Alignment in Kurdish: a diachronic perspective

299 Pages·2016·1.07 MB·English

by  Geoffrey L. J. Haig

Alignment in Kurdish:
a diachronic perspective
Habilitationsschrift zur Erlangung der venia legendi
fu¨r das Fachgebiet Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft,
eingereicht bei der Philosophischen Fakult¨at
der Christian-Albrechts-Universit¨at
zu Kiel
vorgelegt von
Geoffrey L. J. Haig
Juni 2004
2
Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 The Kurdish languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.2 Sources and conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2 Theoretical preliminaries 15
2.1 Alignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2 Transitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2.1 Lexical transitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.2.2 Core arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.2.3 Alignmnent types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.3 Voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.3.1 The optionality of the A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3 Diachronic syntax 35
3.1 Metamorphosis and replacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.2 Grammaticalization and reanalysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.3 Constructional persistence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.4 The challenge of variation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4 The Northern Group 69
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.2 Overview of the morphosyntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
4.2.1 Inflectional categories of the noun . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4.2.2 Inflectional categories of the verb . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.2.3 The Izafe construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4.3 The canonical ergative construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
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ii CONTENTS
4.3.1 The syntactic subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.3.2 Summary of the ergative construction . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.4 Deviations from canonical ergativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
4.5 Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
4.5.1 Double Oblique construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
4.6 Agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
4.6.1 A-dominant plural agreement in the literature . . . . . 103
4.6.2 Summary of agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
4.6.3 Diachronic implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
4.7 Clause linkage strategies, and agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
4.7.1 Summary of clause linkage and agreement . . . . . . . 118
4.8 Summary of alignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
5 Old Persian 121
5.1 Participles as verb forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
5.2 The man¯a kartam construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
5.2.1 Previous interpretations of the man¯a kartam construc-
tion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
5.3 Typological explanations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
5.4 Participles in Old Persian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
5.4.1 Participles and the adjective-verb squish . . . . . . . . 139
5.4.2 The systemic status of participles in the Old Persian
verb system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
5.5 The Agent-phrase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
5.5.1 Clitic and non-clitic Agent-phrases . . . . . . . . . . . 148
5.5.2 The Agent-phrase in synthetic passives . . . . . . . . . 150
5.6 The Genitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
5.6.1 Cliticization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
5.6.2 Valency-bound versus Free Genitives . . . . . . . . . . 158
5.6.3 Summary of the Genitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
5.7 Possession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
5.7.1 Summary of Possession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
5.8 External Possession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
5.8.1 From Possessor to Agent: Benveniste reconsidered . . . 176
5.9 Summary of Old Persian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
5.9.1 Subject properties of the Agent phrase revisited . . . . 183
CONTENTS iii
6 Bad¯ın¯an¯ı 187
6.1 Fronted Obliques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
6.1.1 Predicative Possessive constructions . . . . . . . . . . . 188
6.1.2 Experiencers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
6.1.3 Needers and Wanters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
6.1.4 The Non-Canonical Subject Construction . . . . . . . . 192
6.2 The ergative construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
6.2.1 Agentless constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
6.2.2 Agented constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
6.2.3 Summary of the ergative construction . . . . . . . . . . 195
6.3 Further evidence for lexical intransitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
6.4 Non-Canonical Subjects and ergativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
6.5 Paths to ergativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
6.5.1 From nominal to verbal syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
6.5.2 Discourse pressure towards reanalysis as ergatives . . . 209
6.6 Summary of the evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
7 The Central group 217
7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
7.2 Overview of Suleimani morphosyntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
7.2.1 Pronouns and verbal agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
7.2.2 Pronominal clitic pronouns: overview . . . . . . . . . . 222
7.2.3 Clitic placement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
7.3 Past transitive constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
7.3.1 Clitic/suffix interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
7.3.2 Polysemy of agreement markers . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
7.4 What is alignment in Suleimani? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
8 Broader issues 245
8.1 Bynon’s claims: a reassessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
8.2 Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
8.2.1 Case marking and animacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
8.2.2 Case marking of core arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
8.3 A possible scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
8.4 Alignment and drift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Abbreviations
A Subject of transitive verb
A A of past tense verb form
PAST
A A of present tense verb form
PRES
abs Absolute
acc Accusative
Adj Adjective
adp Adposition
Bad. Bad¯ına¯n¯ı (dialect of the Northern Group, North Iraq)
clc Clitic
cop Copula
def Definite
Det. Determiner
dir Direct (case)
direc Directional
DOM Differential Object Marking
excl Exclamatory
fut Fut
gen Genitive
imp Imperative
ind Indicative
indef Indefinite
interr Interrogative
irr Irrealis
iz Izafe particle
izf Feminine Izafe particle
izm Masculine Izafe particle
izp Plural Izafe particle
Kurm. Kurmanji (main dialect of Northern Group)
loc Locative
iv
Abbreviations (cont.)
med Medium (Middle Voice)
MHG Middle High German
m.k. man¯a kartam (construction)
neg Negation
NCS Non-Canonical Subject
NHG New High German
NP Noun phrase
N Noun
O Object of transitive verb
O O of past tense verb form
PAST
O O of present tense verb form
PRES
obl Oblique
pl Plural
plup Pluperfect
PP Prepositional phrase
pst Past
ptcpl Participle
prog Progressive
recipr Reciprocal
refl Reflexive
s Singular
S Subject of intransitive verb
SAP Speech Act Participant
TAM Tense, Aspect and Modality
V Verb
VP Verb phrase
1s/2s/3s First person singular/Second .../Third ...
v
Map showing approximate location of Kurdish speakers (from Allison
2001)
vi
Chapter 1
Introduction
In 1995, when I first began to learn Kurdish, my interest was captivated by
the feature commonly referred to as ergativity in the past tense of transitive
verbs. Although it was familiar to me in an abstract fashion from the linguis-
tic literature, actually using a language with that particular feature is a very
different matter. However, at a fairly early stage I came to the conclusion
that ergativity in Kurdish was a largely superficial phenomenon, something
manifested in the morphology, but without apparent ramifications for the
syntax. The earlier stages of my thinking on the subject were summed up
in Haig (1998). On the analysis embodied in that paper, Kurdish syntax
wound up looking very much like that of its close relative, Persian: a fairly
unremarkable Indo-European nominative/accusative alignment, but unlike
Persian, cross-cut by ergative alignment in morphology in the past tenses.
While the analysis offered in my earlier paper is still tenable as a synchronic
description of the ‘standard’ versions of Kurmanji (see Section 1.1 on lan-
guage names), it left a central issue unresolved: How did a language with
seemingly unremarkable nominative/accusative syntax acquire morpholog-
ical alignment bluntly at odds with its syntax? This book represents an
attempt to answer that question.
Tackling the issue of ergativity in Kurdish from a diachronic perspective
has turned out to be a daunting task. Ideally, it would have involved compre-
hensive coverage not only of the considerable number of Kurdish languages,
but also of the attested earlier stages of these languages, and of the related
Iranian languages. To forestall any false expectations, it has not been pos-
sible to achieve anything approaching this ideal. In particular, there is a
dire lack of systematic evaluation of the attested Middle Iranian languages.
1
2 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
Obviously a more representative corpus of languages is required before firmer
conclusions can be drawn. However, what this study lacks in breadth is par-
tially compensated for by depth. While large-scale check-list typologies are
invaluable for certain purposes, I believe that much can be induced through
the careful inspection of individual languages, the intra-language variation,
and most particularly, through the investigation of the constructions under
consideration in running texts. As Allen (1995:452) stresses, one cannot re-
construct syntax merely by “strip-mining descriptive studies for facts”. It is
one of the main tenets of this study that discourse factors have shaped the
development of alignments in various ways, and these can only be observed
by investigating connected narrative texts rather than isolated examples in
grammars. To this end, I have paid particular attention to analysing text
material from Kurdish, rather than merely repeating what is stated in the
grammars.
Kurdish provides an excellent starting point for such an undertaking.
The various dialects/languages have been comparatively well-documented,
and within the Kurdish languages themselves, a broad range of alignment
types is attested.1 That internal variation may provide valuable insights to
diachronic change is clearly recognized by Harris and Campbell (1995:12):
“A fruitful and often overlooked source of reliable data in diachronic syntax
is found in dialectal differences.” In particular, the text material available
for Kurdish is far broader than that found in the corpora of older stages of
the languages, because it includes extensive documentation of naturally spo-
ken language, and in many cases can be supplemented by information from
native speakers. The written records from older periods, on the other hand,
often represent highly marked and often conservative varieties and registers,
leadingtoconsiderabledifficultiesininterpretation. Ineverthelessstressthat
the results presented here are to be considered as hypotheses, to be validated
or invalidated against more extensive data from Iranian. Despite their lim-
itations, the value of such hypotheses is considerable. They permit one to
define a research goal in the form of a set of questions, thereby narrowing
the scope of the data to be investigated. And they permit the results to
be integrated into more general theories of alignment change. In principle,
1Bynon (1979:211) draws attention to the same point. However, her conclusion that
the variation found within the Kurdish languages can be interpreted in the form of a
diachronic progression from ergativity to accusativity is an over-simplification, based on
a reductionist view which assigns the Central Kurdish languages to an ‘accusative’ type.
Discussion of these matters is deferred to Chapters 7 and 8.