], in .
Examples contrasting and forms are the following:
d.K. word xwîn “blood” s,
namely the fronting of the vowel [u:], and the delabialisation of the consonant cluster [xw-],
which appear to have interacted in interesting ways. The forms of this word in the various
dialects (cf. Table 4) cannot in fact be predicted by any of the rules given in Table 3.
Regular sound correspondences in Kurmanji dialects
Stand.K
a [a:] agir e’ [a:] [a:] [a:] [a:] ]
e []/[æ] dev ‘mouth’ [] [æ][] [] [a:]
[u:] ‘walnut’ [y:] [u:] [u:] [u:] [u:]
o [o:] ‘today’ [u:] [o:] [o:] [o:] [o:]
VbV [-b-] ‘there was’ [-b-] [-b-] [-b-/-v-] [-w-] [-w-]
vav ‘water’ w v v v v
‘salt’ x xw xw
xw xw xw/x
a A reviewer questions the validity of this example due the morpheme boundary between
he-and -bu. We acknowledge it as a possible special case, but we retain it in the the table
because it is a high-frequency item for which we have reliable data for all dialects. Other
words with inter-vocalic -b- generally follow the pattern indicated (see examples further
below), though as in most cases of phonological change between closely-related varieties,
there may be lexical exceptions and register-determined variation (cf. for example the dis-
tribution of diphthong and monophthong [u:] in words like down in Scottish English,
described in Smith et al., 2009).
b Note that this change in vowels and sporadically word-initial
(æzman “sky”) and word-medial (mæzin “big”) vowels too. The relevant environment is quite
possibly the open syllable (h pronunciation of Stand. K. dev
“mouth”), but this requires more detailed investigation.
c Unlike in much of West Iranian, [v] and [w] are distinct phonemes in most of Kurmanji, cf.
Jastrow (1977), MacKenzie (1961: 30–44) and Haig and Öpengin, forthcoming.
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Stand.K
‘far’
‘bird’
‘walnut’
This change is followed by raising the close mid o to , so “sun” of
is realized as in . In the western half of the Badini dialect zone (e.g.
Duhok), the change has gone further by derounding the vowel to , e.g.
“far” r, or third singular past of “be”, which is b. Derounding also
emzinan-dialect of (e.g. “bitter”, “blood”). In
t, for example in , the word
for “turtle” k (cf. Table 4). The fronting (and in some cases derounding) of
is thus a much more complex process than can be adequately treated here,
s, but it seems to be more or less
restricted to .
does not have the voiced labiodental fricative phoneme /v/ of Stand.K,
which has merged with the approximant /w/. Furthermore, the consonant
group [xw] [x] in . Note that these two
features distinguish also Central Kurdish (Sorani) from Kurmanji, showing the
intermediary position of between Sorani and Kurmanji.
The lenition of Stand. K /b/ to [w] intervocalically is one of the most salient
features of and . In , it is also characteristic for /b/ to weaken to
[v] intervocalically. Thus it seems that we are dealing with a general process of
b-lenition, and , and which has proceeded farthest in
the latter two dialects (bw). Examples of lexical items from our data are
shown below:
Stand.K
hebek ‘one piece’
zebeš ‘melon’ –zebeš zeveš zeweš –
The lenition of [b] is frequently observed with the present-tense stems of verbs
beginning with [b-di-, or the
bi-. In this environment, the stem-initial [b-] may weaken
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further to become a front rounded vowel , for example [de:m] “I say”, from
Stand.K. di-bêjim via lenition of the intervocalic [-b--w-
from Karakoçan)[b-] of present-stem
verbs in the Gorani dialect investigated by Mahmoudveysi et al. (2012: 31).
Other Changes in Phonological Form
other than regular phonological rules: dialects may develop distinct mecha-
nisms for accommodating syllable complexity,
s, leading to changes in the forms of related words, or there
may be sporadic shifts in the phonologies of isolated words (metathesis or
dissimilation, for example). Some examples of this kind of variation are illus-
trated in Table 4.
Stand.K
ziman ‘tongue’ ziman ziman ziman ziman
‘blood’ xwn xn xn xün
‘bone’ hesthesti hæst
‘louse’ speh sipspisp
zarok ‘child’ bik zaok zar (dl)
‘ant’ mro mirjolek mori (gra)
‘sister’ xweh xweng x x
diran ‘tooth’ didan dinan diran diran
heyv ‘moon’ heyv hv hv
doh ‘yesterday’ duhu doh do dihu do
‘beard’ ih
‘turtle’ k k k (eq) k
(i)k, sometimes
(misleadingly)x.
ending in -k in one dialect, while in another dialect the cognate noun lacks
the -k; cf. “bone”, or zarok “child”.
e, and its origin is also a puzzle;
x.
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In some words,
systematise. The word for “tooth” had the forms dnd’n or in Parthian.
It shows interesting developments of the medial consonant cluster. In and
-d-, in -n-, while , and Stand.K-r-.
There seems little point in postulating directionality of change here; rather,
s.
Similarly,-rg-“wolf”
all dialects (as gur) except for (gurg).
word-initial consonant clus-
ters, as shown in the dialect forms of the Standard Kurdish ziman “tongue”,
“louse” and “star”. No dialect tolerates an initial [zm-] cluster,
strategies are employed for handling it: in an initial vowel is added (i.e.
izman or ezman), and the resulting syllable also receives an onset through the
insertion of a glottal stop (w),
yielding n. also favours this strategy for [sp-], though the onset is
provided by [h] rather than a glottal stop. In the other dialects, [zm-] is bro-
ken up by an epenthetic vowel (ziman etc.). The strategies for dealing with the
initial cluster in sp, on the other hand, are quite varied, and both and
in fact tolerate the cluster in this word. Finally, the cluster st- (as in the word
for “star”) is retained in and and avoided in other dialects by inserting
a central vowel. Thus, a given dialect may not follow a systematic strategy of
handling the initial consonant clusters.
The pharyngeal consonant [] is found in a number of native Kurmanji
words, especially in initial position, for example [æft] “seven” in .
Similarly, loan words from Arabic may retain their pharyngeal consonants.
However, in
unrounded vowels (or of the entire syllable) of a number of words, mostly of
native origin, presented in Table 5.
words in and s. It is altogether absent in and
, though in the latter, similar to the dialects with pharyngealised vowels,
the initial stops are deaspirated. It is typical for that deaspiration of stops
s, and is perceptually less salient than
in the other dialects. Again, to
Sorani Kurdish, which lacks the aspirated/non-aspirated distinction on stops
y.
In some cases it can be linked to the “ejective” character (lack of aspiration) of the initial
consonant, which appears to be re-interpreted as a pharyngeal characteristic, and then
spread across the entire syllable. However, other words with a pharyngeal vowel quality
such as mar “snake”, or “mare” (from ) lack an original unaspirated initial conso-
nant, so we lack an explanation for the source of pharyngealisation here.
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Pharyngealisation in Kurmanji dialects
Stand.K
‘eye’ [ta:v] [t [tv] [ta:v] [t
pehn ‘wide’ [pa:n] [pen] [pn] [pn]
tehl ‘bitter’ [t [tel] [tl] [tl]
h’ [ma:si:] [ma:si] [mi:] [ma:si:] ]
mar ‘snake’ [m
Demonstrative particle in adverbs
Stand.K
‘tonight’ ewšew ev ev hišev hišev
‘today’ eworo ro hiro hiro
Finally, we should mention a lexico-grammatical feature that distinguishes
s, namely the form of the demonstrative particle, as
lexicalised in some adverbs. As shown in Table 6, the demonstrative ev “this”
is lexicalised as - in and , along with Stand.K., while the and
have it as hi- and in its form ew which it shares with Sorani.
-
tion, focussing on lexical variants and phonological variation in related words
(cognates). As mentioned earlier,s,
which formed the basis for data collection, is based on shared folk perceptions
and our own knowledge. However, our impression after evaluating the data is
that on the whole,d,
s,
l. While it is evident that the
basic lexicon shows a high degree of shared items, outside the basic lexicon the
s, some of which are
captured in the data compiled in Appendices B and C.
Table 7s, showing that within
-
ent ways.
evidence of a dialect continuum, with the intermediate dialects , and
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, exhibiting greater commonalities with other dialects than the periph-
eral varieties and . -
ing from , and from ,
dialect divisions.
Variation in Morphosyntax
Due to time restrictions, we were unable to compile comprehensive data
x. In this section, we will illus-
trate grammatical variation for only three of the main dialects, namely ,
and , on an east-to-west line. and , on the other hand, generally
s,
which is consonant with the intermediate position of the and dia-
lects as outlined above. In this section we treat only a selection of the actually
attested variation in morphosyntax; the reader is referred to Haig and Öpengin
(forthcoming) for more extensive discussion and illustration of these and addi-
tional features.
Lexical isoglosses (lexical variants and cognates) in Kurmanji dialects
Item
‘stone’ ber kevir
‘lost’ bezir winda
‘much’ hind qas
‘hungry’ birsbir
‘burn’ sotin šewitandin
‘arm’ Mil P
‘like’ Wek Mina
‘all’ Hemi giš(t)
e’ Agir Ar
‘today’ ewro/ro Hiro
‘eleven’ Yanzdeh de-w-yk
‘leg’ Ling uni
‘now’ Niha wsta
y’ M meš
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The direct/oblique distinction in all pronouns is retained in all dialects.
2nd person plural. As shown
below, the form (shared also in northern varieties of Sorani Kurdish) is
t, especially in its oblique form,
although it is possible that they all derive from the same etymological source.
Stand.K
hun/we ‘you.pl.dir/obl’ hing/hingo win/we wun/we
i, used also as an adnomi-
nal possessor. In Stand.K and most dialects of Kurmanji,
is used as an adnominal possessor only under the condition that its corefer-
ent antecedent is the subject of the same clause (i.e. binding principles). In
, however,
person (singular/plural) possessor, regardless of whether it is coreferential
with the same-clause subject. Thus, a clause like rind-e (brother-of
self/rgood-is) “his brother is good” is possible in , but impossible
in or (which could only have baš-e for the same meaning).
e, as the rule for coreferential
xwe
syntax (Haig, 1998).
Verbal Agreement in the Present Tense
tenses. However,
paradigms. Table 8 presents the main areas of variation, disregarding the varia-
tion caused by regular sound changes and certain other details.
The comparison of the data shows that is the most divergent of the
dialects in this respect: has an additional number distinction in plural
persons (1pl -) while the other dialects have a shared plural ending -in for
Though Dorleijn (1996) reports syncretism in the second person singular between
Stand.K. tu (direct) and te (oblique) in the Diyarbakir variety.
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all persons. Similarly,
singular ending is a salient dialectal feature setting apart from all other
dialects.
All dialects indicate oblique case on singular feminine and plural nouns, and
s,
marked for case. Here we only mention two possibilities: oblique case via a
(nan, ) “bread, food” (direct and oblique), or via raising of the stem
vowel (nan, n); see Haig and Öpengin (forthcoming) for details. In the ezafe,
all dialects basically preserve distinct forms for masculine, feminine and plural
(though in there is some collapsing of the system), and this remains one
of the major features that distinguishes all varieties of Kurmanji from Sorani.
However,
varieties of Kurmanji. Table 9 shows the distribution of the oblique marking of
masculine singular nouns,e:
Variation in case marking, and plural forms of the ezafe
Stand.K
plural ezafe -n -d/-t --
sg. masc. oblique
marking
vowel-raising/
s
vowel-raising vowel-raising/
none
A further unique feature of is an additional ending in 3rd person singular -itin. We
currently have no explanation for this form.
Verbal person marker paradigms in Kurmanji dialects
pl
Stand.K -im --e -in -in
-im -- - -in
-im -e --in -in
-im -e -i-in -in
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Some dialects have grammaticalised particular tense, aspect and mood cat-
egories,r. For
example, while standard Kurdish does not have a grammatical expression of
progressive aspect (i.e. indicative present is used for all aspectual values),
e, involving an ezafe after
the clausal subject, e.g. ez-ê nan-î di-xo-m (-.. food-..
-eat.-) “I am eating food”. Further features which show categorial
tense-aspect-mood-
ent forms of the future particle (see Unger, this issue), the use of ezafe in com-
bination with participles for forming present perfect tense, the presence of a
past habitual particle da (Unger, this volume), and a clitic marker for indicat-
ing clauses expressing intention. The distribution of these features across the
dialects is shown in Table 10.
tense-aspect-mood system of dialects
Stand.K
progressive aspect ++
present perfect with ezafe +
future tense particle d/=d==
past habitual particle da
intention/prospective particle =ke
Kurmanji dialects vary considerably in the kinds of adposition that are used
in various functions. For example, the indirect objects of verbs such as “say”
are marked in by a verbal particle -e, and they occur post-verbally. In
and , on the other hand (as representative of Central and Western Kurmanji
respectively), indirect objects are marked by circumpositions such as re/ra
“to”, and they occur pre-verbally. In the northern and westernmost dialects, the
circumposition is often reduced to just the postpositional element. Note, how-
ever, that all dialects also permit indirect objects to be simply placed after the
verb, with no adposition (this is in fact the commonest option with the verb
“give”). A similar pattern is found with expressions of “with”: in a preposi-
tion (li)gel is used, while in and a circumposition as bire/ra is used.
The complete absence of these two circumpositions (ire and bire) in
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from the rest of Kurmanji, and
uniting it with Central Kurdish.
Proximal Clitics
The demonstrative system of Stand.K includes determiners, as ev “this” and
ew “that, those” together with their oblique versions v/v “this”, w/w “that”,
van “these” and wan “those”. Most of the Kurmanji dialects, however, use also a
clitic element attached to the proximate nouns (e.g. “that book” vs. ev
e “this book” and ev ene “these books”
and plural forms, as below:
Stand.K
Proximal clitic – -e/-ene – -a/-ana
ek is shared across Kurmanji, the plu-
in is seen principally (if not exclusively) in ,-
ating it from both and . This is one of the features that was adopted
into Standard Kurdish,m, but
it is interesting to note that it has in fact a narrow distribution in the spoken
language.
Conclusion
Among the regional varieties considered here, the most divergent is ,
encompassing what is generally known as Badini. It has the lowest number of
lexical items in common with the other dialects, and also shows the highest
number of divergent features in the morphosyntax. In a number of respects,
i,
e. However, that is
not the whole story, because also shows typical features of Kurmanji (see
below), including very robust case marking of the oblique case, consistent
maintenance of gender distinctions, and the aspirated/non-aspirated distinc-
tion on voiceless obstruents. These three features (among others) are com-
pletely lacking in Sorani, and thus speak against a view of Kurdish that would
see Sorani and Kurmanji as simply two ends of an unbroken pan-Kurdish
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dialect continuum. The four varieties of Kurmanji considered here, however,
can be considered to form a fairly typical dialect continuum, each fading into
the areally contiguous region with no obvious sharp boundaries.
Looking a little closer at , we can discern a number of features in the
morphology that can reasonably be considered rather archaic: the richer set
of verbal agreement markers (cf. Table 8)
case-marking and gender, additional subjunctive forms lost in many of the
other dialects, the consistent application of the ergative construction, and the
use of non-canonical subjects for certain kinds of expressions (cf. Haig and
Öpengin, forthcoming). In general, these are features that bespeak of a rela-
tively stable speech community, with a long history of unbroken transmission
and the comparatively small impact of adult second-language learners, who
generally tend to simplify morphosyntax (see McWhorter, 2005; Trudgill, 2011
x). The other dialects, on
the other hand, are all characterised to one degree or another by loss of these
richer morphological features. It is therefore conceivable that the other dia-
lects, over the course of the northwestern expansion of Kurmanji speakers into
Anatolia, became a lingua franca for speakers of other languages, in particular
Neo-Aramaic, Arabic, and Armenian, and the impact of these “shifters” was
an overall decrease in morphological complexity of the Kurmanji spoken in
these regions. This remains of course speculative, but the presence of the addi-
i, particularly of
Central Anatolia, is an absolutely typical result of a shift scenario, in this case
from Armenian.
-
ies: , and , the three that are the most distinct from each other.
e, and can probably be considered tran-
sitional zones: exhibits features of both and , while is also a
transitional region between and .
The geographically intermediary position of is also paralleled linguisti-
cally in that it shares features both with and . seems also to have
(e.g.
oblique marking, ezafe forms, Tense-Aspect-Mood system), which is hardly
surprising if we consider that the speech zone of the dialect is geographically
(i.e. there are few natural barriers to inhibit mobility) and that over
centuries, the dialect must have served as the lingua franca for non-Kurdish
speaking speech communities in the region (Arabic, Aramaic and Armenian;
see Noorlander, this issue,Neo-Aramaic). In the same
vein,e, especially in
its lexicon but also in verbal morphology and phonology.
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At the other end of the dialect continuum there is , the Kurdish spoken
in regions such as Elbistan. This dialect shows a number of highly divergent
features, but it has been almost entirely neglected in previous research, and is
sometimes even stigmatised among educated Kurds. We have only noted some
of its features here (see Doan, 2003 for some additional information), and
dialect in comparison to the others, apart from the relatively isolated position
of this dialect group within the totality of the Kurdish-speaking world. More
research on is an urgent desideratum within Kurdish linguistics.
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Appendices
Leipzig-Jakarta list while the remaining
59 items are added within the frame of this research. The transcription is phonemic,
and follows the conventions outlined above (on p. 146). The abbreviations (m) and
(f) stand respectively for masculine and feminine grammatical gender found in all
Kurmanji dialects (though this piece of information has not been noted for all of the
items in the list), while (dir) and (obl) stand respectively for the direct and oblique
case forms of the pronouns. The abbreviation (n.a.) indicates that the relevant dialect
data is not available for the current analysis.
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Item
no
Meaning
emdinli)
(Midyat) (Varto)
(An)
(Elbistan)
agir (m) agir (m) agir (m) ar (m) (m)
nose (f) bhvil (f) poz (m) poz (m) poz(f)
to go nn (f ) ynnyn
water aw (f) av (f ) av (f) av (f) (f)
mouth dew (m) dev (m) dev (m) dev (m) (m)
tongue (m) ziman (m) ziman (m) ziman (m) (m)
blood xn (f) xwn (f) xn (f) xn (f) xün (f)
bone hstik (m) hæst (m) hest (m) hesti (f) hast (m)
tu/te ti/tæ tu/te tu/te tu/tæ
root rih (m) a (m) kok (f) kok (f ) kok (f )
to come hatin hatin hatin hatin
breast sng (m) sing (f) sing (m) sng (m) sing (f)
rain baran (f) baran (f) šil (f) baran (f) (f)
ez (dir)/mi(n)
(obl)
ez (dir)/min
(obl)
ez (dir)/
mi(n) (obl)
ez (dir)/mi(n)
(obl)
æz
(dir)/mi(n)
(obl)
name naw (m) nav (m) nav (m) nav (m) (m)
louse hisp (f) speh (f) sip (f ) spi (f)? isp (m)
wing pe (m) pe (m) pe (m)
bask (m)
(human)
pl (m)/bask
(m)
pil (f)
h/meat gošt (m) gošt (m) gošt (m) gošt (m) gošt (m)
arm/hand mil/dest (m) çeng-mil
(m)/dest (m)
p (m) mil
(m)/dest (m)
p (m)/dest
(m)
p (m)/dæst
(m)
m (f) m (f) m (f) m (f) meš (f)
night šew (f) šev (f) šev (f) v šæv (f)
ear guh (m) guh (m) go (m) guh (m) gu/guik (m)
neck sukur (f ) sukur (f) hist (m) histi (m) usti (m)
far dür dr dr dr dr
to do/make kirin/kirin kirin/çkirin kirin/kirin kirin/çkirin kirin/çkirin
house mal/xan (m) mal (f)/xan
(m)
mal (f)/
xan (f)
mal (f)/xan
(m)
(m)/m
(f)
stone/rock ber (m) kevir (m) kevir (m) kævir (m) kævir (m)
bitter t t t t tu
to say gotin gotin gotin gotin gotin
tooth didan (m) dinan (m) diran (m) diran (m) didon (m)
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Appendix A (cont.)
Item
no
Meaning
emdinli)
(Midyat) (Varto)
(An)
(Elbistan)
hair pir (f) pov (f)/
por (m)
por (m) por (m) por (m)
big mezin mezin mezin mezin gir
one (y)kyek yek ykk
who? k k/k kk/k k/ke
ew/
(e)wi-(e)w
ew/w-wew/w-whew/w-wæw/
(æ)w-(æ)w
to hit/beat ldan lxistin lxistin lxistin lxistin
leg/foot ling/p (m) ling-paq
(f)/p-ling
(m)
p (m)/ling
(m)
nig (m)
(pied/leg)
nig (foot) (m)
horn šax (f ) stirih (m) qo (m) qo (m) ustru
this ev/ew-that ev-va/ew va-v/hew æv/æw
mas (f ) mas (m) masi (m) (m)
yesterday duhu(n) duho do dihu do
to drink xarinewe vexwarin (ve)xwarin vexwarin
black eš eš eš eš
navel nawik (f) navik (f) navik (f) nvk (f) (f)
to stand awestan sekinandin sikinandin Sekinn sækinn
to bite leq dn gez kirin kit kirin/
gez kirin
gæz kirin gæz kirin
back pišt (f) pišt (f) pišt pišt š
wind ba (m) ba (m) b (m) ba (m) (m)
smoke dkel (f) dman (f) d (m) d (m) tu/tuman (f)
what? iiiii
child (kin
term)
bik zaok (f) zar/zar zar/zark (m) dl (m)
egg hlik/hk (f) hk (f) hk hk (f) h-f
to give dan dan dayn dan n/d
new nü nteze nö no
to burn
(intr.)
sotin šewitandin šewitandin šewitandin š
not ne na na na
good baš baš ind/baš rind ind
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Appendix A (cont.)
Item
no
Meaning
emdinli)
(Midyat) (Varto)
(An)
(Elbistan)
to know ann zann zann zannn
knee ok (m) kabok (m) ok (m) ong (f) ok (m)
sand xz (m) qm (f) qm (f) qm (f) qm
to laugh kenn ken (m) kenn kenn kænn
to hear bihstin/
hay j bn
is kirin/
isandin
bihstin bihstin bstin
soil ax (f) ax (f) xwel (f) ax (f) (f)
leaf pelik/belg (m) pel (f) pel (f ) pel (f) ilo (f)
red sor sor sor sör sur
liver cerg (m) kezeb (f) cger (f) kezew (f) cgær/kezew
(m)
to hide šartinewe vešartin vešartin vešartin vešartin
skin/hide erm (m) erm (m) erm (m) erm (m) erm/post
(m)
to suck mtin miandin miandin min/
miandin
mitn/min
to carry kan hilgirtin/
kišandin
kišandin kišandin kišandin
ant mrü (f) mro (f) mirjolek (f) mori (m) gra (m)
heavy giran giran giran giran giran
to take birin birin birin birin birin
old kewn kevin kem kævin kævin
to eat xarin xwarin xwarin xarin
thigh qale (f) kelef (f) ht (f ) qae (f ) qale (f)
thick tür qalin/str qaind qaling qaling
long dr dir dir dir dir
to blow pif kirin peqandin pif kirin pif kirin puf kirin
wood dar (f) dar (f) dar (f) dar (f) (m)
to run ben baz dan evnevn
to fall ketin ketin ketin ketin ketin
eye aw (m) (m) (m) av (m) (m)
ash xl (f) xwel (f) xwel (f) ari (f) xæl
tail dülik (f) dv (m) boik (f )/
dl (f)
bo (f) ddoik (m)
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Appendix A (cont.)
Item
no
Meaning
emdinli)
(Midyat) (Varto)
(An)
(Elbistan)
dog e (m) e kik (m)/
se (m)
kik (m) sudik
to cry/weep giriyan girgirn gir kirin girn
to tie girdan girdan girdan girdan gir
to see dtin dtin dtin/dn dn dn
sweet širnrnrnrin rn
rope bendik
(m)/kindir (f)
a (m)/wrs
(m)
bend (m) ben (m)/
kndir (f)
bæn (m)/
kindir (f)
shade/
shadow
sber (f) sih (f) s (f) s (f) s (f)
bird cücik (f) k (m) ik (f ) k (f) ik (f)
salt x (f) xw (f ) xw (f) xw (f) xw (f)
small kike pik pikik/kk
wide feeh fere fere
star str(k) (f) stik (f) histrik (f) hstirk (f) istewrik (m)
in a/(di)
a/li
hindur
di (hindir)
da
hundir/d
da
hundir/dæ
hard req hišk šk sert set
to crush/
grind
peliqandin piriqandin peliqandin peliqandin pnandin
daughter/
girl
ki(ik) (f) keik/ke (f) qz/kekeik (f) kik (f)
lie dir (f) de (f) direw (f) derew (f) derew (f)
sky (m) aman (m) æ(m)
sun/day o (f) o/ro (f) o() (f) o/o (f) o/ (f)
morning spde (f) sibeh
(f)/ševeq (f )
sib (f) siw (f) siw/sib (f)
moon hew (f) heyv (f) hv (f ) hv (f) hv (f)
man miro(v) (m)/f zilam, mr,
nsan
mrik/meriv mr/mermr/mær
arrow kwn (f) kevan (f) kevan (f) kevan (f) kuvan
all emi emi gi/gišt/hemgik gišt
here re li vir/li v
d/ev der
li vira/vira li vir/virlæ vir/æv
dær
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Appendix A (cont.)
Item
no
Meaning
emdinli)
(Midyat) (Varto)
(An)
(Elbistan)
there were li wir/w
d/ew der
li wir/w
dera/wira
li wir()/
wira
læ w/læ w
der/æw/w
der
hing win hn hn hn
now nuke niha niha/nika niha w
woman in/inik (f) prek (f); jin
(f)
in in in(ik)
today eworo ro hiro hiro
if ku/heke go/eger a qas/a-waqa ko/eger ko/ægær
sister xüšk (f) xweh (f) xweng xayng xik/x
wolf gurg (m) gur (m) gur (m) gur (m) gur (m)
beard idn (f) ih (f) (m) rihi (m)
easy senahhesanrihet qole rihat
sheep mih (f) mih (f) pez (m) mihi (f) m (f )
one ykyek yek ykk
two du du/dido du/dudu didu/du (du)du
three ss/siss/sissis/s(si)s
seven ewt eft eft eft hæft
eight ešt hešt eyšt eyšt hæšt
nine nehe neh neh nehe na
ten dehe deh deh dehe da
eleven yanzde yazdeh yonzde de w yk da w yk
twelve dnzde duwanzdeh donzde de w didu daw dudu
seventeen hevde hivde ivde de w eft daw u hæft
thirty sih ssss
fourty il el il el a
pnce pncpncpncpnc
ninety nehwrt nod nod nod nod
hundred ed ed sid sed sed
thousand hizar hazar ezar ezar hæzær
turtle küse (m) kso (m) kus (f ) eq-reqesl
(m)/f
ks (m)
work šol (f) šoil (m) (m)/
šiol (m)
šuil (m) šoul (m)
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Appendix A (cont.)
Item
no
Meaning
emdinli)
(Midyat) (Varto)
(An)
(Elbistan)
end dümaykdawdawson (f )
pa (f)
song
hedgehog (m) o (m) ši (f) i (m) ui (m)
eyebrows milank (f) migl biang biang (f) bi (f )
leg ling (m) ling p (m) nig (m) uni (f)
tipl (f) tilih (f) tilpi (f) p/til
rooster dqil (m) dk (m) dk (m) dk (m) dk (m)
owner xudan (f)/m xwedxwed (m) xadxod
father bab (m) bav bav bav (m) (m)
thirsty tntttt
hungry birsbe bir bir bir
how it awa ito ita ito
how kut e er (n.a.) i
that way wet halo aha ha/han/
hana
wer
thus ht wlo wer werga/
wergan
ho/hoyna
that hind evqas/
wilqas
a qas/
a-waqa
viqes/wiqes vaqæs
much/that
many
then hinghingw ax/
hing
w a wng()/w
a
hindhingqas hn
like wek/wekwekæ mna/fena mna/nola mn/wek/
n
next to, by lali/li nik (li) cem/
(li) ba
li hinda/
li kleka
min/ba/cem
li cem/li ba/li
hinda
v/hind
side qer (f) kev/klek/
e x
klek klek k
yet hta hhna hn hn
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Phonological Variation
Item
no
Meaning
father-in-
law
xezür xezrxezrxezr xenzr
walnut güz gz gz gz guz
far dür dr dr dr dr
eye aw av
snake mar mar
bitter tatel
pan pen
sister xüšk xweh xweng xeyîng xk
salt xxwxwx x
to read xandin xwendin xwendin xandin x
small bik pik pikik/kk
a little pek hindik/
piek
hindik/pi
ek
hindik ekî/
hindik
it’s possible dibt dibê diwe diwe debi
s/he says dibjt dibêjê diwdiwê deb
because of (ji)be(r) ji boy wilo se-a/
sewa
sêwa
wê/me?na
wê
sæw/
sæwa (te)
kabab kebab kebab kiwaw (f) kebab
one
unit/single
eb/
ebek
eb eb/ew ewek awek
water aw av av av
night šew šev šev šæv šæv
to come hatin hatin hatin hatin
to know ann zann zann zannn
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Lexical Variation
Item
no
Meaning
lost bezir wunda wenda wenda wæ
uncle’s wife inmam (f ) jinam jinap amoi n /x
father’s
brother
mam (m) am ap ap
mirror qd (f) neyk (f) neynik (f)
wet tešil/ti (dar) šil/ter šil/ter šil/tn
stable hel/page (f) kox (f) tewle (f ) axir (f ) (m)
cradle landik (f) derg (f) bk
(derg=be
bek)
derg (f) dærguš (f)
throat ewk (f) qiik (f) qiik (f ) qiik (f) gæwri (f)
watermelon šimt (m) šebeš (m) zevešzeweš (m) qerpz
melon gundore (f) petx (m) qawin kelek (m) xx
potato swik (m) petat (f) kartol (f) patet z (f) petik (f )
tomato temate (f) bajan (f) temats(f) temutos/
tem irtos (f)
to
understand
tgehištin fm kirin
to learn fr bn h(n) bn/h
lik bn
belli kirin
to be able to šiyan karn karn kann šæ kirin
biriyan/
xilas bn
xelas
bn/qedehan/
xilas bn xelas bn tewa bn
to collect xir kirin/
kom kirin
dan hev d/
dan hevd/
tov ki-n/
kom kirin
top kirin/
to pa hev
kirin
beref kirin
to spend xerj kirin xerj kirin xerj kirin xerj kirin xerj kirin
to send hinartin/
kirin
yandin šandin šandin šandin
to look at
smt/smb
ber xo dan/
l westan
myzandin mze kirin/
nn
nrn mz kirin
to burn sotin šewitandin šewitandin šewita ndin šæwitandin
to deceive lbandin xapandin xapandin xapand in
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Appendix C (cont.)
Item
no
Meaning
to sleep niwistin azandin aketin aketin ætin/
ræ dn
to speak axiftin šitelandin qise dan deyn kirin deyn kirin
to hold helgirtin ahištin/hilg-
irti n
hilgirtin helgirtin hilgirtin
to get tired šeq bn betandin westandin westiyan wæn/
on
to wait for xo awi
(yk) girtin
li hviy/
benda bn
li hviya/
li benda
li bend
to walk we n mešandin va n meši-yan men/yrm
bn
to want wyan/
xwastin
viyan/
restricted usage
xwastin xwas-tin (no
viyan)
(no
viyan)
to hang helawstin daleqandin darda kirin bi dar xistin
to help har kirin ar kirin al kirin n.a. kirin
change gon (n.a.) degišandin/
guheandin
gihr-tin g(uh)otin
(bigoim)
squeeze guwištin (n.a.) givtin guvištin givištin
reach gehištin (n.a.) gtin (n.a.) gtin
verb paradigms
Stand.K Meaning Present
Indicative
Imperative
Past Present
Subjunctive
bn ‘be’ (y)e be bü bt
n/yn‘go’ dit here bit
hatin ‘come’ dihtwere hat biht
kirin ‘do’ diket bike kir biket
birin ‘take’ dibet bibe bir bibet
dan/dayn‘give’ didet bide da bidet
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Appendix D (cont.)
verb paradigms
Stand.K Meaning Present
Indicative
Imperative
Past Present
Subjunctive
xistin ‘drop’ dixt bxe xist bixt/bxt
ketin ‘fall’ dikewt bikewe ket bikewt
ann ‘bring’ dint bne na bnt
xwarin ‘eat’ dixot bixo xar bixot
azan ‘sleep’ diaztzzzt
dann ‘put’ dadint dandana dant
gotin ‘say’ dibt begot bt
dtin ‘see’ dibnt bibne dt bibnt
verb paradigms
Stand.K Meaning Present
Indicative
Imperative
Past Present
Subjunctive
bn ‘be’ (y)æ bæ bb
n/yn‘go’ di here her
hatin ‘come’ twere hat wer/new
kirin ‘do’ dikbikæ kir bik/nek
birin ‘take’ dibbibæ /nebæ bir bib/neb
dan/dayn‘give’ didbidæ da bid
xistin ‘drop’ dixbixæ xist bix
ketin ‘fall’ dikevbikevæ ket bikev
ann ‘bring’ tn /nanbne anbn /nen
xwarin ‘eat’ dixwbixwæ xwar bixw
azan ‘sleep’ diazih aze aziha az
dann ‘put’ dideyne deyne deyna deyn
gotin ‘say’ dib begot b
dtin ‘see’ dibnbibne dt bibn
man ‘stay’ dimnbimne ma bimne
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Appendix D (cont.)
verb paradigms
Stand.K Meaning Present
Indicative
Imperative
Past Present
Subjunctive
bn ‘be’ y/e be bbe
n/yn‘go’ tee hee hee
hatin ‘come’ twere hat were
kirin ‘do’ dike bike kir bike
birin ‘take’ dibehere behee bir behee/bibe
dan/dayn‘give’ dide bide da bide
xistin ‘drop’ dixne bixne xist bixne
ketin ‘fall’ dikeve bikeve ket bikeve
ann ‘bring’ tne bne anbne
xwarin ‘eat’ dixwe bixwe xwar bixwe
azan ‘sleep’ adikeve akeve aket akeve
dann ‘put’ datne dayne dandayne
gotin ‘say’ dibne/
diwne
bibne/
biwne
dt/dbibne/
biwne
dtin ‘see’ dib/duwbib/bje got/go bib/bje
verb paradigms
Stand.K Meaning Present
Indicative
Imperative
Past Present
Subjunctive
bn ‘be’ e/ye be wbe
n/yn‘go’ dare here here
hatin ‘come’ twere hat were
kirin ‘do’ dike bike kir bike
birin ‘take’ diwe biwe bir biwe
dan/dayn‘give’ dide bide da bide
xistin ‘drop’ dixe bixe xist xe
ketin ‘fall’ dikeve bikeve ket bikeve
ann ‘bring’ tne ne an ne
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Appendix D (cont.)
verb paradigms
Stand.K Meaning Present
Indicative
Imperative
Past Present
Subjunctive
xwarin ‘eat’ dixe bixe xar bixe
azan ‘sleep’ adikeve akeve aket akeve
dann ‘put’ dtine dne dandne
gotin ‘say’ diwbiwgot biw
dtin ‘see’ diwne biwne dbiwne
verb paradigms
Stand.K Meaning Present
Indicative
Imperative
Past Present
Subjunctive
bn ‘be’ æ/yæ bæ bbi
n/yn‘go’ tæri here heri
hatin ‘come’ twere weri
kirin ‘do’ dækæ bikæ kir biki
birin ‘take’ dæbæ bæ bir bae
dan/dayn‘give’ dædi bidæ bidi
xistin ‘drop’ txi bixæ xist bixi
ketin ‘fall’ dækævi bikævæ kæt bikævi
ann ‘bring’ tni wnæ wni
xwarin ‘eat’ dæxæ /
dæxwæ
bixwæ xwær/
x
bixwi
azan ‘sleep’ dækævi kævæ kæt akævi
dann ‘put’ dtni dnæ dni
gotin ‘say’ (ew) debbiwgo(t) biw
dtin ‘see’ dæbni biwnæ dbiwni
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Published with license by Koninklijke Brill
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the
brill.com/ksa
Kurdish Studies
Archive
Badini Kurdish Modal Particles dê and da:
Procedural Semantics and Language Variation
Christoph Unger
Researcher and translation consultant with International, Germany
christoph-kuelvi_unger@sil.org
Abstract
In this paper I review a semantic analysis of the Badini Kurdish modal particles dê
and da (Unger, 2012). This analysis claims that the modal particles are procedural indi-
cators in the sense of Blakemore (2002) triggering cognitive inferential procedures
relating to assessing the speaker’s commitment to the veracity of the communicated
content and to the speaker’s reliability for making true claims about the eventuali-
ties described. Since audiences interpret utterances for optimal relevance following
(Sperber and Wilson 1995), these minimal clues for constraining
the pragmatic interpretation process are enough to guide audiences arriving at the
temporal, modal and aspectual interpretations intended by the speaker. I argue that
the standard Kurmanji particle wê
dê.
dialects with respect to the indication of future time and with reference to possible but
non-factual worlds.
Keywords
Kurdish
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Pirtikên raweyî yên dê û da di kurdiya badînî
de: semantîka prosedûrî û cudatiyên zimanî ya
navxweyî
Di vê meqaleyê de ez vedigerime ser tehlîleke semantîk (Unger, 2012) a ptir li ser
pirtikên raweyî (modal particles) yên dê û da di kurdiya badînî de. Îdiaya vê tehlîlê
ew e ku ev pirtikên raweyî nanên prosedûrî ne, li dû pênaseya Blakemore (2002),
ku rê li ber prosedûrên hi yên bimenakirinê vedikin ku ew prosedûê didin
derheqê pabendiya axêverî bi rastbûna muhtewayê axiftinê û derheqê pêbaweriya
axêverî ji bo derbirîna gotinên rast li ser encam û muhtewayê axiftinê. Ji ber ku guhdar
bêjeyan bi awayê herî zêde pêwendîdar û êmtirîn hewlan rove dikin
(Sperber û Wilson, 1995), ev serben û nanên mînîmal yên destnankirina çeperên
proseya rovekirina mercî bes in ku guhdar bikarin pê bigihine wan roveyên demî,
raweyî û aspektî ku mebesta axêver in. Herwiha diyar dibe ku pirtika wê ya kurman-
ciya standard prosedûrên hinek cudatir ji yên dê ya badînî feal dike. Ev cudatî ye li pit
cihêrengiya zaravayên kurmanciyê ya di nandana dema tê de û di amajeya bi cîhanên
mumkin lê ne waqi’î.
). (
)(
) (
.
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Introduction
Closely related linguistic varieties of Northern Kurdish (also called Kurmanji)
time. Standard Kurmanji refers to future time with a modal particle wê/dê/ê
in conjunction with verb forms based on the present stem, and carrying the
bi-. Apart from its use in expressing future time reference,
the modal particle wê/dê/ê is also used in several conditional forms which are
lacking in Badini Kurdish. In Badini, reference to future time is achieved with
the modal particle dê in conjunction with the present stem, but without the
bi-. There is also a modal particle da in Badini that is used in
the same construction with dê (that is, in conjunction with verb forms based
x) which can be used
to express the conditional meanings of those Kurmanji conditional forms lack-
ing in Badini, as well as other aspectual information. This latter modal particle
is absent in (standard) Kurmanji.-
ences in the expression of future time and conditional verb forms are system-
the modal particle wê/dê/ê in Kurmanji and the corresponding modal particle
dê in Badini. This analysis is based on Unger’s (2012) detailed analysis of the
semantics and pragmatics of the future tense marker dê as well as the modal
particle da in Badini Kurdish. The analysis is cast in procedural terms: it claims
that the function of these items is to put the mind of the audience in a state
in which a small set of certain inferential heuristic procedures is activated. In
this paper I will expand this analysis by applying it to standard Kurmanji and
exploring the ways in which this analysis may explain the variation in the use
of the modal particles under consideration.
This paper is organised as follows:t, I review the uses of dê and da in
Badini (section two). In the third section, I introduce the notion on proce-
dural meaning underlying Unger’s (2012) account of dê and da. In section
four, I discuss the expression of future time in Kurmanji and review the uses
of the modal particle wê/dê/ê. Finally, -
dural analysis of dê and da in Badini sheds interesting light on the variation in
to analyse Kurmanji wê/dê/ê in procedural terms powerful enough to provide
semantic motivations to the observed variations.
paper. Ergin Öe. Needless to say,
none of them can be held responsible for the way I used their comments, and all remaining
shortcomings are my own.
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The Expression of Future Tense in Badini Kurdish
For the purposes of this paper I will discuss two varieties of Northern Kurdish:
Badini Kurdish, spoken predominantly in the Dohuk Governorate of Iraq, and
what I will call standard Kurmanji, spoken primarily in Turkey. The latter is
described in Bedir Khan and Lescot (1986), represented in the Kurmanji lit-
erature published in Latin script since the early 1930s, and in the Corpus of
Contemporary Kurdish Newspaper Texts () in particular. The former
is documented in MacKenzie (1961)-
erature published in Arabic script in Iraq (particularly since the turn of the
century). Both varieties have much in common and are considered by their
speakers as basically the same language. However, there is considerable lin-
guistic variation between them. In this paper I want to discuss variations in
the expression of future time in these two variations of Kurdish,
at Badini Kurdish.
In this variety of Kurdish, future time reference is expressed in a construction
consisting of the modal particle dê-
ber using the present tense stem, x. In
particular,bi- cannot occur in this construction. Since
this construction typically describes eventualities in future time, it is often
referred to as the future tense form.
(1) vêca ez dê ç-im-e mal-ê
so I go-- home-..
“I will go home now.”
The modal particle dê immediately follows the subject noun phrase. Only the
enclitic conjunction jî “also” may intervene between the subject and dê:
(2002) for a description of this corpus.
e.
(2012), unless otherwise
indicated. The glosses, however, have been adjusted to use standard abbreviations used in
this volume. Ergin Ös. The
following non standard abbreviations are used in glosses: postposition indicating attach-
ment; conditional; postposition indicating containment; imperfective aspect
marker; . imperative singular; postposition indicating movement; vocative.
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(2) belê hta ez ya di tengavî-yê da, u tu
but still I .. in trouble-.. and you
jî dê kev-î-ye di tengavî-yê mezin da.
also fall-- in trouble-.. big
“but I am still in deep trouble, and you, too, will get into big trouble.”
(Hizirvan, 2003)
While the order subject–modal particle is the predominant order, the modal
particle can also precede the subject.
(3) ne hakîm înand-in-e ser got-î:
every healer bring.-- over said-
bab-o ev-ê Sînem-ê vê-t,
father- this-.. Sinem-.. need-
tu bû kurr-ê xo bîn-î yan dê kurr-ê te ji
you for son-of self bring- or son-of yours from
dest-ê te ç-it, dê kurr-ê te mir-it.
hand-of yours go- son-of yours die-
“Every healer that they brought in [to examine him] said: Father, this
Sinem, you must get her for your son or you will lose your son, your son
will die.” (Sînem)
da in Badini which is used in the very same
construction. Like dê, this particle directly follows the subject noun phrase
s. Unlike dê, it does not express future
tense,-
terfactual eventualities in the present or near past. This striking syntactic
parallel to the future tense construction makes it important to consider the
da-
Badini, and I will discuss da in more detail below. It is also noteworthy that
the modal particle da and the construction it is used in do not exist in the
tape-recorded story. The following tape-recorded stories are used for this
study and referred to by their one word title: “Friendship”, Sînem “The story of Sinem”,
Xec “The story of Xec and Siyabend”. These three stories were recorded by Mela Nasir Zaxoyî,
Zakho, Iraq, 1992. Pira “The story of the Delal bridge in Zakho”, recorded by Loqman Nûredîn
Hassan, Zakho, Iraq, 1992. I am grateful to Mela Nasir and Loqman Nûredîn not only for
recording these stories and allowing me to use them for studies, but also for the invaluable
e.
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standard Kurmanji variety of Kurdish, which is based mostly on central dia-
lects of Kurmanji.
The particle dê used in the construction described above can be used to denote
e.
In other words, this construction is used to express the simple future. This can
be illustrated with the following examples:
(4) belê hêta ez ya di tengavî-yê da, û tu
but still I .. in trouble-.. and you
jî dê kevî-ye di tengavî-yê mezin da.
also will fall- in trouble-.. Big
“but I am still in deep trouble, and you, too, will get into big trouble.”
(Hizirvan, 2003)
(5) pitî çax-ek-î kêm dê heft dêw
after while--.. little seven demons
hê-n-e di keft-ê ve
come-- in cave-..
“after a short while seven demons will come into the cave.” (Hizirvan,
2003)
The precise point in future time to which dê future construction refers to needs
to be pragmatically determined. This point may be located very close to the
present time.
person and number (kevîye) “[you] fall” in (4) and hêne “[they] come” in (5).
This verb form cannot be used outside the construction with the particle dê
(or da, as will be discussed below). Outside this construction, the verb based
di- or the sub-
bi-na-/ne- if appropriate. Example (6) is
record a song, and after explaining its content, he utters the words quoted in
this example. Again, the verb bêjim “[I] say” is based on the present stem and
r.
(6) û ez dê bo te piçek-ê jê bêj-im.
and I for you a.little-.. from.it say-
“and I will sing a little bit of it for you.”
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Another instance where the dê construction refers to a point in the immediate
future, very close to the present, is when a guest announces the end of his visit
by saying (7) (verb: çime “[I] go”, based on present stem,
and number,x):
(7) vêca ez dê ç-im-e mal-ê
so I go-- home-..
“I will go home now.”
There are, of course, other ways of referring to the immediate future. Present
tense is also an option, and even past tense can be used when the clause
begins with a demonstrative, as in (8). This is taken from a novel, and in the
story world these words are spoken by the secretary of Dr Perwer to the lat-
ter’s remark about the secretary having forgotten to bring some orange juice
e. Apologetically, the secretary uses these words to say
that she will immediately correct her fault. The main verb çûm “I went” is in
the past tense, and future time indication is pragmatically inferred in the situ-
ational context. A more idiomatic rendering of this utterance would be “I’ll
get it right away.”
(8) ev-e ez-a çû-m b-în-im
this- .. went- -bring-
“I have already left to get it.” (Bamarni, 1999: 8)
Apart from indicating future tense, dê can also be used to draw attention to the
speaker’ss. In example (9), the
speaker is arguing against his father’s claim that the speaker’s friends are not
genuine and cannot be trusted as real friends:
(9) û ez bêj-im ruh-a xwe bi-d-in-e mi,
and I say. - life-.. self -give-- me
dê d-in-e min,
give-- me
“and I say they would give their lives for me, they will give it for me”,
(Dostînî)
The second clause consists of a dê construction. This clause is closely parallel
in content to the previous one,d. The con-
text makes it clear that in both instances, the speaker intends to convey one
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thought that can be described as The speaker’s friends give their lives for him in
a world where the need arises. Thus it appears that dê can be used to describe an
idea in a possible but non-actual world.
clause by the subjunctive mood.
Example (10) illustrates another use of dê. The speaker expresses the con-
cern that a certain event is likely to occur, namely that the blood avengers or
the police will get him. But since the speaker believes that this event is avoid-
able if his friends shelter him during the night, it is clear that the speaker does
not simply intend to describe an event in future time. In addition to referring
to an event in the future, he expresses a certain commitment towards the like-
e.
(10) Ev ev-e dereng ev herre
this night- late night go..
dergeh-ê wî bi-qut-e û
door-of him -knock-. and
bêj-ê: “Biray-ê Ramazan
say- brother-.. Ramazan
min êk-ê kut-î û ev-e urteh-ê
I one-.. killed- and this- police-..
li dîf mi ve dê mi gir-in yan
at after me me catch- or
ew neyar-êt min il dîf mi ve dê
those blood.avengers-. me at after me
mi kuj-in û mi di-vê-t
me kill- and I -want-
ev ev-e tu bi min xudan k-î
this night- you with me owner make-
heta sahar-ê.”
until morning-..
“This night, late at night, go, knock at his door and tell him: ‘Brother
Ramazan, I have killed someone and this police which is after me will
catch me, or those avengers who are after me will kill me, and I ask that
you let me stay in your house this night until morning.’” (Dostînî)
In the following example (11), the speaker apparently does not refer to future
l, rather dê is used in a clause expressing a conditional
regularity: “whenever we put the last two stones, then our bridge falls down.”
The speakers claim that they have observed a regularity in the past and expect
this sequence of events to happen again.
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(11) Ev-e Ye çîrok-a pir-a me:
this- Is story-of bridge-of ours
hindî em ava-di-k-în,
whenever we build--make-
du ber jê di-mîn-in heta dîmahik-ê,
two stones from.it -remain- until end-..
em dê deyn-în, pir-a me di-herrif-it.
we lay-, bridge-of ours -crash-.
“This is the story of our bridge: Whenever we build the bridge and only
d, when we put them in, our bridge
comes crashing down.” (Pira)
Example (12) shows an instance of the use of the future tense with an imperati-
val force. The father is instructing his son on how he should proceed in testing
his friends. (I(10) above, the imperative is used to the
t.)
(12) Ev ev-a got-ê saat dozdeh
this night-.. said-to.him hour twelve
tu dê ç-î mal-a wan dê bêj-î
you go- house-of theirs say-
“bab-ê min-ê got-î
father-of my-.. said-
he ehe bila b-ê-t-e vêrê”
may -come-- here
“‘This night’, he told him, ‘at twelve o’clock, you’ll go to his house and say
to him: My father said: may he come here immediately.’” (Dostînî)
Yet another use of dê is illustrated in (13):
(13) Mêr-ê Sînem-ê jî ew jî
husband-of Sinem-.. also he also
ji wan tacir-a bî
from those traders-. was
s. See for instance German: Hans, du wirst dich
bei Maria’s Mutter entschuldigen “Hans, you have to apologise to Mary’s mother.” In English,
this can also be expressed with the same imperative force as follows: John, you will apologise
to Mary’s mother.
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fe roj-a dîv ya çu-î
and day-.. After .. went-
viya sefer-î bi-k-it,
wanted journey-.. -make-
bi-ç-it, bi-ç-it, em dê bêj-in
-go- -go- we say-
çu bajêr-ê am-ê.
went town-.. Damascus-..
“Sinem’s husband was one of those traders and the day after the previ-
ous one he wanted to go on a journey and wanted to go, let’s say, he
went to Damascus.” (Sînem)
In this example, dê is used in a parenthetical clause expressing an assump-
tion made for concreteness. In English, this idea is typically expressed with
the phrase let’s say X, but in French, the future on dira can be used just as in
Badini. The speaker is advancing an arbitrary example, here the name of the
city Damascus, which is considered the prototypical faraway place where mer-
chants travel to.
Example (14)e:
(14) Û Siyabend wext-ê ket wêrê jî yanî em
and Siyabend time-.. fell there also or we
dê bêj-în bê çare bibî.
say- without hope had.been
“And when Siyabend fell there it was, we can say, it was hopeless.” (Xec)
Again, dê occurs in a parenthetical phrase Em dê bêjin “We will say”. This phrase
is inserted before the speaker’s comment that Siyabend’s situation was hope-
less, a stronger statement than what was used before. The parenthetical indi-
before. In English, this can be expressed with the phrase we can say.
Finally, the particle dê is used to express a generalisation in example (15):
(15) Yan î ew dar-ane bi qewet in belê
That-is those trees-. with strength are but
zelam-ek ne hinde bi qewet jî dê -t
man- not that with strength also can-
fe “and” alternating with Kurdish û “and” is an
ideolectical characteristic of the speaker who has recorded this story.
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wan dar-a Bi dest-ê xo hil-k-itin.
those trees-. with hand-of self up-pull-
“That is, those trees are strong, but even a man who is not that strong
can pull those trees out with his hands.” (Xec)
In summary, the dê construction can occur in the following types of usage:
(16)
– dê is used for expressing future time.
– This form is also used in statements where the likelihood or the certainty of
e.
– The form can be used with imperative force.
– The form is also used in cases where temporality or certainty are not at issue:
parenthetical uses involving generalisations, assumptions, or emphatic
statements.
A satisfactory semantic analysis of dê must explain how this particle can be
put to these uses in context. The main question is whether the a-temporal uses
s. In other words,
is dê ambiguous between a temporal particle and a modal particle? Or can a
d? e,
should it regard the temporal or a-temporal uses as basic and pragmatically
derive the one from the other? Or is there an underlying, more abstract seman-
tic notion that gives rise to the full range of uses? Unger’s (2012) analysis of
dê
meaning of dê to indicate a more abstract semantic notion from which the
temporal, modal and parenthetical uses can be pragmatically derived. Such an
explanation draws on the framework of procedural semantics in the sense of
Blakemore (1987 and 2002).
notion of procedural semantics before applying it to the analysis of dê.
A Procedural Analysis of in Badini
Consider the following example from Wilson and Sperber (2004: 614):
(17) a. Peter: Did John pay back the money he owed you?
b. Mary: No. He forgot to go to the bank.
in-depth discussion of procedural semantics as well as more recent developments in
this domain, see Escandell-Vidal, Leonetti and Ahern (2011).
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What does Mary intend to communicate with the sentence He forgot to go
to the bank? Intuitively, she wants to say that the same individual that Peter
k. Moreover, she
advances this information as an explanation for John’s failure to repay the
money.
individual third person referent of masculine gender forgot to go to whatever
is referred to with the word bank, ambiguous between conveying the concept
n” or “edge of a river”.
How does the audience bridge this gap between the linguistically encoded
meaning and the speaker’s meaning? According to Relevance Theory (Sperber
and Wilson, 1995; 2004; 2012; Carston, 2002), the audience takes the linguisti-
cally encoded meaning as partial evidence to infer the speaker’s meaning. This
inference process is constrained by two factors.
i: it tends to allocate
processing resources to those inputs which promise to be most relevant in a
technical sense. The relevance of an input to cognitive processes increases to
the extent that the stimulus achieves s, that is, improve-
ments of the individual’s representation of the world, for a minimum of pro-
t. The second factor is that a verbal utterance is a special kind of
behaviour that can only be explained by attributing an intention to commu-
nicate and an intention to inform the audience of something to the commu-
nicator. This attribution of intentions calls for some cognitive processing to be
done, or in other words,t.
y, it follows that verbal
utterances (and other communicative behaviours) raise the expectation that
-
ence’s attention. Comprehension then amounts to the process of verifying this
expectation, and this can be done by following a heuristic procedure: access
interpretive hypotheses for utterances (containing hypotheses about intended
context, implicit import and explicit content) in order of accessibility, starting
s, and check whether
the utterance, on this interpretation,
kinds and levels. If so, accept the interpretation as the one intended by the
communicator; if not,-
does not warrant continuation. It should be emphasised that in this proce-
dure, context, implicit import and explicit content are calibrated in parallel.
e, see Wilson and
Sperber (2004) and Sperber and Wilson (1995).
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Applying these ideas to example (17), the process by which John compre-
hends Mary’s utterance He forgot to go to the bank can be described as follows:
John must assume that Mary must believe that her utterance is at least relevant
enough to be worth Peter’s attention without causing unreasonable processing
t. Moreover, this utterance is present as part of an answer to Peter’s ques-
tion whether John has paid back the money he owed to Mary. Hence, Peter can
expect Mary’s utterance to be relevant by contributing information why this
John has not repaid the money yet.
comes to mind leads Peter to interpret the pronoun he as referring to John.
Moreover, the concept n” gives access to contextual
information that people can withdraw money from their accounts at such an
institution. Accepting the assumption that the word bank here is intended to
convey the concept , Peter can make further inferences: if John forgot
to go to the bank before it closed, he was unable to withdraw money, and if he
did not have money he was not able to pay back the money he owed to Mary.
This in turn amounts to an explanation of why John did not repay the money
he owed, and furthermore explains why Mary did not answer Peter’s question
with a simple No: she intended to provide an explanation for why John did
not pay back the money he owed.
t. Hence Peter
in this way.
Notice that on this account of comprehension, the linguistic meaning of
utterances serves as nothing more than partial evidence to the speaker’s mean-
ing. It follows that the information that this linguistic meaning conveys must
serve the needs of the inference procedures that it feeds into. These inferences
operate on conceptual information, so linguistic meaning must certainly
contribute conceptual information. But the mind must also choose which
possible inference paths should be followed. It would certainly be helpful if
there were linguistic expressions that provide information on which inference
paths to follow. Consider the pronoun He in this respect: as Kaplan (1977) has
pointed out, it would be awkward to assume that the linguistic meaning of
pronouns were to be taken as the content they contribute in each use, because
this changes according to context. He argues instead that the linguistic mean-
ing of pronouns (and other indexicals) is their character, which is basically
As Blakemore (2002) comments, this amounts to a reversal of the traditional formula
“st, then pragmatics” to a view where pragmatics takes centre stage and (lin-
guistic) semantic theory is shaped by asking how semantic information can best facilitate
pragmatic processes.
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a procedure to determine the referent of the indexical expression. This pro-
cedure is indeed the same across contexts. Wilson and Sperber (1993) have
argued that these procedures should be understood in psychological terms as
constraints on the inferential phase of utterance interpretation, as suggested
by Blakemore (1987).
Tense, aspect, and modality markers can also be analysed as having pro-
cedural meaning in this sense (Smith, 1990; Amenos-Pons, 2012; Jary, 2012).
Consider the following example:
(18) a. I have read the newspaper.
b. I have written a book.
c. Mary lent money to John. John then forgot to go to the bank and
hasn’t repaid it as agreed. Mary was disappointed.
While (18a) and (18b) are marked with the same time indicator, the temporal
t: (18a)
will usually be taken to refer to the same morning of the day the utterance is
made whereas (18b) will be understood as referring to a time earlier in the life
of the speaker. (18c) illustrates that the same past tense marker may not only
e, but that there is also a temporal sequence
between the events described that needs to be interpreted pragmatically in
context. Echoing Kaplan’s proposal for pronouns, if we assume that the lin-
guistic meaning of the tense marker is not given by the time value contrib-
uted by its use but rather by the general procedure it triggers, we can provide
a linguistic semantic description of the tense marker that is context indepen-
dent and is useful for the inferential phase of comprehension. In examples
(18a) and (18b) the procedural meaning of the perfect tense marker may be
informally described as “locate the eventuality at some time in the past with
consequences still noticeable in the present.” Such a constraint on temporal
interpretation narrows the audience’s search space for temporal values.
Recall the types of uses of dê discussed in (16) above. What do all these inter-
pretations of the future construction have in common?
they express semantic representations that cannot be represented as facts by
either the communicator or the audience. One way of making this informal
Needless to say, this description of the procedural meaning of the English perfect tense is
provided only for purposes of exposition and is not intended as a real theoretical analysis.
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observation more precise is to say that utterances employing the future con-
struction convey that the proposition expressed is relevant to the audience not
in its own right, but as embedded in a higher-order representation comment-
ing on the veracity of the proposition expressed. functions as a linguistic
trigger for this procedure. In other words, dê activates/triggers the following
procedure:
(19) Embed the explicature P of the utterance in a metarepresentational
schema as follows, and determine the relevant world-time variables:
t.
The cognitive environment of an individual is the set of facts that are manifest
to him at any one time. A fact is manifest to an individual if he is capable of
representing it as true or at least probably true. A cognitive environment in
which it is manifest that two individuals share it, is their mutual cognitive envi-
ronment (Sperber and Wilson, 1995).
But this procedure seems to be too strong. All of the following types of
semantic representations can be compatible with this procedure:
(20)
– d,
– t, and
–
expected.
In order to eliminate type 2 cases (c
or past), I assume that dê triggers a second procedure as well:
(21) Embed the explicature P of the utterance in a metarepresentational
schema as follows:
described in the explicature of the utterance.
In order to see how following these two procedures the audience can arrive at
a future time interpretation, let us look at example (22), reproduced from (4)
for convenience:
(22) belê hta ez ya di tengavî-yê da, û tu
but still I .... in trouble- and you
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jî dê kevî-ye di tengavî-yê mezin da.
also will fall- in trouble-.. Big
“but I am still in deep trouble, and you, too, will get into big trouble.”
(Hizirvan, 2003)
This utterance is part of fairy queen Ewran’s words addressed to Mendê,
the coward. She has just explained her situation in which she met Mendê,
(“But I am still in deep trouble”). When the addressee gets to process the sec-
ond clause (“and you, too, will get into big trouble”
with û “and”
the same world (the actual world from the point of view of the participants
d). One of the procedures triggered by dê indicates
-
resentation of the actual world. This condition can be reconciled with the
expectation that the speaker is talking about the actual world only by assum-
holding at some future time. This saturation of world-time variables produces
addressee to think about what it means to come into danger, about the nature
of the danger and how to get out of it.
only under two conditions: if the time index is not assumed to be too far into
the future (the more distant in the future the danger is to be expected, the
less urgency for the addressee to ponder these thoughts, the less relevant the
information is), and if the speaker truly commits to the factuality of state of
s, i.e.s. That
this latter condition holds is highlighted by the second procedure triggered by
dê.
time in the not too distant future.
Let us now have a look at some other uses to see how this analysis applies to
these uses as well. Let’s consider examples (23) and (24). (For a discussion of
the remaining examples, see Unger, 2012.)
(23) (Reproduced from example 10 for convenience)
Ev ev-e dereng ev herre
this night- Late night go..
On the interval problem in temporal interpretation, see Wilson and Sperber (1998).
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dergeh-ê wî bi-qut-e û
door-of him -knock-. and
bêj-ê: “Biray-ê Ramazan
say-to.him brother-.. Ramazan
min êk-ê kut-î û ev-e urteh-ê
I one-.. killed- and this- police-..
li dîf mi ve dê mi gir-in yan
at after me me catch- or
ew neyar-êt min il dîf mi ve dê
those blood.avengers-. me at after me
mi kuj-in û mi di-vê-t
me kill- and I -want-
ev ev-e tu bi min xudan k-î
this night- you with me owner make-
heta sahar-ê.”
until morning-..
“This night, late at night, go, knock at his door and tell him: ‘Brother
Ramazan, I have killed someone and this police which is after me
will catch me, or those blood avengers who are after me will kill me,
and I ask that you let me stay in your house this night until morning.’”
(Dostînî)
In example (23)
are obviously not holding in the actual world in the present, but whose fac-
tuality the speaker commits to by means of the procedural indicators in dê:
that the police catch him and that the blood avengers kill him. The easiest
way for the addressee to accommodate the claim that the speaker describes
claims nevertheless that he is committed to their factuality is to assume that
d. Assuming
this interpretation to be the one the speaker intended, the addressee under-
stands that the speaker claims if the addressee shelters him this night those
dreadful potential worlds could be avoided.
help his friend, what it means to stand up to police and blood avengers, and so
on.y, the interpretation of the dê
relevant to the addressee. Let’s turn to example (24), reproduced from example
(11) for convenience:
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(24) Ev-e ye çîrok-a pir-a me:
this- is story-of bridge-of ours
hindî em ava-di-k-in,
whenever we build--make-
du ber j-ê di-mîn-in heta dîmahik-ê,
two stones from-it -remain- until end-..
em dê deyn-in, pir-a me di-herrif-it.
we lay-, bridge-of ours -crash-
“This is the story of our bridge: Whenever we build the bridge and only
d, when we put them in, our bridge
comes crashing down.” (Pira)
The speakers start out by describing a regularity that they have observed:
“W
The next clause Em dê deynin “we lay [the last two or three stones]” indicates
by means of the particle dê that (a)truth-claim
s, and (b)
explicature doesn’t hold true in their shared world knowledge. This can only
be harmonised by assuming that the speakers intended to talk about potential
worlds, expressing a belief that their observations amount to regularities that
they believe will re-occur on future occasions. Accepting this interpretation as
intended leads to further inferences that are worth the addressee’s attention,
such as that the speakers do not understand why this regularity should hold,
that they do not know what to do, and so on. Hence the utterance is optimally
relevant on this interpretation.
In the discussion of these examples, we have seen in outline how the analy-
sis of dê as a procedural indicator for the procedures (19) and (21) can explain
the varieties of temporal, modal and non-modal uses of dê. But it can be
objected that this analysis still over generates, as there is nothing to rule out dê
can be expected. Unger (2012) argues that this can be explained by the fact
that there is a particle in Badini that is specialised for precisely such states of
s, namely the modal particle da. A speaker aiming at optimal relevance
must be expected to use this dedicated particle to express distant past states of
t, otherwise she would
t. Because the particle da
seems to be so interconnected with dê,
the modal particle da.
The object is elided; I have added it to the translation in square brackets.
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The following examples taken from Unger (2012) illustrate the range of uses to
which the the da construction can be put:
(25) Explanation given by native speaker: “my friend and I want to go to the
t. But it starts to rain, and we turn around before we
get there. On our way back, you meet us and ask: ‘where did you go?’
and we answer:”
em da genim-î çîn-in
we wheat-.. sow-
“we wanted to sow wheat. [But it rained so we did not sow and we are
returning home]”
(26) Context: Peri Ewran explains to Mende what almost happened before
he picked her up when she was in the shape of a tortoise and the demon
that was persecuting her in the shape of a tortoise egg:
Her bi küseletî Da min ke-t-e jin
all in tortoiseness me make-- wife
u pa da min wergêrî-t-e reng-ê dêw-a
and afterwards me change- shape-of demons-
- .
“Even in the shape of a tortoise he would have made [or: was about to
make] me his wife and afterwards he would make me into the shape of
demons.” (Hizirvan, 2003)
(27) In a tape-recorded text about the history of the narrator’s home village,
he talks about the occupation of the villagers in former times:
ew da genim-î çîn-in
they wheat-.. sow-
“[In old time] they used to plant wheat.”
(28) jiyan-a wan ser tîcaret-ê bî,
life-of their On trading-.. was
ser hatin u çun-ê bî,
on coming and going-.. was
da ç-in bu xêr bajêr,
go- to other city
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da hinde tit-a b-in wêrê,
some things-. take- there
û da hinde tit-a zivirr-în-in=ve.
and some things-. return--=again
“their existence was based on trade, on traveling, they would go to
another city, they would carry some goods there and they would bring
other goods back again.” (Sînem)
Examples (25) and (26) describe intended but unachieved actions, whereas
(27) and (28) convey habitual actions in the (often distant) past.
glance, s: the latter group has
to do with aspect (habitual aspect in this case), whereas the former group of
d. However,-
ent perspective we can see that these usage types have something in common:
while the addressee cannot verify these descriptions in the mutual cognitive
environment, the speaker can in hers. This means that the speaker has privi-
and is therefore a good source for the addressee to acquire true knowledge
d. Consider (25): the speaker talks about his
and his friend’s intentions or plans. Surely people can be trusted to be a reliable
source of information regarding their intentions. In example (26) Perî Ewran
is talking about her experiences with the demon persecuting her, and having
these experiences arguably makes her a good source for information about the
schemes of her persecutor. The speaker of (27) grew up in the village he talks
about and must therefore be assumed to have heard stories about the former
times from his forefathers. He can therefore be assumed to be a good source of
information about distant past times in village history that the addressee can-
not check in his own cognitive environment.
An anonymous reviewer questioned whether temporal distance is relevant for the inter-
pretation of da at all. This is an important question,
way. The fact is that uses of da referring to past eventualities in this way are rare in my
corpus. Those that do occur do indeed refer to eventualities in the distant past. Given the
rarity of these uses, this may be a mere statistical accident. On the other hand, if tempo-
ral distance was indeed irrelevant, then the question arises why da does not occur more
frequently in the corpus to refer to any past eventualities. Given these considerations
I conclude that it is better to be faithful in the description of the data to the extent that
temporal distance is considered relevant for the interpretation of da until data is found
that calls this generalisation into question.
Ergin Öpengin (personal communication) observes that in line with the discussion in
this paragraph, da is never used with negative verb forms when used to describe distant
habitual actions.
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It appears, therefore,da can be developed
on the assumption that this particle triggers the procedure described above in
(19). This procedure is triggered by the modal particle dê as well. Recall that
this procedure constrains for temporal and modal interpretations of the three
types listed above in (20). But clearly, da is only used in types 2 and 3, that is
t, and distant past states
d. Therefore da
must trigger another procedure as well that excludes its use to refer to future
s.
r, the speaker cannot verify the veracity of
the description in her own cognitive environment. Based on this observation,
Unger (2012) argues that da triggers the following procedure as well:
(29) Embed the proposition expressed by the utterance in a metarepresenta-
tional frame of the following kind:
The communicator is a good authority for making a true claim involving
the proposition expressed in this utterance.
By indicating that the communicator is a good authority for making a true
claim involving the proposition expressed, the communicator conveys that
environment. Hence, das.
Notice that the procedures triggered by dê and da
-
tation of the world:
cognitive environment,
the communicator vouches by expressing a truth commitment, or for which
-
tions.
-
prehends the communicator’s intention, but also believes her.
On this analysis, dê and da do not directly constrain the audience’s reso-
lution of world-time variables. As we have seen, the procedures triggered
by these particles have consequences for the audience’s determination of
world-time variables, that is, for temporal and modal interpretation. But these
particles, and the forms expressed with them, -
ral or modal interpretation. Rather,
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interpretation of utterances is achieved by what Unger (2011) calls tangential
procedural marking: by means of constraining the interpretation of speaker’s
commitment, knock-on inferences are triggered that lead to the recognition of
the intended temporal and modal interpretation.
This analysis raises a question: given that the temporal and modal inter-
pretations of utterances are so important for comprehending verbal commu-
nication, should we not expect that a language that relies solely on tangential
procedural marking in this domain produce a variant in which at least one
of the modal particles directly triggers temporal-modal procedures as well,
thereby cutting short the inference process even further? Surely, this a logi-
cal possibility, and I want to argue that this is indeed what can be observed in
Northern Kurdish: that one language variant shows a small semantic change
in the modal particle dê-
pretation in addition to the procedures constraining speaker commitment rec-
ognition. In other words: the procedural analysis of dê outlined here provides
the basis to explain language variation with respect to the expression of future
tense in variants of Northern Kurdish.
Future Tense in Kurmanji
In standard Kurmanji, future tense is expressed in a way very similar to Badini:
a modal particle wê, which is also found as an enclitic =ê and dê, occurs right
after the subject noun phrase and the verb,n,
is based on the present tense stem. However, in contrast to Badini, the verb
bi-:
(30) Robbinson Wê li ser rew-a kes-ên sivîl
Robbinson on above situation-of persons-. civilian
yên Sirb ku vegeriyan-e Kosovo-yê
. Serb returned- Kosovo-..
lêkolînê bi-k-e.
research -make-
“Robbinson will research the situation of Serbian civilians who returned
to Kosovo.” ()
The modal particle wê appears to be a variant of dê, but the former is used pre-
dominantly in Kurmanji, although the latter occurs as well in written/standard
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Kurmanji. Wê can be shortened to ê and cliticised to the subject, particularly if
the subject is expressed by a pronoun:
(31) Înelah em-ê qezenc bi-k-in.
God.willing we- win -make-
“God willing, we will win.” ()
The sequence subject–modal particle may be reversed:
(32) Li ali-yê din ger di sedsal-a 21’-an de,
on side-of other if in century-.. 21-. in
ziman-ê netewe-yek-ê ne-b-e ziman-ê
language-of people--.. -be- language-of
ragihandin-ê û çapemeni-yê,
communication-.. and printing-..
wê ew ber Bi tunebûn
it towards With nonexistence
û mirin-ê ve bi-ç-e.
and death-.. -go-
“On the other hand, if in the 21th century the language of a people does
not become a language of communication and writing, it will go down
the trail of extinction.” ()
Haig and Öpengin (2014) point out that the wê/dê/ê construction can occur
with negation:
(33) Ez-ê sibe bi wan re ne-ç-im
I- tomorrow with them not-go-1sg
‘I won’t go with them tomorrow’ (not numbered example from Haig and
Öpengin, 2014)
In Behdînî, on the other hand, dê cannot occur with negation, so the equiva-
lence to (33) in Behdînî would be (34) (not numbered example from Haig and
Öpengin, 2014):
(34) Ez sibe digel wan na-ç-im
I tomorrow with them not-go-1sg
‘I won’t go with them tomorrow’
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The modal particle wê/dê/ê is also used in a construction which Bedir Khan
and Lescot (1986) (Konditional ): the subject is
directly followed by the modal particle,
number, bi- but this time based on the
past stem.
(35) Lezgîn dê bi-hat-a.
Lezgin -came-.
“Lezgin would have come” (German: “Lezgin wäre gekommen”) (Bedir
Khan and Lescot, 1986: 125)
Bedir Khan and Lescot (1986) also discuss a second future form (“Futur ”),
formed with the participle and the auxiliary bûn “to be”
and number on its present stem:
(36) Ez-ê ket-i b-im.
I- fell- be.-
“I will have fallen down” (German: “ich werde gefallen sein”). (Bedir
Khan and Lescot, 1986: 137)
However, these authors comment that this form is rarely used (Bedir Khan and
Lescot, 1986: 138,§175).
The modal particle wê/dê/ês:
the second conditional, based on the modal particle wê/dê/ê and participle
(37), and the perfect subjunctive,
(38):
(37) Conditional 2:
min-ê dîti bi-wa
see. be.-
“I would have seen” (German: “Ich würde gesehen haben”)
In reviewing the exposition from Bedir Khan and Lescot, I use their terminology, which
h, German
and English. An anonymous reviewer has rightly commented that Kurmanji should bet-
ter be understood on its own terms. For example, instead of talking about a second future
tense, it would be better to say that the participial i entails perfectivity or comple-
tion and may combine with the future particle to yield a reading that is comparable to
that of the Futur in German. However,
the interests of clarity to review Bedir Khan and Lescot’s descriptions in their own termi-
k.
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(38) Perfect subjunctive:
Perîxan-ê ji hakim re kulîlk pk bi-kir-a-n-a
Perikhan- from ruler -made-
--
“Perîr” (German:
“Perîkhan sollte dem Gouverneur Blumen schenken (hätte geschenkt).”)
(Bedir Khan and Lescot, 1986: 279)
In Badini, none of the conditionals, the perfect subjunctive, or the second
future exist. The function of these forms is primarily carried out by the da
construction.
As we have seen,
variants of Northern Kurdish discussed in this paper. Badini lacks a whole set
of verb paradigms involving the future modal particle: it does not have forms
for what Bedir Khan and Lescot (1986)l, the
second future and the perfect subjunctive. In turn, Kurmanji lacks the modal
particle da, and at least one of its functions is carried out by the conditionals,
the perfect subjunctive and possibly by the second future.
On closer examination,
properties of the future modal particle. In Badini, the future modal particle
dêb:
aspect, and it may only occur in the present stem. The Kurmanji modal particle
wê/dê/ê, on the other hand,
mood. However,
as well.
syntactic properties of the future modal particle are accidental formal features
or whether they are conditioned by semantic properties. In this paper I want to
argue for the latter hypothesis. I will do so on the basis of the semantic analysis
of the Badini modal particle dê provided by Unger (2012).
Explaining Variation in the Expression of Future Tense
e,
the future tense form in Badini and (standard) Kurmanji is that in Kurmanji,
bi-, whereas in Badini
d.
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-
cal fact: i. On this
assumption, the syntax would be the same, and there would be a subjunctive
functional head projected in the sentence in any case. However, my analysis of
dê in Badini suggests another account. On this analysis, the linguistic seman-
tics of dê does not refer to the notions of modality or temporality at all. So the
non-occurrence
to dê not linguistically encoding temporal or modal notions. If we assume that
the Kurmanji future indicator wê/dê/ê
therefore licenses, or even requires, subjunctive verb forms, then the variation
observed with respect to the use or non-use
future tense form is semantically motivated and not merely a morphological
accident. For concreteness, let us assume that wê/dê/ê triggers the following
procedure in addition to the ones triggered by Badini dê (26) and (28) as well:
(39)
actual one.
It follows that the verbs in clauses containing wê/dê/ê should carry the sub-
n. Once the
y,
to express more nuances in the modal-temporal interpretation of linguistic
forms. Hence forms that are absent in Badini, such as the conditional forms,
the perfect subjunctive and the second future (according to Bedir Khan and
Lescot, 1986) become possible. Once these forms are realised, the modal par-
ticle da becomes redundant.
Another consequence of this analysis is that it explains the fact that future
constructions can occur with negation in Kurmanji but not in Behdini. The
n: na in
the present indicative, ne in present or past subjunctive and in past indicative.
n, but
also tense and mood information. According to my analysis of dê in Behdini,
tense and mood information is not licensed in this construction. Hence, the
r. In Kurmanji, on the
other hand, wê/dê/ê does license modality information, and the negation pre-
d.
Kurmanji verb paradigm can be explained on the basis of semantic properties
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of dê and da not shared by the Kurmanji future particle wê/dê/ê. Although this
is a strong theoretical argument in favour of the hypothesis that the future
-
junctive forms on the verb or not, it is not a complete proof. Notice that this
account claims that the future indicator in the respective dialects directly trig-
s, but that the pragmatic inferences it triggers leads
to the same overall results with respect to the temporal and modal interpreta-
tions of the utterance. While this is certainly a plausible claim, it must also be
r. In other words, it is still to be expected that there
dialects. In fact,
wê/dê/ê construction such as (13), (14) or (15) in the . It appears that
Kurmanji wê/dê/ê future tense constructions exhaustively fall into the tempo-
ral or modal types of use.
If true,
particle wê/dê/ê directly triggers a procedure relating to the modal interpreta-
tion of utterances. However, more detailed research will be required to cor-
g.
Conclusion
I have presented an analysis of the Badini future indicator dê and the “modal”
particle da in procedural terms. This analysis claims that these particles trigger
speaker-commitment to, or evi-
dence for,d. The procedures triggered
n,
speaker-intended
temporal and modal interpretation in a knock-ont. I have thus put for-
ward the hypothesis that this analysis can help provide a semantic motivation
of conditionals between two closely related linguistic variants of Kurdish,
Badini and standard Kurmanji. In essence, my claim is that the modal par-
ticle wê/dê/ê dê in Badini in that it triggers a third
procedure which directly relates to the modal interpretation of the utterance,
thereby short-cutting the need to rely on indirectly triggered inferences for
comprehending the modal meaning of the utterance.
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Published with license by Koninklijke Brill
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the
brill.com/ksa
Kurdish Studies
Archive
Diversity in Convergence: Kurdish and Aramaic
Variation Entangled
Paul Noorlander |
PhD candidate at Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, the Netherlands
p.m.noorlander@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Abstract
This article is about diverse types of convergence as well a few examples of how diver-
n.
Kurdish-Aramaic bilingualism has had a major impact on Eastern Neo-Aramaic lan-
guages. There are numerous challenges to a comprehensive study of contact between
the two speech communities, whose far-reaching history is intriguing yet highly com-
plicated. In so doing, the functional-communicative approach mainly developed by
Yaron Matras will be helpful, which presupposes that bilingual discourse is the primary
locus of contact-induced change.e: those that facilitate, that
constrain and that motivate the borrowing. This approach makes a valuable distinc-
tion between the borrowing of linguistic matter (concrete word-forms and parts) and
the borrowing of linguistic patterns (constructions and their usage). It will be observed
that the Jewish Aramaic dialects to the east of the Greater Zab River in the sphere of
l, whereas
those to the west of it tend to adapt to patterns of Northern Kurdish while making use
of native Aramaic material.
Keywords
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Cihêrengî di konverjansê de: Lêk-aliyana cudatiyên
navxweyî yên kurdî û aramiyê
Ev meqale li ser awayên cihê yên konverjansê [levqelibîna zimanan] û li ser wan
nimûneyan e ku rola cudatiyên navxweyî yên zimanê kurdî nan didin di iklgirtina
zaravayên aramiya hevçerx de li Kurdistanê. Duzimaniya kurdî-aramî tesîreke gelek
mezin kiriye li ser birê rojhilatî yê zimanên aramiya nû. Gelek asteng hene li ber
vekolîî ya di navbera herdu cemaetên zimanî de, ku tarîxa
wan a pir qedîm hem têkel e hem jî aloz e. Ji bo hewleke wisa, modêla fonksiyonel-
komûnîkatîv [erkî-ragihandinî], ku bi taybetî Yaron Matrasî p xistiye, dê gelek kêrhatî
be, lewre pferza vê modêlê ew e ku axiftina duzimanî navenda guherîna zimanî ya
bi rêya temasa zimanan e. Fakterên cuda xwedan rol in: hindek fakter rêxweker in,
hindek astengker û hindek jî handerên deynkirinê [ya peyv û amrazên rêzimanî] ne.
Ev modêl cudatiyeke binirx dixe navbera deynkirina keresteyê zimanî (peyv û form û
parçeyên berçav) û deynkirina nimûne û mastereyên zimanî (binyad û avanî û iklê
bikaranîna wan). Di vê meqaleyê de dê diyar bibe ku ew zaravayên aramiya cihûyan
yên li rojhilatê rûbarê Zêya Mezin, ku li jêr tesîra soraniyê ne, zêdetir keresteyê zimanî
yê kurdiyê deyn dikin û dixine nav sîstema zimanê xwe, di demekê de ku zaravayên li
rojavayê wî rûbarî bêtir nimûne û mastereyên kurmanciyê werdigirin lê heman ker-
esteyê zimanî yê aramiyê bi kar tînin.
( )
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( )
.
.
Introduction
Aramaic, like Hebrew and Arabic,-
cial lingua franca of ancient West Asia, encompassing, at its zenith, an area
from Egypt into India during the Achaemenid Persian empire. Its long-lasting
heritage of three millennia still lives on today in the Neo-Aramaic-speaking
minorities in the Middle East and beyond. The increasing documentation of the
highly diverse Neo-Aramaic dialects (also known as Assyrian or Chaldean) in
the last few decades has given new impetus to comparative linguistic research
and the study of contact between varieties of Iranian and Aramaic, of which
the exceptional diachronic depth extends over 2500 years with considerable
convergence as the result (Khan, 2004b, 2007; Gzella, 2004:184–194, 2008;
Ciancaglini, 2008). Indeed,Neo-Iranian,
especially Kurdish, and Eastern Neo-Aramaic, though more intense for some
dialects than others,
beyond the mere borrowing of lexical items (Garbell, 1965a; Sabar, 1978; Stilo,
1981, 2004; Pennacchietti, 1988; Chyet, 1995, 1997; Kapeliuk, 1996, 2002, 2004,
2011; Khan, 1999:9–11, 2004b, 2007; Mengozzi, 2002:20–22, 42–49, 2005, 2006;
Matras, 2000, 2009, 2010, 2011; Talay, 2006–2007; Josephson, 2012). On the
other hand, studying contact between Kurdish and Aramaic is quite compli-
cated and before we examine a few examples, we need to address some of the
main challenges we face in dealing with such contact phenomena.
Jewish and Christian speakers of Eastern Neo-Aramaic are by and large
Kurdish-Aramaic bilinguals and have remained so for centuries within an area
of prolonged multilingualism. This Kurdish-Aramaic bilingualism that has
prevailed among Neo-Aramaic speakers obviously facilitated the recruitment
Öpengin for their invaluable
comments at the International Workshop on Variation and Change in Kurdish in Bamberg,
29–30 August 2013, where parts of this paper were presented.
contact-induced pattern borrowing that can lead languages to con-
verge toward a common prototype (Matras, 2010: 73).
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and deep and lasting integration of Kurdish elements into their Neo-Aramaic
speech. Aramaic has been in continuous contact with Western Iranian for
circa 2500 years. This historical depth of contact is not only fascinating, but
also challenging. Needless to say, the Kurdish and Aramaic speech communi-
ties maintain highly complex historical relationships, of which much is still
obscure and perhaps will remain forever so. The wide range of sociolinguistic
factors involved obviously shifted and drifted over the course of time, yet it is
safe to say contact between the two continued without interruption.
Moreover, after the Islamic conquest, most speakers forfeited their loyalty to
Aramaic and mainly shifted to varieties of Arabic. The fact that these Eastern
Neo-Aramaic dialects have nonetheless survived to this day as a minority
language maintenance, presumably due to their social and geographical isola-
tion. Although we do not know the exact circumstances of spoken Aramaic
and Kurdish prior to the sixteenth century, both speech communities must
have held close and intertwining ties in Kurdistan long before that time, which,
I believe to have been rather a hindrance to language shift. It is only through
the massive migrations out of Kurdistan since the 1950s that Neo-Aramaic dia-
lects have become highly endangered or even extinct.
Furthermore, as Neo-Aramaic speakers are daily confronted with the need
of multilingualism, Kurdish-Aramaic contact constitutes an essential part of
a wider complex sociolinguistic picture, where Persian, Azeri, Turkish, Arabic
and many more neighbouring languages interact (see also Stilo and Noorlander,
forthcoming 2014). Yet Kurdish is also in direct contact with these languages,
so what could be attributed to contact with Kurdish may also be under the
a.
However, wholly apart from convergence with neighbouring languages,
these Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialects also exhibit an enormous degree of di- ver-
gence. The degree of diversity found among the modern dialects is staggering,
but has been mapped out only partly during the last few decades. After all,
speakers are more or less aware and attentive of even the most subtle regional
and confessional distinctive features and the dialect-dependent choice of
word-forms. Aramaic is generally divided into Western and Eastern dialect
groups; the latter will obviously be the main concern of this article. As men-
tioned before, the Eastern Aramaic dialects themselves are somehow related
to an exceptionally long and continuously documented heritage boasting over
3000 years. Since the direct ancestors of Neo-Aramaic are unattested,-
Neo-Aramaic gradually took on its own
unique shape. Classical Aramaic languages, such as Classical Syriac (hence-
forth , the liturgical language of the Syriac churches) and Jewish Babylonian
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Aramaic (the Aramaic language of the Talmud) can help us reconstruct the
older situation to some degree.
Major dialect groups can be distinguished within the Eastern modern dia-
lects, such as Central and North Eastern Neo-Aramaic. Central Neo-Aramaic is
primarily uroyo spoken with slight dialectal variation by diminishing num-
bers of mostly Syriac Orthodox Christians in uAbdin, which is the area east
of Mardin from the Turkish-Syrian border (but including Qamishli in northern
Syria) up to the river Tigris (roughly until Cizre). Since the 60s and 70s, most
speakers have emigrated mainly to Europe and the United States of America.
Closely related to uroyo, but by now extinct, is a dialect known as Mlaso
(Lice, province of Diyarbakr), which we will discuss in some detail at the end
of this article.
Yet, by far the largest and most diverse group is North Eastern Neo-Aramaic
() with about 150 dialects (Khan, 2011) spoken by Jewish and Christian
communities in and from Kurdistan. They are primarily named after the town,
where they at least used to be spoken,
s,( J.(C.)
varieties of t. Indeed,
they are extremely diverse, especially the Jewish dialects, where, as far as we
know, s.
Although
Germanic languages, it is common practice to speak in terms of dialects.
Certain clusters along the dialect continuum can be distinguished. For
instance, the peripheral dialects in South East Turkey, such as Hertevin and
Bohtan (both Christian), share a few traits with uroyo, which is overall closer
to Classical Syriac and, to some extent, Western Neo-Aramaic, spoken by dimin-
ishing thousands in Syria. The Greater Zab river functions as a natural border
separating the north eastern Iraqi and western Iranian dialects from the other
dialects, much like Northern from Central Kurdish, as we will see. The Jewish
dialects to the east of the Greater Zab are accordingly known as Trans-Zab Jew-
ish (M 2008), a dialect group that is pertinent to this study. And further
north, the dialects in North-West Iran or Iranian Azerbaijan, such as Urmi and
Salmas, constitute a separate cluster (within Trans-Zab Jewish) as well.
Finally, comparisons with Kurdish (perhaps especially those made in this
paper) are also tentative because often (good) descriptions of equivalent
Kurdish dialects from the same town are unavailable. Thus, notwithstanding
(1989); see also Haig and
Öpengin (forthcoming).
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that many questions still remain open, as we await much needed fresh descrip-
tions of certain Kurdish dialectal counterparts, I will review some remarkable
Eastern Aramaic.
The Functional-Communicative Approach to Language Contact
In light of the aforementioned challenges, I believe Matras’ functional-
communicative approach to language contact (as set forth inter alia in Matras,
1994, 1998a, 1998b, 2009; Matras and Sakel, 2007) can be of great value in study-
ing (possible) Kurdish-Aramaic contact phenomena. Its main assumption is
that the primary locus and typical mechanism of contact-induced change is the
innovation of linguistic expressions by bi-
of discourse (Matras, 2009; cf. Labov, 1994; Croft, 2000). Bilingual speakers can
express themselves in the full range of available resources of both languages,
circum-
stances. Drawing on previous literature, Matras and Sakel (2007), also make a
matter, i.e.
word-forms and morphemes,
pattern, i.e. -
tions of form and meaning and their functional distribution. We can expect
that isolated material is adopted or borrowed easily. Loanwords are numer-
ous in uroyo and North Eastern Neo-Aramaic, but not equally distributed. A
rough relative estimation of Kurdish and/or Turkish borrowings in J. Urmi and
J. Suleimaniya is shown in Table 1. below:
Percentage of loanwords of Kurdish and/or Turkish origin in J. Urmi and
J. Suleimaniya
Nouns Particles Adjectives Verbs
J. Urmi
(Garbell, 1965a, Khan 2008b:f.)
J. Suleimaniya
(Khan, 2004a: 443)
n, copying and borrowing interchangeably.
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Among these loanwords are typically Kurdish and very basic lexical items,
such as +daa “mother” (or in other dialects), “young, beauti-
ful, good”, jwanqa “young (unmarried) man”, baš “good, well”, xoš “id.”, naxoš
(or in other dialects naxwaš) “ill, sick” etc. Cross-linguistically, verbs tend to be
morphologically more complex and less likely to be borrowed (Winford, 2003:
52), which is in basic agreement with these data. However, we can expect
that verbs can be replicated more easily from a closely related language such
as Arabic, since the systems are more akin; though, further inquiry is needed
to support this. More importantly, these percentages would not support a bal-
anced type of Kurdish-Aramaic bilingualism but exposure to extensive mat-
ter replication. The relative degree of Kurdish lexical borrowings is very much
less so in peripheral dialects of Iraq around Mosul (see Khan, 2002 on
Qaraqosh), where, as expected,r. This demonstrates
d, hence, contact between
Kurdish and Aramaic.
Assuming this functional-communicative approach is correct, we would
e. Bilingual
speakers will generally struggle in keeping languages apart, when they qual-
ify the communicative interaction using, for example,
(Matras, 1998a)
function words and particles, which serve as discourse markers, conjunctions,
s. They constitute important building-blocks to
structure and qualify the discourse. Hence, many dialects share particles at
least with Kurdish,n, like ya(n)“or”, jî“too”, hêj“still,
even” (or Sorani hêšta), her“just, still”, belki“maybe” and more. Similarly, most
dialects have borrowed “not any” from Badini, whereas South Eastern
Turkish dialects, such as Hertevin (Jastrow, 1988) and Bohtan (Fox, 2002, 2009),
exhibit tu and uroyo t, both from Kurmanji tu “not any”.
In pattern replication, however, the substance in form is kept intact but the
grammatical meaning is altered on a more abstract, functional, usage-based
level. A clear case of such pattern copying from Kurdish, which is widespread
across varieties, is the new preposition reša and its eroded variants (reš,
-, š-, -) that has extended its function from a noun meaning “head” to also
a preposition meaning “upon, on top, over, about” as in (1). This is contrary to
the inherited preposition “upon”, still used in uroyo (see [2] below) and
the Christian dialects of North-West Iran, but conforms to the pattern of
Kurdish ser “head”, which is also a preposition denoting “upon”.
sign indicates that subsequent sounds are pronounced with retraction of the back of
the tongue.
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(1) C. Barwar
har-m--gare
still-from-on-roof
‘while still on the roof’ (Khan, 2008a: 174 6, A6: 75)
(2)
on-the-roof
‘on the roof’ (Jastrow, 1992: 74)
This functional redistribution can also lead to new idioms, such as reš reši “lit.
over my head” in J. Zakho (Sabar, 2002: 64) paralleling Kurmanji ser serê min
“lit. over my head”, both conveying more or less the meaning of “(you’re) wel-
come, gladly, willingly”. Thus, here we have a clear case of a Kurdish pattern
but Aramaic matter.
The distinction between matter and pattern is, however, not mutually
exclusive. Matter can be borrowed along with a pattern and vice versa, but
this distinction can suggest that the borrowing of a pattern implies a certain
degree of avoiding direct material borrowing. We can illustrate this using the
words for “tomato” and “aubergine”, which are distinguished by the colours
“red” and “black” in Kurdish. In Neo-Aramaic, both will be expressed by means
of the incorporated Kurdish equivalent noun but the native Aramaic colour.
For instance, in J. Zakho, this yields “tomatoes, lit. red b.” and
“aubergines, lit. black b.” (Sabar 2002: 64) for Badini bancanê
sor respectively (cf. uroyo (Midyat) “tomato”
and “aubergine”; Ritter, 1979: 46). Likewise, the aforemen-
tioned particle “not any” is replicated along with a converging pattern. In
(3a) and (3c)xa- in J. Zakho (derived from the numeral
xa “one”ek in Badini Kurdish (derived
from yek “one”), which we will discuss in more detail below. Interestingly, the
Kurdish-derived particle in (3b) and (3d)
found in , as it precedes the noun not only as in Badini, but also as the
xa- “a”:
(3) J. Zakho : Badini
(Cohen, 2012) (Jardine, 1922)
a. kes-ek ‘somebody’
-person person-
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b. ‘nobody, anybody’
any-person any person
c. tišt-ek ‘something’
-thing thing-
d. ‘nothing, anything’
any-thing any thing
Similarly, “nothing” and “nobody” in Jewish Koy
Sanjaq ( 66) corresponding with Sorani (cf. MacKenzie, 1961:
68) as well as tu mendi “nothing, anything” and tu naša “nobody, anything” in
Hertevin (Jastrow, 1988) containing Kurmanji tu “not any” (cf. respec-
tively in uroyo). This, however, does not necessarily rule out full
material borrowing, cf. “a certain (person), such-and-such” in J. Zakho
(Sabar, 2002: 263a) and across Eastern Neo-Aramaic.
It should be noted that speakers can still creatively apply the borrowed
material in their own linguistic way. A case in point is the formation of com-
paratives in Neo-Aramaic. Several dialects have borrowed the Kurdish or per-
haps earlier Iranian comparative (ns), as in Kurm.
dûr-tir “further” comparative of dûr “far”. In uroyo, the inherited elative con-
struction still exists, the bare adjective followed by the preposition me- “from”,
for example:
(4) a. ‘pleasant’
b. me- ‘more pleasant than (lit. form)’
As an alternative, the Kurdish-derived comparative can be attached
to either the basic form (4a) or the inherited comparative (4b, see Jastrow,
1992: 147):
c. ‘more pleasant’ (4-r)
d. ‘more pleasant’ (4-r)
so-called absolute state. This state is the independent
form of a noun or adjective in contradistinction to the dependent form much like the ezafe,
known as the construct state (m “the king of the land”m, known
as the emphatic state (m “the king”).
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This demonstrates how speakers deal with such contact-induced elements
convergence (Haig, 2001: 206).
An important implication of this distinction between matter and pat-
tern replication is that bi-
independently of the morphology and other elements.
Here, constructions are taken in the broadest and most common sense as
form-meaning combinations at all possible levels of abstraction, ranging from
word formation patterns to contextual pragmatic inferences of word order.
Speakers can adjust or expand the functions of constructions and reshape
their form and structure, having the full potential of leading a life of their
own within a speech community. If this standpoint is correct, then bilingual
their multilingual repertoire. Accordingly, it is possible that patterns not only
spread within the languages of an individual multilingual speaker, but also
across languages within whole speech communities of a certain area. Such
dynamics can lead to contact-induced innovations that pervade the gram-
matical structure of a language (cf. Heine and Kuteva, 2003, 2005).
The Present Indicative and Subjunctive in Kurdish and Aramaic
A possible example of such profound structural assimilation is the shape of
the present indicative progressive or habitual and its subjunctive counterpart
in the verbal system of both Kurdish and Eastern Neo-Aramaic. Both speech
in modal complements expressing desire, ability and obligation, respectively
bibînim “(that) I may see” in Kurmanji as against the indicative present dibînim
“I see”. The basic template begins with a marker of clause-level grammati-
cal information (di-, bi-), in which are fused: the categories of tense (such as
future, present and past), aspect (practically, completed or ongoing action)
and mood (such as possibility, necessity etc.). In linguistic theory, these cor-
relatives are often abbreviated to . What follows these -markers is the
verbal base that encodes the core meaning of the verbal phrase (bîn “see”), to
which the person agreement markers (s) are added (-im, -î, -e etc.). This
particular morphosyntax or structural template of -base- is also found
in modern Aramaic:
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The present indicative and subjunctive in Kurdish and Aramaic
Present indicative Present subjunctive
uroyo ko- -no - -no
J. Zakho k- - - -
Kurmanji di-bîn -im -/bi-bîn -im
Sorani a- -im bi- -im
‘I see’ ‘(that) I may see’
Note: tense-aspect-mood, r,
a After Matras (2000: 5 7–7), who also includes Persian, Arabic and Western Armenian. Cf.
Pennacchietti (1988, 1995); Chyet (1995); Matras (2009: 259–60, 2011: 75); Matras and Sakel
(2007: 845).
Like Kurdish di- and -a, the present indicative or “I see” is
ko- and k- (and its variants g-, ki-, -y- in
other dialects), whereas its absence (-) denotes the subjunctive, respectively
or “(that) I may see”. In this respect,
mainly bi- in marking the subjunctive,
the same: Mark before the verbal base and after it. Unquestionably,
we cannot preclude motivations giving rise to this type of
system, -
pletely incidental. Indeed, in contrast to common Semitic (cf. Gensler, 2011),
one of the most drastic changes to the Eastern Neo-Aramaic verbal system is
s, i.e. all
the s follow the verbal stem, but it lies beyond the scope of this paper to
go into the details here. Similarly, and interestingly, the indicative negator is
incompatible with the future marker in most dialects of as in the Badini
varieties of Northern Kurdish (Haig and Öpengin, forthcoming), such that the
negative present and the negative future coincide in the form of the negated
indicative-habitual. The primary negator is la in and adding it as a
(Khan 2008b)
marker b-b, e.g. ana b-la goren “I’m not going to marry” (Garbell, 1965b:
197). Interestingly, in the (Christian) dialect of Bohtan, there is one example of a contamina-
tion, possibly,h: the future particle (bt) is unexpectedly combined with
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meaning “I do
not see” or “I will not see”. This parallels Kurdish as follows:
(5) a. ez ná-yê-m (Kurmanji)
:I :-come-
b. lá- (J. Zakho; cf. Cohen, 2012: 438)
I --come-
‘I am not coming’ or ‘I will not come’
The material borrowing of Kurdish preverbal -markers is extremely rare.
One example that comes to mind is the Central Kurdish indicative-progressive
preverb da- (cf. MacKenzie, 1961: 90, 96), which occurs only in a few cases with
a past (perfective) stem to mark a past progressive in the Jewish dialect of Koy
Sanjaq and one in that of Arbel: “he was walking” (M 2004:
189.15) and “they were passing” (Khan, 1999: 112), compare Central
Kurdish: da-r “he was leaving”, or tim “I was coming” (MacKenzie,
1961: 96).
Apart from that, these examples of (possible) pattern replication dem-
onstrate an overall functional match between constructions in Kurdish and
Aramaic. This is what Matras and Sakel (2007) have termed pivot-matching.
Pivots are equivalent or near-equivalent features and combinations thereof
(type of) construction and facilitate the optimal syncre-
tisation and extensions of the functional range between the model or source
construction and its replicated or recipient counterpart.
When we amass some more complex constructions, we will see that the
same principle holds. For instance, in combining two clauses, both Kurdish
(against a verbal form as in
English He wants to go) in same-subject subordinate clauses linked to preced-
ing modal verbs expressing desire, ability, and obligation. This is one of the
hallmarks of languages in the Kurdish and Aramaic speech area. We observe
this,l, with expressions of desire,Table 3 below.
the indicative negator (which is le; subjunctive would be la), e.g.
“I will not see my friend” (Fox, 2002: 174 nt. 10). The order of morphemes is similar to what
we would expect for the Kurdish dialects that employ a future marker, f. ex. ez ê neçim mala
hevalê xwe “I will not go to my friend’s house” (p.c. E. Öpengin). It may be relevant to note that
several dialects in Central Kurdistan, such as the Jewish dialect of Suleimaniya, do not
exhibit a future marker,h, which does not have
a distinct form for the future either (see Fox, forthcoming 2014).
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Pivot-matching in the phrase ‘I want to go home’ in Aramaic and Kurdish
Present indicative Present subjunctive
‘I’ Ind-prog Base Pam Subj Base Pam ‘home’
Kurmanji ez di-xwaz -im -her -im malê
Badini min di-vê -t bi-ç-im =e mal
Sorani (min)a=m-awe --im =
ono k- -ono (d-) - l-ú=bayo
J. Zakho g-ib - - -in l-besa
J. Urmi ana g-bé -n-ez -én belá
J. Arbel g-bé -n-ez -én belá
J. Saqqiz (ana)g- -na -hiz -na
‘I want to go home.’
Note: Kurmanji, J. Zakho and J. Saqqiz (Matras, 2002: 60, 2009: 248, adapted glossing mine),
J. Urmi (Garbell, 1965b: 230), J. Arbel (Khan, 1999: 442.94), Badini (p.c. E. Öpengin), and Sorani
(Thackston, 2006a: 33).
The columns in Table 3. clearly show how constituents and their order
are near-identical in varieties of and Kurdish. Mainly the Sorani pro-
y, such as the mobile oblique clitic m- “me”,
which follows the -marker a- but precedes the verbal base awe, as well as
the directive enclitic =á “toward” (cf. Badini =e). This is similar to the fronted
oblique (i.e. non-canonical) subject in Badini: min divêt lit. “To me, it wants”.
Such oblique subjects do not occur in with verbs meaning “desire”, as far
as I am aware. Furthermore, distinct patterns are also found in , such as
(6) and (7):
(6) C. Tiyari (Talay, 2009: 34.11)
walla t--az-in l-xa
by.G od :want- that--go- to-a church
‘By God, I want to go to a church.’
(7) C. Aradhin (Kf, 1982: 112.129)
d-
I -want- that--go- to-church
‘I want to go to church.’
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However, a one-to-one correspondence is not essential to communicatively
driven convergence (Matras, 1998b and elsewhere). The only prerequisite are
the matching pivots or shared features of functional equivalence between the
source or model and recipient or replica language. First, the (possible) full
“I”
e, i.e.
preverbal encoding of -information -
ment. e, the second subjunctive. The goal of the move-
ment, “home”, is placed after the motion verb: in Kurdish in the oblique (malê)
with a directive clitic (or the preposition bo) in most Kurmanji dialects and
in Sorani; (see also Haig and Öpengin, forthcoming), and in Aramaic (lacking
such case distinctions for nouns) with or without a directional preposition l-
“to”. In this respect, I believe, the general factors that facilitate the replication
are still there. And this also applies to other modal environments such as abil-
ity,(8), and obligation,(9), where the subjunctive is
used in a comparable way.
(8) a. ez bi-hê-m (Amidya Kurdish)
:I -can- -come-
‘I cannot come.’ (Blau, 1975: 84)
b. (J. Amidya Aramaic)
I -can- -go-
‘I cannot go.’ (Greenblatt 2011:274.38)
(9) a. t-vê-t tu b-în-î (Amidya Kurdish)
-want- :you -bring-
‘You have to bring.’ (Blau, 1975: 71)
b. ( J. Amidya Aramaic)
-want- -go-
‘You (f.) have to go.’ (Greenblatt, 2011: 247)
As shown in (9), an impersonal construction containing the verb “want, need”
(beside Arabic-derived lazim) expresses obligation. In Suleimaniya, the linguis-
tic matter of the modal verb also coincides phonetically along with the pattern:
(10) a. abe (Suleimaniya Kurdish)
must -go-
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b. gbe -hez-ex (J. Suleimaniya Aramaic)
must -go-
‘We must go.’ (Khan, 2007: 211)
This phonetic resemblance and independence as an invariable modal auxiliary
presumably even amounted to copying of the Central Kurdish
form as dabi besides the inherited gbe (cf. [9b] and [10b] above) in the
Jewish dialects of Arbel and Koy Sanjaq, compare:
(11) a. (Bingird Kurdish; MacKenzie, 1961: 106)
must -go-
b. dabi ( J. Arbel Aramaic; Khan, 1999: 255)
must -go-
‘I (ms.) must go.’
(12) dabi (J. Koy Sanjaq Aramaic)
must -go-- there
‘We should have gone there.’ (M 2004: 111)
The convergence of the Kurdish and Aramaic clause linking strategies is not
exclusive to same subject complements. Although there isn’t the space for a
detailed discussion, it will be evident that non-coreferential subjects embed-
ded in a subordinate clause can also be used in a similar fashion. Consider the
following sentence in varieties of Eastern Neo-Aramaic and Kurmanji:
(13) Matras (2002: 61, adapted glossing, added parentheses)
a. (ana) (d) zon-ad laxma ( J. Zakho)
I -want- you buy:- bread
b. (ana) (ad) laxma (J. Saqqiz)
I -want- you bread buy:-
(14) (ono) (hat) (uroyo)
I -want- you -buy- bread
(15) ez di-xwaz-im ku tu nan bi-kir-î (Kurmanji)
: -want- that :you bread -buy-
‘I (m./f.) want you (ms./fs.) to buy bread.’
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The change in subject is explicitly included by means of an independent
subject pronoun (Aramaic d, d, hat; Kurdish tu, all meaning “you”)
in the embedded clause containing the subjunctive. The noteworthy word
order in the J. d
Kurdish. Note, however, that the embedded subject can be sensitive to focus in
Neo-Aramaic and is regularly dropped.
Another correspondence in usage of the subjunctive is the expression of the
so-called proximative aspect using wext in Kurdish. The proximative refers to
t, much like English be
about to happen and on the verge of and on the point of happening (Noorlander,
2013). The Kurdish word wext meaning “time” is itself derived from Arabic
waqt denoting “time” or “when”. In combination with the copula and the main
verb in the subjunctive, it constitutes a proximative construction, as in wext=e
bikevît “He is about to fall” in (16a) below. We could identify this construction
according to the pattern of wext. The word wext “time”
has been borrowed into varieties of Eastern Neo-Aramaic as waxt, along with
the accompanying function of a marker of proximative aspect. In the exact
same pattern with a copula (ile) and the subjunctive,
(16c) in Aramaic.
(16) a. wext =e bi-kev-ît (Badini)
: -fall-
‘He is about to fall.’ (p.c. E. Öpengin)
b. waxt =a (Sorani)
: -fall-
‘He is about to fall.’ (p.c. E. Öpengin)
c. waxt=ile pel- (J. Koy Sanjaq Aramaic)
time=: :fall-
‘He is about to fall.’ (M 2004: 249)
In this construction, it is the copula that changes a bare noun waxt meaning
“time” into a proximative marker, qualifying the verb in the subjunctive. This
is a clear example of pattern replication, showing how the Aramaic enclitic
copula (=ile) is functionally equivalent to the Kurdish copula (=e, =a). In the
Jewish dialect of Zakho, however, -
tion in the same construction, e.g. “he may die any moment”
(Sabar, 2002: 154). Here, there is no Aramaic copula, but it is the a that
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makes waxt a proximative marker. Possibly, this a of waxta
e in wext=e /waxt=a/ “lit. time it is”, which was replicated as a
waxta “almost” into Neo-Aramaic. Moreover, the adverb waxti
(from Kurdish wextî “soon”) related to this has been copied in a similar way:
(17) a. bi-b-e Kurmanji (Rizgar, 1993: 218)
dinner soon ready -be-
‘Dinner is almost ready.’
b. waxti uroyo (Midyat; Ritter, 1979: 551)
soon -freeze--
‘I (f.) almost froze.’
c. parx-an-wa J. Sanandaj (Khan, 2009: 621)
soon -
‘I (f.w.’
Kurdish Variation within Eastern Neo-Aramaic
The Kurdish dialectal landscape is in several ways profoundly responsible for
Neo-Aramaic dialects. This shows how entangled
Kurdish and Aramaic varieties are dialectologically speaking. A typical case is
the numeral system. In the formation of ordinals, dialects of Kurdish behave
accordingly. In the Kurdish variety
of Zakho, ordinals are created on the basis of cardinals by annexing them to the
nominal head in the oblique case, as in “fourth month” (MacKenzie,
1962: 364). This genitive or possessive relationship is otherwise known as ezafe.
The pattern of ordinals is very similar in the Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of
Zakho (see Sabar, 2002), compare (18a) and (18b) below.
(18) a. ‘fourth month’ (Zakho Kurdish)
month-: four-:
b. yarxa-d ‘id.’ (J. Zakho Aramaic)
month-of four
The functional parallel to the ezafe is the linking enclitic -d. The converging
structure is that the ordinal is formed by annexing the cardinal (r, a) to
(hayv, yarxa) that is characteristic of a general process of
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combining nouns into one phrase through a linker (ezafe, genitive -d). Note
that Aramaic lacks any case marking on nouns (like the Kurdish oblique - in
), which precludes a potential correspondence in this respect. Moreover,
the J. Zakho system more or less already existed in earlier Aramaic with a
chronological sense (i.e. *y d- “month number four”), but it was
extended and ultimately replaced the originally productive ordinal adjectives
(cf. “fourth”, h” etc.) most likely due to contact with
Kurdish.
When we cross the Greater Zab, we move into the area of Sorani or Central
e. These dialects typically construct the ordinals by adding
the morpheme -am to the cardinal possibly extended with the superlative -,
e.g. h” in the variety of Suleimaniya (MacKenzie, 1961: 72–63).
This salient morpheme has been borrowed as - in the Jewish Neo-
Aramaic dialect of Suleimaniya (Khan, 2004a: 206), yielding the following
correspondence:
(19) a. h’ (Suleimaniya Kurdish)
am-
b. ‘id.’ (J. Suleimaniya Aramaic)
The overall structure is again the same, which we could describe as follows: an
is composed of the -amin, reinterpreted by Aramaic
speakers as +-a-.
-
niteness (more or less equivalent to English the). In Aramaic, nouns used to be
post-positive article (cf. malk “(a)g”,
malk- “the king”), but these forms gradually supplanted the entire nominal
system in the Eastern varieties (m “king”). Unlike uroyo, which devel-
oped a new system based on demonstratives (cf. Jastrow, 2005), and atypical
of other Semitic languages, many dialects parallel the Kurmanji (and
Turkish) pattern (Kapeliuk, 2002, 2011):
(20) C. Barwar : Kurmanji
(Khan, 2008a) (Thackston, 2006b)
‘the girl’ brata keç
‘the man’ gawra mirov
‘a (particular) girl’ (a/)xa-brata keç-ek(-ê)
‘a (particular) man’ xa-gawra mirov-ek(-î)
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on the cardinal “one” ( xa, a; K.(y)ek, cf. Turk. bir)
nouns are unmarked. However, it should be pointed out that certain functional
properties of anaphoric demonstratives in dialects amount to the same
(Khan, 2008c), i.e. “that/the
girl” respectively “that/the man” (cf. uroyo o “the girl” respec-
tively ú-gawro “the man”).
Like Kurdish (MacKenzie, 1961: 152)-
e, cf. the Christian dialect of Barwar below in
(21). The gradual loss of gender distinction between xa (masculine) and a
(feminine)e.
(21) C. Barwar : Kurmanji
(Khan, 2008a:19, 534) (MacKenzie, 1961: 152, 161)
a. xa xamša gay-e
time- time--pl
‘fs’
b. xa-kma yom-e
-some day- some day--
‘some days’
c. kul-xa-naša kas-ak
every--person each person-
‘each person’
d. xa-ga xeta jar-ak
-time: other: time:- other
‘another time, again’
Moreover, again certain Jewish dialects beyond the Greater Zab in Central
i:
s. t, for
example, is generally morphologically marked as such by means of object agreement on the
verb. e. Compare -te
korrona “you (ms.) see the boy” (lit. see-you-him boy) and korrona “you (ms.) see
(a) boy” (Hertevin; Jastrow, 1988: 33).
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(22) J. Sul. : Sorani
(Khan, 2004a) (Thackston, 2006a)
‘the girl’ kiç-aká
‘the man’ ké
‘a (particular) girl’ xa bratá kiç-èk
‘a (particular) man’ xa gorá
aké is a dialectal hallmark of Trans-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic
in North-East Iraq and West Iran. The é is somewhat puzzling and could
be derived through contraction from the Sorani singular oblique form -aka-y
or alternatively the feminine counterpart - found in Akre (MacKenzie, 1961:
154). It should be noted that this morpheme also occurs in Gurani-Hawramani
(MacKenzie, 1966: 16) as -aké for both feminine singular and masculine plural.
fashion (Bulut, 2005: 254).
This is a highly exceptional case of borrowing; not only for the reason that
(Matras and Sakel, 2007: 845; Matras, 2009: 216), but also for the reason that
bound morphemes are assumed to be less prone to borrowing (Aikhenvald,
2006: 36). However, the latter factor is more subtle, since the morpheme also
shows clitic-like or semi-bound behaviour in Kurdish (p.c. G. Haig), although,
we must note that, once incorporated,c.
The overall pattern can appear strikingly similar, such that adjectives are
s,n:
(23) a. xalusta ‘the elder sister’ (J. Suleimaniya Aramaic)
sister: big:- (Khan, 2004a: 232, 2007: 202)
b. gawr-aká ‘the elder brother’ (Central Kurdish)
brother: big- (MacKenzie, 1961: 64)
(Khan, 1999), Koy Sanjaq (M 2004), Saqqiz (Israeli, 1998)
and Sanandaj (Khan, 2009).
Extant in Pidar and Mukrî dialects of Central Kurdish, northeast of Sulemaniyya, see
MacKenzie (1961: 57–9), Khan (1999: 173) and elsewhere.
The aká can follow, for instance, complex or compound noun phrases constructed
with a particular linker -a, e.g. [hotel-a bash]-aká “the good hotel” (Thackston, 2006a: 11).
c, since nouns
in typically end in -a.
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t. In Aramaic, the plural noun takes
x, as in gu “the men”gur-e “men” vs.
“the man”gora “(a)n”, whereas in Kurdish the plu-
-, compare Sorani “the men”
from .-
nite article in Kurdish, but this is impossible in Aramaic, compare “my brother”
and “my brothers”:
(24) a. axon-i axon-awal-i (J. Suleimaniya Aramaic)
brother-my brother--my (Khan, 2004a: 195)
b. (Central Kurdish)
brother--my brother-:-my (MacKenzie, 1961: 57–60)
On the other hand, it should not be combinable with demonstratives in
Kurdish, though it is freely so in Aramaic (as is typical of Central Semitic), cf.
Sorani aw “those rich people” (cf. Thackston, 2006a:8–10)
vs. Aramaic dawlamand-aké (Khan, 2004a: 232). All of this indicates how a
Central Kurdish morpheme has been integrated into the morphosyntax.
In more extreme cases of borrowing,
d.
(Khan, 2009:
233–4): most often the Aramaic article xa, e.g. xa brona “a boy”, but also the
-ék, e.g. bron-ék “idem”, besides a combination of the two, e.g. xa
jwab-é “an answer” (cf. more clitic-like: J. Kerend xa gorá-e besides xa gorá-ek
“a man”, Jastrow, 1997: 357). Moreover, it is noteworthy that the accompanying
pattern can be the same:
(25) Central Kurdish (Suleimaniya)
har-
every-what person-
‘whosoever’ (MacKenzie, 1962: 36.87)
(26) Neo-Aramaic (J. Sanandaj)
bel-é
in-whatever house-
‘in every house’ (Khan, 2009: 234)
In the eastern periphery of the Neo-Aramaic speech area, a similar construc-
tion is used in the dialect of Mlaso. This is not a dialect of , but closely
related to uroyo (i.e. Central Neo-Aramaic)
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replicated as -(e)ki without altering the stress (Jastrow, 1994:60 and elsewhere)
s. It appears to be fully inte-
grated into the language, although there is an alternative strategy to use
“one” as in uroyo (and xa in ). When combined with inherited nouns,
the -e assimilates fully to the preceding -, as in “night” “a certain
night, once upon a night” and “day”ki “a certain day”. It can be
added to loanwords, such as kára “(a)e” karra) káraki “once,
a time” (cf. Kurm. cárekê), “clamor” m. borebor)
“a clamor” and “a check”check). It is noteworthy that this
borrowed morpheme also contains the Kurdish masculine oblique ending -î
(of Kurmanji)aké discussed above.
Conclusion
We have explored a few examples of how Kurdish and Aramaic diversity is
entangled through replicated matter and converging patterns. Without doubt,
dialectal variation within speech communities is an important factor to con-
sider when studying contact between them.(though
not exclusively) pattern replication in the Jewish dialects to the west of
the Greater Zab river,(though not exclusively) matter repli-
cation in those to the east of it, i.e. in the Jewish dialects in North-East Iraq and
West Iran belonging to the Trans-Zab Jewish cluster. This geographical variation
of the Jewish dialects coincides well with major Kurdish dialect groups
and gives clues to (the perception of) salient Kurdish dialectal hallmarks. It is
noteworthy that, in borrowing Kurdish material, much of the structural integ-
rity of the Aramaic system is kept intact, whereas this is, as expected, rather
the other way around in cases of structural borrowing. This could support
claims generally made in contact linguistics (Weinreich, 1953; Silva-Corvalán,
1994; Matras, 2009) that language maintenance plays an important role in the
convergence of patterns in contexts such as the Kurdish-Aramaic bilingualism
that prevails among the Neo-Aramaic-speaking communities in Kurdistan. As
a strategic compromise, speakers maintain loyalty to their Neo-Aramaic dialect
by selecting typically Aramaic matter, but permitting non-Aramaic patterns to
converge in order to optimally syncretise communicative tasks and gain maxi-
mal linguistic adaptability in bilingual interaction. There is, nonetheless, no
precise way to predict how the variation in the model or source language, i.e.
Kurdish,e, i.e. Aramaic, since
bilingual speakers can still creatively manipulate the pattern according to their
own needs. The results can be completely idiosyncratic. Each dialect or dialect
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cluster may, as it were, e” or “tinker” with the borrowed matter or pattern
in its own particular system, yielding an independent contact-induced innova-
tion. However,
Trans-Zab -
cantly distinct from that of the Jewish speakers in North-West Iraq. (Whether
this also applies to the Christian community is a question for future research.)
Central Kurdish (respectively Sorani)
for Trans-Zab Jewish speakers of than Northern Kurdish (respectively
Badini and Kurmanji). They could represent two distinct strategies (and/or
perhaps even types of language attitudes) of bilingual societies in improv-
y. We may tentatively infer, then, that Jewish
Neo-Aramaic speakers west to the Greater Zab largely avoided copying linguis-
tic matter from Northern Kurdish due to language maintenance. By contrast,
those to the east rather complied with the Aramaic structural constraints by
integrating the linguistic matter from Central Kurdish, i.e. the dominant and
prestigious language.
There are numerous other Kurdish-Aramaic contact phenomena of the kind
s, but
they lie outside the scope of this article and belong to a future endeavour. It
is expected that the same functional-communicative approach taken in this
paper will yield fruitful results in further studies of Kurdish-Aramaic contact.
Abbreviations and Symbols
1
2 second person
3 third person
> developed into
< is derived from
C. Christian
copula
ezafe
F feminine
indicative
J. Jewish
Kurm. Kurmanji
M masculine
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negation
North Eastern Neo-Aramaic
person agreement marker
plural
S singular
subjunctive
Sul. Suleimaniya
tense aspect mood
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brill.com/ksa
Kurdish Studies
Archive
Adem Uzun, “Living Freedom”
t. Berghof Transitions Series No. 11. Berlin: Berghof Foundation,
2014. 48 pp., (:8-3-941514-16-4).
With more than 25 years of experience in the Kurdish liberation movement
in Turkey and currently a leading member of the Administrative Council of
the Kurdistan National Congress (), Adem Uzun has authored a succinct
report “to explain the emergence and internal evolution of the [Partiya
Karkerên Kurdistan or Kurdistan Workers’ Party] within the Kurdish struggle
for freedom and democracy against the repressive and nationalist policies of
the Turkish state” (p. 9). His report has three main parts: 1.
Kurdish history and the post-World-War- bipolar world in which the present
Kurdish movement developed; 2.
Cold War in the early 1990s and their impact on the Kurdish movement; and
3.
the in 2007 and presently involves the peace process since 2013 on Imrali
island where Abdullah Öcalan, the founder and current leader of the , has
been imprisoned since his capture in 1999.-
tion to a peaceful approach, Adem Uzun is particularly well suited to analyse
these subjects, both the development of the and particularly the currently
stalled peace process.
Kurdish population: “Uy, 20 million Kurds live in Northern Kurdistan
(Turkey), 10 million in Eastern Kurdistan (Iran), 7 million in Southern
Kurdistan (Iraq) and 2.5 million in Western Kurdistan (Syria)-
mately 2 million Kurds more scattered across the globe. This means that there
are almost 40 million Kurds worldwide” (p. 10). In his second section Uzun
somewhat confusingly tells his reader about “the establishment of the
in 1973” (p. 13), but then a few lines later states that “the
founded on 27 November 1978, largely because its cadres believed that all legal
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ways of organising a national movement had been exhausted” (ibid.). However,
what Uzun clearly means is simply that the ’s immediate roots go back to
the earlier date.
The main part of Uzun’s report deals with the current pursuit of a peace pro-
cess, which he traces to the beginning of the ’s transition from an armed
independence movement to the presently much more socially and politi-
cally sophisticated and broadly constructed organisation that began with the
1993 ceas during the last days of the Turkish president Turgut Özal. The
implication is clear; if Özal had not suddenly died on 17 April 1993, the current
peace process that only began in 2013 might have started two decades earlier.
not have occurred. Alternative histories, however, are not reality, but only lost
shades of what might have been.
Claiming that “forces in Turkey that were hostile to peace killed President
Özal to reignite the war” (p. 17) Uzun describes the subsequent renewal of mili-
tary struggle and 7 more unsuccessful in 1995, 1998, 1999, 2005,
2006, 2009, and 2010. “U [the
as signs of weakness and responded to them with conspiracies and
provocations” (ibid.).
As many other Kurdish nationalists do, Uzun then describes what he calls
“an international conspiracy to capture Öcalan.
conspire against Öcalan” (pp. 17 and 19). Uzun is probably referring to decla-
rations made by governments such as the European Union (EU), the United
States and Israel that could indicate that they were involved in Öcalan’s arrest.
However, true or false,
law of unintended consequences, Öcalan and the turned what seemed
their death knell with Öcalan’s capture in 1999 into a new Kurdish empower-
ment. Adem Uzun’s report is strongest in explaining how these developments
occurred.
Initially, “t
and wanted to exploit the international conjuncture dominated by the post-
11-September 2001 ‘war-on-terrorism’ rhetoric” (p. 20). In short order, the EU
and the US joined Turkey in placing the on their respective terrorist lists,
actions that “ds” (ibid.). This is because “the
government, who had just come to power in Turkey, interpreted the EU
decision to list the as a terrorist organization as international support for
taking a violent approach to the Kurdish issue” (ibid.).
However, the more sensibly and unexpectedly responded with a
“tm” by which it “was reconstructed with a
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c, ecological and gender-emancipatory
system, and switched from being a party to a congressional system” (p. 21).
renewal, the became “the ideological centre of the new system” (ibid.)
termed the Koma Civakên Kurdistan () or Kurdistan Communities’ Union.
“Kongra-Gel became the legislative assembly of the system” (p. 21), while
the Kurdistan National Congress () sought to “incarnate the moral unity
of the Kurdish nation” (p. 23). In addition, Ö n’s
struggle for liberation as “the fundamental contradiction preventing societal
freedom and championed women’s liberation as the only way to bring about
social enlightenment, democratic change and an emancipatory mentality”
(ibid.). Indeed, even the most casual observer can readily see how uniquely
important women are in the as contrasted to any other movements in
the Middle East.
Encompassing this new paradigm, “democratic autonomy was developed
for Turkish Kurdistan: a voluntary joint existence that did not require chang-
ing the borders of the current nation-state or demanding a separate state was
desirable” (p. 22). While clearly praising these paradigm alterations, Uzun
admits that “it was not easy for an organization that for so long had aspired to
and struggled for an ‘independent, united and democratic’ Kurdistan to change
its aspirations” (ibid.). On the other side, however,
the ’s ability to transform itself according to internal and external changes
and then communicate these alterations to ordinary people is exactly what
empowers the organization and the Kurdish liberation movement as such.
With this background, Uzun’s report then enters the current Imrali peace
process in which the still imprisoned / leader Abdullah Ocalan never-
theless declared on 21 March 2013, “the start of a new era.
n.
He also made detailed suggestions to the government, noting the necessary
legislative amendments and steps required to advance the process” (p. 31).
However,“the Turkish state’s mentality prevents even the most
basic laws being passed to support the peace process” (p. 33) and thus argues
that “it is incumbent upon the EU to persuade Turkey to adopt a principled
paradigm shift” (ibid.) to correct this negative situation.
Uzun concludes that his “paper has sought to show that the Kurdish peo-
ple have sought to solve the Kurdish question through peaceful dialogue and
negotiation, while the Turkish state’s approach has used policies of assimila-
tion, delay and oppression” (p. 34). Admirably, however, he still believes “that
only negotiations will lead to a solution” (ibid.).
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In addition to its main sections, Uzun’s report contains a limited bibliogra-
phy consisting mostly of online sources, but missing most of the now volumi-
nous scholarly literature of the past two decades. He does have a useful list of
very apropos Kurdish acronyms,
elsewhere and four annexes.October 2011
criticizing the Turkish state’s approach for “imprisoning the very people who
are the political force behind the solution as members of the ” (p. 39), and
concluding that “it is now clearly evident that the opposing forces cannot erad-
icate one or the other through war” (p. 40).
The second annex analyzes the current revolutionary situation in Syria
and Western /Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), an on-going
impacts the current peace process in Turkey. Here Uzun argues that “the
Turkish state secretly supports groups, both logistically
and militarily” (p. 41). On this point, -
gious sources as the British news magazine The Economist in October 2013,
among many other sources. Given the extremist conduct of the Islamic State
of Iraq and Syria ()
Turkey’s-
tine actions.
As for the Kurds in Syria, Uzun accurately insists that “they prefer peace-
ful methods for solving the current problems, and refuse to side with either
the regime or the opposition, because neither recognises the Kurdish people’s
natural and democratic rights” (ibid.). He also notes how on 21 January 2014,
the vast majority of the Kurds in Syria “d
s” (p. 43). Uzun’s second annex also
contains a map that details relevant cities in Rojava. Following a useful lengthy
chronological list of relevant events from 1973–2013 that runs for more than
four pages, another map shows the much larger pan-Kurdish area of the
Middle East and lists numerous cities in all four stares that contain Kurdistan.
According to the prestigious scholarly publisher Berghof, Uzun’s most
enlightening report “is one of a series produced by participants in a Berghof
research project on transitions from violence to peace” (p. 8). The purpose
of Berghof ’s scholarly project “was to learn from the experience of those in
resistance or liberation movements who have used violence in their struggle
s”
(ibid.). The publisher further explains that “we believe these case-studies are
t” and that “we are convinced that these
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opinions and perspectives urgently need to be heard in order to broaden our
understanding of peacemaking” (ibid.). The present reviewers strongly feel
that Berghof is right on with this intention. Adem Uzun’s report will richly
reward the reader and is highly recommended to policy makers, academics,
and the lay public.
Kariane Westrheim
University of Bergan, Norway
kariane.westrheim@uib.no
Michael Gunter |
Tennessee Technological, University, USA
MGunter@tntech.edu
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Ebru Sönmez, Idris-i Bidlisi: Ottoman Kurdistan and Islamic Legitimacy, Libra Kitap,
Istanbul, 2012, 190 pp., (:8-605-4326-56-3).
It is not an easy endeavour to sketch out the political and cultural landscape
of the moment when Ottoman power met Kurdistan during its struggle with
the Safavid Empire for imperial expansion.
the limits of available sources which reduce the history of the region to a mere
political/administrative account. The second is the state-centred methodol-
ogy which has long guided/structured existing historiography on the subject.
e, dris-i Bidlisi
(d. 1520), at the centre of her narrative, Ebru Sönmez in this study adopts a
rather original methodology. With her focus on the sources written by Bidlisi,
Sönmez guides the reader through the complex cultural and political universe
of this historical moment. In doing so, she also describes the historical land-
scape of the period which produced Bidlisi as a statesman and intellectual. As
the author is attuned to both to the wider history of the time and to the history
of the individual, she skilfully draws out the autobiographical elements in the
works of Bidlisi such as his Selimshahname, Kanun-i Shahanshahi and magnum
opus the Hasht Bihisht. These sources are combined with Hoca Sadeddin’s
, the local history of erafeddin Khan Bidlisî, Sharafname and
dris-i Bidlisi’s letters to Ottoman sultans. Thus, Sönmez puts into dialogue not
only the sources but also the worlds of and Rum, which came into con-
tact at the turn of the 16th century.
a window on the cultural and intellectual atmosphere of the world. As
the son of the learned mystic Husam al-Din Bidlisi (d. 1495) who served as the
divan secretary of the Akkoyunlu court, dris-i Bidlisi was born in the village of
Suliqan in Rayy, near the Akkoyunlu capital, Tabriz. Against this background,
Sö
s. Bidlisi served Yakup Khan (d. 1490) as chancellor at his court and
after the annexation of the Akkoyunlu state by the Shite Safavid power, he
made his way to the world of Rum, during the reign of Bayezid (d. 1512). In
her description of this part of Bildisi’s life, the author stresses the intellectual
t. One interesting
incident concerns the Ottoman elite’s reactions against Hasht Bihisht, a work
on Ottoman dynastic history that Bidlisi wrote in Persian at the request of the
sultan. Sönmez argues that such reaction should be taken as the symptom
of the constitution of an Ottoman cultural identity distinct from that of the
(pp. 45–48). After this event, Bidlisi left the Ottoman court and settled in
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Mecca, under the protection of the Mamluk sultan, Qansu Gawri.
of the book ends with the re-invitation of Bidlisi to the Ottoman court by the
new sultan Selim (d. 1520).
The second part concentrates on the political history of the Sunnite
(Ottoman-Kurdish) alliance against the Safavids. It moves the scope of discus-
sion from the biography of Bidlisi to the imperialisation of Kurdistan by the
Ottoman Empire. In Bidlisi’s writings the term Kurdistan does not denote an
ethno-demographic entity. Yet, according to Sönmez, Bidlisi lays stress on the
ethnic identity of the Kurdish notables in order to place the Kurds in the larger
history of the world (pp. 71–72). In this part, Sönmez successfully depicts
an acute anxiety in Bidlisi’s writings to attribute legitimacy to the autonomous
polity of the Kurdish notables in the region.
of the Kurdish notables as descended from Sassanid and Abbassid nobility or
simply as belonging to the prophet’s lineage (sayyid), statements bolstered by
a strong emphasis on the Sunnite identity of the Kurds. The second is the refer-
ence to the hereditary political positions which the Kurdish leaders had nego-
tiated with earlier rulers, such as the Seljukids or Mongols. The matrimonial
ties that the Kurdish notables made with dynasties such as Karakoyunlu and
Akkoyunlu in order to strengthen their power are also explored in this part.
Following this, the author narrates the defeat of Shah Ismil by the Ottoman
forces and the role played by dris-i Bidlisi as chief diplomatic intermediary
important by his winning the loyalty of Kurdish notables to the Ottoman sul-
tan. The second part of the book comes to an end with a detailed analysis of
the creation of Kurdistan as an administrative unit under Ottoman rule.
t, the author places Bidlisi’s writings in the con-
text of the Ottoman claim to the Sunnite caliphate. The conception of ruler-
ship and caliphate in the works of Bidlisi bear a strong mystical tenor since, in
his view,h. The idea
caliph-sultan.
Sönmez underlines that despite his mystical tone, Bidlisi in his writings kept
himself aloof from the hululi ideas of ghulat Shis according to which God
“transmigrated” into the Safavid shah.
in Bidlisi’sn’s superiority over the Safavid
shah, considering the latter as heretical. Particularly, in his Selimshahname,
Bidlisi associated Shism with Zoroastrianism,y. As the
author underlines, these were also major arguments used by the great Ottoman
jurists to formulate juridical opinions in order to establish the legitimacy of the
Ottoman Sultan as caliph-sultan whose duty was to conduct jihad against the
heretical Safavid power. It is at this point that the author makes the central
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argument of her book: Bidlisi’s intellectual writings had a major impact on the
caliph-sultan. This
process, according to the author, must be understood as the emergence of the
conception of universal and absolute Muslim leadership demarcating a radical
rupture from the post-Abbasid and the post-Mongol conception of regional
caliphate.
Sönmez’s exciting work is an important contribution to Ottoman/Kurdish
history in particular, and to the intellectual history of the Middle East in gen-
eral. The importance of this book cannot be overemphasised in terms of the
sources used and in terms of its attempt at writing the history of the Ottoman
Empire’s encounter with Kurdistan, both from local and imperial perspectives.
However, it is not without shortcomings. It misses the mark at certain points
and the historiographical style of the author provokes certain questions dis-
cussed in the following lines.
Despite the author’s
angle, one should perhaps note that she generally relies upon secondary
sources written by Ottoman historians. This restrains the author from engaging
in dialogue with works written by non-Ottomanists. This restriction of intel-
lectual sources may limit the readership of this important historical work. It
should also be noted that at times the author tends to use weak secondary
sources on certain themes or neglects earlier work on the central issues tackled
in the book.
As the author rightly argues in the introduction of her book, the history of
the region has long been overshadowed by nationalist accounts. One can add
Özolu and Baki Tezcan,
however, the following major contributions, among many others, should be underlined as
well: Walter Posch, Jahres 1548–1549. Ein gescheitertes
osmanisches Projekt zur Niederwerfung des safavidischen Persiens, unpublished PhD disser-
tation, Bamberg, 1999, from the same author see, “What Is a Frontier?: Mapping Kurdistan
between Ottomans and Safavids”, in Éva M. Jeremiás (eds.), Irano-Turkic Cultural Contacts in
the 11th–17th Centuries, Piliscsaba, 2003, pp. 203–215; Alexander Khatcharian, “The Kurdish
Principality of Hakkariya (14th–15th Centuries)”, Iran and the Caucasus 7/1–2, 2003, pp. 37–58;
Stephan Conermann, “Volk, Ethnie oder Stamm : Die Kurden aus mamlûkischer Sicht”, in
Asien und Afrika:Kurden 8, S. Conermann and G. Haig (eds.), Verlag, Hamburg, 2004,
pp. 27–68 and Bacqué-Grammont and J.-L. Adle, C., “Quatre lettres de Sheref Beg de Bitlîs
(1516–1520)”, Islam 63, 1986, pp. 90–118.
(A Modern History of the Kurds, London I. B. Tauris,
1996, p. 22) in order to describe the political position of the Kurds under Seljukids. However,
Claude Cahen’s La Turquie pré-ottomane, 1988 is still an important work to be consulted on
this particular point. See also the following work, among many, on the question of caliphate
which is not cited in Sönmez’s study: Gilles Veinstein, “La question du califat ottoman”, in
Le Choc colonial et l’islam, Pierre-Jean Luizard (ed.), Paris, L’Harmattan, 2006, pp. 451–468.
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that Ottoman Kurdistan, as an object of research, has generally been pushed to
the fringes of the Empire, in the mapping of Ottoman-centred historiography.
Therefore, the great deal of attention paid by the author in her narrative on the
history of the term Kurdistan as an administrative unit that emerged under
the Ottoman imperial expansion should be saluted. In spite of a limited read-
ing of geographical sources,
within the larger context of Ottoman historical writing.
Notwithstanding, the author does not seem to have paid the same meticu-
lous care when it comes to her usage of the word “Kurd”. In Sönmez’s work,
that the word Kurd denotes a singular “ethnic category” with a principally
Sunni-Muslim faith seems to have been taken for granted (pp. 65–81). Only
occasionally does the author note Shiite tendencies among some Kurdish
no-tables (pp. 81–85). Thus the reader cannot help but to ask what exactly did
the word Kurd stand for in the 16th century? It is true that in the writings of
drisi Bidlisi and erafeddin Khan Bidlisi there is a strong tenor in representing
the Kurds as a monolithic Sunni community. However, even a cursory glance
at sources such as Sharafname suggests that the word Kurd had a polysemic
meaning even for erafeddin Khan Bidlisi. Thus on several occasions the
author of Sharafname writes of certain Kurdish communities not only as het-
erodox but also as Jewish, Yezidi, Jacobite, or Christian. As such, the stress on
Sunnism in these sources cannot refer only to the concern of Kurdish notables
for legitimacy. It should also be taken as symptom of an inner “sunnitization”
process in 16th century Kurdistan.
comes to other geographical or political terms. As an example, in a page the author puts
the terms Egypt and Transoxania together with the Ottoman Empire and considers them as
Muslim states. p. 39.
t, the reading of Sönmez reproduces the same limits as does
the following work. Baki Tezcan, “The development of the use of ‘Kurdistan’ as a geographical
description and the incorporation of this region into the Ottoman Empire in the 16th cen-
tury”, in The Great Ottoman-Turkish Civilisation, 4 vols., edited by Kemal Çiçek. (Ankara: Yeni
Türkiye, 2000), vol. 3, pp. 540–553.
eighteenth-century context the word Kurd had a pol-
ysemic meaning. See, Yavuz Aykan, Les acteurs de la justice à Amid et dans la province du
d’après les sicil provinciaux du 18 siècle, unpublished Ph.D dissertation, ,
Paris, pp. 42–44.
Chèref-nâmeh ou fastes de la nation Kourde, translated by François Bernard (Charmoy,
St.-Petersbourg, 1870), volume 1/2, pp. 21/28–29.
k: Derin Terziolu, “How to Conceptualize Ottoman
Sunnitization: A Historiographical Discussion”, Turcica (44) 2012–2013, pp. 301–338.
n/Kurdish policy against Yezidi
Kurds. See, Yavuz Aykan, Les acteurs de la justice, pp. 255–292.
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Finally, while the author’s aim of rescuing the past from the Kurdish and
Turkish nationalist ideologues of the present is very important, what arouses
the reader’s curiosity is that all the examples of nationalist writings that she
provides come only from Turkish historiography (p. 20). Indeed, it would
have been a fascinating engagement for the Ottoman historian to deconstruct
Kurdish nationalist historiography, however there is no evidence that such a
historiography exists.
Yavuz Aykan |
Institute for Advanced Study, Nantes, France
yavuz.aykan@univ-paris1.fr
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Sabri Ate, The Ottoman–Iranian Borderlands: Making a Boundary, 1843–1914,
New York; Cambridge University Press, 2013. 366 pp., (:8-1107033658).
The Ottoman–Iranian Borderlands: Making a Boundary is about the story of the
border-making process of the Ottoman and Iranian empires during the nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries when both empires were experiencing
great transformations in terms of centralisation, modernisation and state mak-
ing in parallel with the reforms implemented in administrative,l, military
and legal spheres. Ate’s book challenges the long established nationalist and
linear historiography which argues that the border drawn between Ottoman
and Iranian empires with the Qasr- irin Treaty (1639) is the oldest and the
most one and which has not changed ever since. Through focus-
ing on the activities and decisions of several international borderland com-
missions, the treaties and the wars between the Ottoman and Iranian empires,
“border” but also several
changes carried out on the boundary between Ottoman and Qajar empires
throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
By using a variety of untouched archival sources, including Ottoman, British
and Iranian, AteOttoman-Iranian border-
land/frontier turned into a sharp boundary/border when the two empires
attempted to increase their state capacities in their frontier zones. While doing
this Ate does not regard the “state” as the sole actor of the boundary making
process in which the central bureaucracy imposed its policies from top down.
He gives voice to a variety of local actors and borderland communities ranging
from semi-nomadic tribes to powerful hereditary dynasties and pays attention
to their role in the demarcation of the boundary. This challenges the histo-
riographies which tend to see central states as the sole actor of change and
transformation in history. Moreover, Ate does not examine the border mak-
ing process solely as an attempt of two intersecting states, but analyses this
process within a broader/i
powers, like the British, Russian and German states, were also involved.
Through referring to various studies about border making processes in dif-
ferent parts of world, the author analyses this process as a part of state making
in which states expanded their infrastructural powers (administrative units,
taxes, new methods of conscription, new land regime, salaried appointees and
etc.) in their frontier zones and replaced indirect rules with direct ones. Thus,
on the Ottoman side, the border making process ran parallel with the elimi-
famous Baban, Soran, Botan who until the implementation of the Tanzimat
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-
tiations with surrounding states. Ate shows how “borderland peoples lost their
ability to manipulate or negotiate with state power, play rival states against
each other, and ‘live autonomously in interstitial spaces’ as a result of the ter-
ritorialisation of the state-space” (p. 33) during the boundary making process.
However, this does not mean that borderland populations were passive recep-
tors of state policies, quite the contrary borderland peoples were involved in
border-making s. In
several examples the author shows how the decisions and claims of the bor-
derland communities were important in the demarcation of the boundary and
Shatt al Arab and Muhammarah in the south (pp. 119, 20) to the Qotur (pp. 148,
49) in the northern parts of the Ottoman and Qajar borderlands.
Ate analyses how the Ottoman and Iranian empires attempted to trans-
ethno-religious and tribal groups of the borderlands into
“modern” citizens through new identity cards, passports, patrols,
institutions, practices and surveillance methods. He also shows the response of
surrounding states. Among many, the author gives the example of the Sheikh
Ubeydullah Revolt of 1880 as a case to exemplify this reaction (pp. 213–221).
Without entering into the discussion on the nationalist/non-nationalist char-
acter of it, Ate analyses the Sheikh Ubeydullah Revolt within the context of
the Ottoman-Iranian border-making process. He argues that the revolt “was
in a way an attempt to deactivate the boundary and generate an alternative
understanding of space that would encompass the Kurdish ethnic group”
(p. 221). He also regards the failure of the revolt as a “testimony to the reality of
the boundary and the identities that were formed by it” (p. 211).
The author further argues that with the Treaty of Erzurum (1823), both
states started to abandon the sectarian language in their diplomatic relations.
In other words, Ate regards this Treaty as the starting point of the secularisa-
tion of the relations between the Ottoman and Qajar Empires which also cor-
responds to the boundary making and modernisation process (p. 56). However,
in the following chapters he illustrates how in practice sectarianism (although
it had its limits) continued to play an important role during the demarcation of
the boundary. While the Ottomans tried to win the loyalty of the Sunni Shekak
century (p. 180), Shi Kurdish tribes of Sanjabi, Zanganah and Kalhor sup-
the twentieth century (p. 258).
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Ate puts forward that the demarcation of the boundary between Ottoman
and Iranian Empires in the nineteenth century precluded the formation of a
possible Kurdish nation state in the long run. The demarcation of the bound-
ary together with the elimination of the hereditary Kurdish dynasties from the
beginnings of the Tanzimat led to the atomisation of Kurdish society, a process
which Ate calls the “clanization of Kurdistan” (p. 82). Agreeing with Martin
van Bruinessen, he claims that the extension of state power in the region led
to a transformation from “complex, state like to much simpler forms of social
and political organizations” (p. 82). Moreover, this atomisation or clanisation
process expanded and accelerated after the formation of the Hamidian Light
Cavalry Regiments in 1890s, (pp. 230–231) when the Ottoman centre increas-
ingly extended its power over tribal entities. The atomisation of the Kurdish
society left Kurdistan without any powerful brokers to negotiate with imperial-
ist powers and thus prevented the formation of Kurdish political organisations
(p. 319).
The author strongly emphasises that border making processes of the two
d.
He claims that due to the pressure applied by surrounding states during the
demarcation of the boundary, several nomadic tribes changed their migra-
tion routes although they continued their seasonal migrations (p. 163). Since
his study is more about border-making and not about semi nomadic tribes,
the author does not analyse how restrictions over nomads changed migra-
tion routes, migration patterns, migration cycles, livelihoods of nomads and
whether this contributed to their settlement at frontier regions or not. But still,
his observations on the tribes of the borderlands, particularly on the Caf and
Zilan tribes, give many insights for further studies on borderland nomads.
In general, Ate’s study is full of new information, new arguments, and
s, centre-
periphery relations and state formation processes in general and Kurdish his-
tory in particular. Ate pays great attention to the claims of borderland com-
munities and aims to make them visible actors throughout his study. However,
since there are too many names of individuals, communities and places men-
tioned, w. Yet, twelve
changes the border went through but also the claims made by the Ottomans
and Iranians on the borderlands.
Yener Koç
Boaziçi University, Turkey
yener.koc@khas.edu.tr
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Choman Hardi, Gendered Experiences of Genocide: Anfal Survivors in Kurdistan-Iraq.
Farnham, Surrey and Burlington Vermont: Ashgate, 2011,217 pp.,
(:8-0-7546-7715-4).
This is a very, very important book. It is important for Kurds and Kurdistan, but
not merely. In Choman Hardi’s book on the Anfal genocidal attacks and their
survivors, we have the most systematic and sympathetic social science study
of one of the most brutal and depraved acts of humanity in the late 20th cen-
tury. And yet this book is not situated or marketed as such. It is part of a series
blandly called, “Voices in Development Management.” It is only available (in
hardcover and e-book) at prices too high for the average consumer ( 92.47
and 95.96 respectively). By specifying that the experiences she gives voice to
are “gendered”
of Anfal studies. However, Anfal’s survivors were disproportionately women,
because the Saddam Hussein regime systematically killed men and terrorised
women. Anfal itself, not only this book, was highly gendered, and this aspect of
it must feature prominently in any analysis of it. The women who speak from
Hardi’s pages recount incredible horrors. Many of the men associated with
them were killed before experiencing further horrors about which they could
have spoken. So this is a “gendered” account, true, but more importantly it is an
account, and to my knowledge the richest and most detailed available. I hope
it is soon re-releasede, and marketed appropriately.
Anfal, “The Spoils”, was highly-organised and systematic. As Hardi vividly
describes, it was a campaign of killing, torturing, displacing, detaining, terroris-
ing, raping, starving, humiliating, and disappearing waged against Kurds and
other minorities by the mainly-Sunni Arab government of Saddam Hussein in
the late 1980s. Like this book, Anfal should be much better-known. Yet, many
members of global publics believe that Saddam Hussein’s government did
not have weapons of mass destruction (). In so believing, they confuse
assertions made about the early 2000s with the late 1980s, for which there is
incontrovertible evidence that the Iraqi government not only had , but
used them to kill, injure, traumatise and displace hundreds of thousands of
people in Kurdistan. The world must continue to learn about and recognise the
outrageous fact of both the use of and the campaign of which it was a
part, and I believe this book will prove to be a very important resource toward
that end. Anfal has received only limited recognition as a genocide from the
world’s governments (p. 30). One notable recognition came after this book was
published, in the form of the British House of Commons’
in 2013 (for which I had the privilege of lobbying during a 2010 parliamentary
seminar).
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For this book, Hardi interviewed 71 women and 23 men, and also obtained
data from other conversations and meetings between 2005 and 2010 (p. 7).
She interviewed most subjects “on camera” (p. 64). She found survivors both
eager to talk about their ordeals, but sometimes insistent on telling the story in
their own way, rather than with precise responses to the researcher’s questions
(p. 9). The book contains seven chapters, which range from a basic introduc-
tion to Anfal, to chapters rich with content from the interviews,
and contextual material at the end of the book. Some of the content of the
women’s t,
but many pressed ahead despite this. Hardi’s g,
-
rienced during the Anfal campaigns. For example: “Topzawa was buzzing with
the people, the shouting soldiers and the various transports that brought some
people and took others away. Every day, convoys of vehicles came to take peo-
ple away, some to mass graves, some to Nugra Salaman in the south of Iraq
and others to Dibs. The moment of departure was as chaotic as the moment of
arrival. People were brought into the courtyard, pushed into full vehicles and
driven away. Topzawa was the last place where most of the women last saw
their men” (pp. 51–52).
Hardi makes frequent and useful comparisons to the Holocaust, arguing
that many of the techniques and outcomes of Anfal were similar. For example,
she notes that both Holocaust and Anfal victims’
if they were pregnant or had children (p. 68). They faced acute danger when
giving birth, and their children died in great numbers. Some women even dis-
carded or killed their children when they could not care for them or when
they thought the children would be killed by other means anyway. Hardi also
t, such as the length of
time that men spent in detention. In Anfal, men typically spent very little time
in detention before being taken to execution sites. Many Anfal detainees were
thus held in detention facilities populated by women and children. These com-
parisons do more than to simply aid in the analysis of the two genocides; they
contribute valuably to genocide studies generally.
Not only does this book provide evocative and excruciating testimony of
the actual events of Anfal, but it deals equally as strongly with the survivors’
d. Survivors’ struggles range from the psycho-
logical to the political. Many struggled to provide for themselves and their
children in the early years, and many still struggle as they age. Although the
Kurdistan Regional Government () has paid increasing attention to the
Anfal survivors,
and other assistance, many survivors have felt that it should have done more.
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Many struggle with survivor’s guilt. Many struggle with rejection in the wider
Kurdish community. The author reports that once, while giving a presenta-
tion on Anfal, a young man stood up and said, “We are fed up with hearing
about Anfal, we should try to forget it” (p. 160). Perhaps the most vicious type
of rejection is reserved for rape victims, or women perceived to have been vic-
tims of rape: “How many have been forced to marry and then killed because
they were not virgins? Those women’s
were raped live with the burden of silence and the fear of being found out. It
is no wonder that during the Anfal trials the Kurdish community managed to
been raped because to do so would damage their reputation and jeopardize
their lives” (p. 67).
I wish this book included more-lengthy interview excerpts. The author’s
technique is to include short quotes of one to a few sentences, and then to
summarise the rest of the data in her own words, which is appropriate for an
academic text such as this. However, I think there would be great value in read-
ers having access to the full, or nearly full, content of the interviews. So, I hope
Hardi will publish another book with this material, or make her notes and
long-term preservation. They could
be embargoed and thoroughly anonymised (to the extent that this is possible
in the case of video)s.
As I write this,
small-scale genocides perpetrated by the Islamic State against Christians,
Yezidis, and other minorities that may go unrecognised as “ol” genocides
much as Anfal did in many jurisdictions and as it does in many still. Very likely,
some of the perpetrators are the same people, who were once Ba’thists and
who now operate under an extremist Islamic banner. I will close with one
last hope for this book: that it is translated into Arabic. Iraq is today home to
countrymen. Most have not faced justice, and, sadly, many may never face it.
But I hold out hope that, like other perpetrating populations such as that of
Germany, at some point wide-spreadsoul-searching will com-
mence that leads to contrition and revulsion at what was done. Books like this
one can assist in that endeavor. That is among one of the things the victims,
both living and dead, deserve. They of course deserve much more still, but
bravo to Choman Hardi for doing this courageous research and giving us this
detailed account of Anfal’s horrors.
King
University of Kentucky, USA
deking@uky.edu
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Harriet Allsopp, The Kurds of Syria: Political Parties and Identity in the Middle East,
London and New York, I. B. Tauris, 2014, 299 pp., (:8-1780765631).
Harriet Allsopp’s book seeks to explain a striking paradox: while the Kurdish
-
sation from the 1990s onwards, by 2010, the level of (Kurdish) “national con-
sciousness” among Syrian Kurds had never been that high. Delegitimisation
was marked by an ever-increasing gap between the intellectuals and the youth
on the one hand, and the political leadership, on the other. Furthermore,
some of the factors that explain Kurdish parties’ “crisis of legitimacy” also
help us understand why, despite unprecedented political opportunities (such
as regaining political, as well as sentimental, attachment from the “Kurdish
street” prompted by the Syrian uprising of 2011) only the
Democratic Union, and one of the rare political parties
y, which was
thanks to the takeover of the Kurdish regions, both from military and political
viewpoints.
In order to shed light on the abovementioned puzzling dynamics, Allsopp
provides a detailed historical account of the emergence and evolution of the
Kurdish movement in Syria (Chapters 1, 2, and 3) since the establishment of
the Syrian state under colonial rule in 1920 up to 2012, including: the creation
(1920–1946), the ambiguous
relations between the French authorities and the Kurdish elites, the economic
and sociological characteristics of the Kurdish leadership, and the increasingly
strained relations between the Kurdish political activists and the other Syrian
parties (especially the Communist and the Ba’th Party). In addition to the his-
torical background,(Chapters 3, 4, and 5)
of the Kurdish parties’ internal functioning, activities, programs, social as well
as cultural roles within the Kurdish society, and relations with third parties in
order to provide a better understanding of the reasons behind their “crisis of
legitimacy”.
The latter is probably the most original part of the book as it explores a
largely understudied aspect of political parties, not only within the Kurdish
context, but also in the Middle East and beyond. Thus, political parties, in par-
ticular within an authoritarian context, or perhaps precisely because of the
authoritarian framework (illegality, repression) had to look for alternative
paths, new functions, new alliances, as well as repertoires of collective action
which allowed them to play a relevant role in societies or groups they pre-
tended to represent.
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In particular, the author enhances our knowledge of the Kurdish political
space in Syria. While highlighting some input from the established political
parties, such as national legitimacy, family as well as trans-border networks,
the book also underscores parties’ shortcomings, which became more visible
after 2004. What’s more, it allows the reader to comprehend both the crisis of
-
ties to a new context, namely the beginning of the Syrian uprising in 2011 and
the subsequent partial withdrawal of the Syrian forces from Kurdish enclaves
in July 2012. In so doing,-
ments of Syrian crisis in the short term and the role Kurdish parties might be
able to play in the current dynamics in Syria and Iraq.
All in all, Allsopp’ss. Her
long and comprehensive research allows her to garnish her account with a
wide range of primary sources and interviews conducted in 2000 and later.
In addition to the well-documented discussion on Kurdish political parties,
“stateless”
Kurds, beyond the mere description of the tragic consequences this “subgroup”
s. In that sense, the book is particularly useful
for students, observers as well as experts interested in the Middle Eastern
politics, Kurdish and human rights issues.
A primary criticism is, however, that since the Kurdish political parties con-
stitute the main theme of the book, it would have been interesting to present
a more general discussion about political parties in the Middle East from the
very start, and particularly in Syria, in order to better signal out the particu-
larities, as well as similarities between the Kurdish political space and parallel
political spaces with which, by the way, the former interact in Syria. Engaging
-
retical framework. Thus, for instance, the incapacity of most Syrian political
parties to respond to the 2011 uprising challenge may tell us something more
general about political systems within authoritarian contexts.
Less importantly, while Allsopp’s book discusses relations between Kurdish
parties, Syria and the main Arab oppositional groups, the book does not tell
us about the relationship that Kurdish parties have (or haven’t) established
with other political parties (in particular with the Assyrian movement) active
in northern Syria, nor with the other communities (Armenian, Assyrian, Arab,
Turkmen) living there. Thus, while the Kurdish parties in Iraq seem to have
an active “policy” regarding “minorities” (mainly Turkmen and Christian from
s) in Iraqi Kurdistan, Kurdish parties in Syria (at least until 2012)
seem to have failed to establish relations with other political groups despite
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the existence of a common “enemy”h’ist regime. What are the factors
e?
Despite these minor weaknesses, this is a highly compelling book. The clar-
ity with which the main arguments are presented is complemented by a seri-
s, resulting in
a most interesting contribution that was a joy to read.
Jordi Tejel |
Graduate Institute, Switzerland
jordi.tejel@unine.ch
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Khanna Omarkhali (ed.), Religious Minorities in Kurdistan: Beyond the Mainstream
[Studies in Oriental Religions, Volume 68], Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014,
423 pp., (:8-3-447-10125-7).
This book could hardly have appeared at a more appropriate time. It presents
a broad overview of the main religious minorities existing in Kurdistan and
the problems they have been facing in the past century (with an emphasis on
recent developments). The occupation of Mosul and Sinjar by the so-called
Islamic State this summer, followed by the expulsion of Christians, the mur-
der and enslavement of Yezidi men and women, and violent assaults on all
non-Sunni groups in the region, have given this book a sudden relevance
beyond its merits as an academic publication.
The book celebrates the religious diversity of Kurdistan,-
ent religious communities have long co-existed in relative harmony, but it is
pervaded by a deep concern that this diversity is under threat, not only due to
persecution and oppression by dominant groups but also as a result of urban-
isation and globalisation that are breaking up communities and provide strong
incentives to assimilation and conversion. Most of the communities have been
decimated by migration,-
try or abroad, mostly to North America and Western Europe (or Israel, in the
case of the Jews). In the diaspora there have been attempts to reconstitute
their distinctive religious practices and the structures of social and religious
authority of their communities, but this is a precarious process, as several of
the contributions in this book show.
Khanna Omarkhali has succeeded in bringing together a remarkable team
of seventeen contributors, including established authorities as well as prom-
ising young scholars, whose knowledge of these communities is based on
h,s.
The editor’s
all minorities; y.
Sections of three chapters each deal successively with the Ahl-i Haqq, Yezidis,
Alevis, (heterodox)k, Jews and Christians. The limitations
of a book review do not allow me to do justice to each of the contributions.
Omarkhali’s own chapter on transmission of religious knowledge, in the
Yezidi section, discusses a structural aspect that is also relevant to the Ahl-i
Haqq, Alevi and Shabak communities: the existence of sacred lineages of rit-
ual specialists (êx and pîr, pîr and delîl, dede, seyyid, etc.), in whom religious
authority is vested and without whom major rituals cannot be performed.
These lineages constitute an endogamous priestly caste, most strictly so among
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the Yezidis, where even individual linages are endogamous. Religious knowl-
edge was until recently transmitted orally, within these lineages as well as by
non-priestly specialists (qewlbêj, kalâmkhwân, hozan), in the form of religious
poetry. Only recently have these sacred texts been made available in print, by
d. Omarkhali
-
ity and its implications for the identity quest of young Yezidis in the diaspora.
Several of these themes recur in other papers. The ethnomusicologist Partow
Hooshmandrad, whose primary interest has been in the performance of Ahl-i
Haqq religious poetry (kalâm) in ritual contexts, highlights both the role of the
kalâmkhwân as the authoritative repositories of religious knowledge and that
of the hereditary pîr as the ultimate judge of correct performance. She was
kalâm, on the basis
kalâmkhwân.y, the leading pîr,
who had authorised this work of standardisation, does not allow publication
of the texts, which would have given everyone unmediated access.
A contrasting case is presented by Mojan Membrado in her biography of
the charismatic Ahl-i Haqq leader Hajj Nmatollah Jayhunabadi, who wrote
(in Persian) a large corpus of religious texts synthesising and reinterpreting
older Gurani kalâm, part of which was later published in print. He did not
belong to one of the existing sacred lineages but gained a following on the
basis of his qualities as an inspired visionary (didedar) and is considered by
some as the founder of a new sacred lineage.-
lished major works, restating Ahl-i Haqq religious ideas in a framework of eso-
teric Shism, appealing to educated urban Iranians but rejected by many of
the traditional established authorities in Kurdistan. Membrado is highly criti-
cal of earlier scholars who have emphasised the pre-Islamic elements in the
Ahl-i Haqq tradition and argues that the accommodation with Sha esoteri-
cism is not an innovation by this family but had been present in the tradition
before them.
One of the connections between the Ahl-i Haqq and esoteric Sha tradi-
r, with which Shahrokh Raei’s contribu-
tion deals. One of the higher stages of spiritual advancement in this order
demands initiation by an Ahl-i Haqq pîr (suggesting one-way rather than
two-way communication). Some of the earliest published Ahl-i Haqq texts
had in fact belonged to, or were written by, Khaksar dervishes. Raei’s chapter
focuses on how the Khaksar established a permanent presence in Kermanshah
in the mid-20th century, which they have been able to maintain after the
Iranian revolution.
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The dominant discourse on Alevism in Turkey has emphasised its origins
in Turkish pre-Islamic beliefs and practices and insisted that all its sacred
h. Kurdish Alevi intellectuals have
religious tradition. The suppressed oral tradition of prayers and poems in Zaza
or Kurmanci, was partially recovered and made available in print. The chapter
t, a book written by a dede living in
Germany, Pir Ali Bali, on Alevi ritual among the Kurds, as remembered from
his youth. The entire book is in Kurdish; it contains lengthy prayers and other
ritual texts and is thereby an interesting contribution to the scripturalisation
of Kurdish Alevism.
The Shabak are one of the most elusive communities, about whose reli-
gious as well as ethnic identity there has been much controversy. Michiel
in the post-Saddam period. Some of the ambiguity in the Shabak’s religious
identity may have to do with the sacred lineages to which individuals or entire
villages attached themselves: some of these were Bektashis, others Shis, and
Leezenberg found a community of Shabak origin that had attached itself to a
Kak i (Ahl-i Haqq) sayyid.
The small Haqqa community, by contrast, is unambiguously Kurdish and
Muslim but nonetheless sharply distinguished from its Muslim neighbours. It
had become a utopian, egalitarian sect accused by their neighbours of hereti-
cal ideas and practices. Thomas Schmidinger traces the little-known history of
this community and its confrontations with political and religious authorities,
on the basis of interviews and literature only available in Sorani.
Yezidis and Alevis have massively emigrated from Kurdistan and are facing
the choice between assimilation or reconstruction of their community struc-
tures and religious (and ethnic) identities. A lengthy analysis of Soviet and
post-Soviet censuses by Nodar Mossaki throws light on the shifting (self-)d-
nition of the Yezidis as a religious or ethnic group, subsumed under or separate
from the Kurds, and processes of conversion and assimilation, noting the pres-
ence of Christian Yezidis in Russia. Markus Dressler and Janroj Kele discuss
Alevi associations and identity debates in Turkey, Germany and Britain.
The Kurdistani Jews (chapters by Birgit Ammann and Yona Sabar) are an
exceptional case in this collection, because they have long disappeared from
Kurdistan (although they have continued playing a role in its history); the last
members of the community migrated to Israel in the 1950s. They remained
a highly distinct community there, with a nostalgic attachment to Kurdistan
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neighbours. Some of them were instrumental in the secret military support
Israel provided the Iraqi Kurds in the 1960s (and most probably later as well).
However, the younger generation is rapidly being assimilated into the Israeli
mainstream, giving up the Aramaic language of their ancestors for modern
Hebrew. As Ammann writes, the community’s culture will soon be “lost for-
ever.” Not entirely lost, however,r, who has
painstakingly recorded a large corpus of oral tradition of the Kurdistan Jews.
His contribution here discusses the various genres of this neo-Aramaic oral
literature, and presents samples of each genre. He points at several distinct
s, including the borrowing of Kurdish folk themes (includ-
ing Mem û Zîn) and the use of entire sentences in Kurmanci embedded in
neo-Aramaic texts.
For Iraqi Christians, Kurdistan is currently a (relatively) safe haven.
Erica C. D. Hunter sketches the migration to Kurdistan in an apparent rever-
sal of the inexorable exodus of Christians from Central Kurdistan of the past
century, new hopes of establishing an autonomous Christian enclave in the
partly Kurdish-controlled Nineveh plains (which were never realistic, and
), and the lasting suspicions
in Christian-Kurdish relations. Those suspicions are rooted in old memories of
depredations by Kurdish tribesmen and the stereotype of the “thieving Kurds”,
on which Martin Tamcke contributes a quaint article, largely based on reports
in the German missionary press of the previous turn of century. Another aspect
of the return of Christianity to Kurdistan is documented in a report by Marcin
Rzepka on his research on recent Kurdish Bible translations which, unlike
the 19th-century translations, do not appear to address Kurdish-speaking
Armenians and Syrians but Kurdish converts from Islam.
-
lems they are facing, there is little uniformity in the format of the contributions
in this book,
from heavy-handed editorial intervention. On the whole, however, this volume
is highly informative and provides an important and authoritative overview of
s.
Martin van Bruinessen |
Utrecht University, The Netherlands
m.vanbruinessen@uu.nl
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Anna Grabole-Çeliker, Kurdish Life in Contemporary Turkey: Migration, Gender and
Ethnic Identity, London: I. B. Taurus, 2013, 299 pp., (:8-1780760926).
Kurdish Life in Contemporary Turkey: Migration, Gender and Ethnic Identity is a
vivid account of rural-urban
lives of people involved. The book follows Kurdish migrants who moved from
Van to Istanbul and back again. For many of the Kurdish migrants in the city,
it is argued, the village is a central cultural theme. In the book, the village is
considered as a conglomerate of ideas and feelings, and treated as a cultural
point of reference for migrants to the city. In the course of the book, the author
also makes clear that the same is true for the city: in the lives of villagers and
migrants the city too is a symbol that contains a multitude of ideas.
Important spatio-cultural themes discussed in the book are related to gen-
der, identity and work and analysed from a socio-spatial perspective. Empha-
sising trans-locality and the networked character of migration, the authors go
rural-urban dichotomy.
Instead of treating village and city as separate entities or worlds, she builds
upon social network theory, showing how migrants inhabit what she calls
“multi-layered” and “multi-sited” s. These encompassing those who left
(the village) and those who stayed behind, those who migrated from the coun-
tryside to the city of Van and those who went all the way to Istanbul, and those
who returned again. This does not only result in a dynamic approach to migra-
tion, including multiple spaces and non-linear movements, but also makes
y.
Fluidity and ambiguity are two central and reoccurring themes in the book.
Fluidity in the way “here” and “there” are connected, in the sense of multiple
movements forward and backward from and to the village, and in the sense of
feeling “at home”s. Referring to the “polytactic” potential of
humans, it is argued that people feel “at home”n, which is
made possible because the “here” and “there” are connected in people’s living
structures: transactions of goods, ideas, favours and people through which the
spaces they live become intertwined and interconnected.
Ambiguity is expressed in the representation of both village and city. On the
one hand, the village is looked at with nostalgia. The author discusses nostalgia
as “embodied knowledge”: such as when the fresh village air is compared with
the toxic smell of coal in Istanbul in winter, or when the village tendûr bread is
compared with the mass-produced loafs in the city, the fresh and cold water in
the village with the chlorinated tap-water in the city, or the happy gatherings
in the village with the cold relations in the city. On the other hand, many men
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s, and women to the hard
work in carrying water from a central village fountain to their houses, as well as
the constant baking of bread. This is ambiguity of idyll and hardship, or, as the
author argues, nostalgia in the context of a sense of necessity to leave the place
in order to improve one’s economic situation.well-of,
the family will avoid the grueling migrant labor life for their sons. This ambi-
guity can also be found in the idea of the city, which represents not only the
promise of a better material life but as well symbolic violence and contempt.
An illustrative example for this is an anecdote told by the Kurdish writer
Muhsin Kzlkaya, which the author shares with us. Taking his daughter by taxi
to the crèche, Muhsin Kzlkaya talks Kurdish to her. The taxi driver is surprised
that the little girl speaks Kurdish, stops the taxi at the side of the road and
starts crying. The anecdote is shared with us as an illustration of what she calls,
in terms of the sociologist Bourdieu, symbolic violence. The denigratory atti-
tude towards the Kurdish language in combination with the linguistic assimi-
latory polices of the Turkish state resulted in a loss of mother tongue; a loss
which is painfully lived through.
The author underlines that many of her interlocutors became reluctant to
speak the Kurdish language after they arrived in the city, and argues that they
seemed to have accepted the idea that Kurdish is an inferior language, an idea
imposed on Kurds starting from the very moment they enter school at young
age. The author concludes that the desire to modernise is often equated with
(linguistic) assimilation, and a modern in Turkey would (still) not include
h. The result is that Kurdish ceased to be the language
of communication in many families and people become increasingly nonlin-
guistic. Yet the author not only shows how the invisibilisation and silencing of
Kurdish identity took (and takes) place, but also brings to our attention that
the use of Kurdish has become a marker of identity in the city, and alleged loss
of mother tongue is neither a linear nor irreversible process. On the part of
the older generations, the author argues that as Kurdish was
never strong, while younger generations proudly refer to their Kurdish identity
and language. Unfortunately this ambiguity is not elaborated upon.
k.
The author discusses pathways and routes of migration, but also shows how
many have become used to “plurilocal homes”. The elderly, who spend their
summers in Van and the winters with their children in Istanbul, or the fami-
lies who migrated to Istanbul and spend their summers in the village, or the
children who are sent to the city for education. And then there are those who
migrate to the city and return after a few years. The examples she discusses
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e.
not only a result of movements made by people, but also a result of transactions
of goods, favors and ideas. The most important of these, the author argues, has
r, resulting in a self-perpetuating
labour migration.
-
d, and
gender-hierarchies. In Kurdistan people do not identify with where they live,
but where they are born, and the interlocutors in this research also identify
themselves with Van and people from Van. Networks of people from one also
determine, partly, whether or not someone from Van migrates to Istanbul: they
come when they know work has been lined up for them by family of country-
men. In the city, they work together and live together. Here, and with reference
to Bourdieu and Putnam, the author distinguishes bonding and bridging capi-
tal. Where bonding capital explains the strong ties, a lack of bridging capital
might explain why many of them, and their children, are not able to improve
their living conditions in the city.
Discussing gender-hierarchies, the author argues that due to migration the
constraints of, what she calls the traditional gender-hierarchy, are less salient
than before. The dominant gender paradigm idealises female domesticity and
piety, and emphasises the role of men in public space, who is responsible for
earning a living. Though in the village women’s labour makes a considerable
contribution to household subsistence, this is not the case in the city, and
though it is argued that the gender hierarchy is incompatible with modern life,
the author concludes that in the course of migration gender hierarchies are
often reinforced rather than challenged.
Kurdish Life in Contemporary Turkey: Migration, Gender and Ethnic Identity
is a well written account of Kurdish labour migration and multi-place living
in Turkey today. The multi-sited
large scale processes are to be found in intimate interactions have contributed
to a lively account. The author shows rather well how lives of many people
have become organised in and around several places called home,-
ently said, how people’s or families’ activity-spaces include various locations.
Looking at the activity-spaces of the people involved in this research, their
network of links and activities, of spatial connections and of locations, we
come to understand the particular way in which life is organised today. And
this is, increasingly, a life which takes place at various places throughout time.
Though this is well expressed in the book, the chapters are organised around a
more classical idea of sending and receiving communities. For the clarity of the
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argument, and to emphasise the relational approach, the structure of the book
could have been organised around the idea of a network of links and activities,
of spatial connections and of locations. And maybe these practices could also
have been the starting point of the study, instead of letting the story begin in a
village. But these could be considered suggestions for future research. “Kurdish
Life in Contemporary Turkey” is an important book for all those who are inter-
ested in migration studies, and the spatial organisation of everyday life.
Joost Jongerden |
Wageningen University, Netherlands
joost.jongerden@wur.nl
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