The phrase structure of two dialects of Kurmanji Kurdish: standard dialect and Muş dialect

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the phrase structure of Kurmanji Kurdish with a specific focus on ergativity. In the literature, Kurmanji is assumed to exhibit two different case patterns depending on the tense and transitivity of the clause; nominative pattern in non-past transitive constructions and ergative pattern in past tense transitive constructions (Thackston, 2006; Haig, 2004). Adopting the main premises of the Minimalist Program and Distributed Morphology, we analyzed the nature of the case patterns and agreement relations in syntax, as well as, focus on the morphological realization of case and agreement in Kurmanji. In this study, it is proposed that Kurmanji in fact has two different ergative patterns in past tense transitive constructions; one is observed in the Standard dialect whereas the other is observed in the Muş dialect. On the basis of the fact that ergative case in both dialects is dependent on tense and transitivity but not on thetaroles, along the lines of (Marantz, 1991; Davison, 2004; Bobaljik&Branigan, 2006) it is claimed that ergative is a structural dependent case in Kurmanji. With the evidence from binding and scope tests, it is also argued that despite different case markings they get, ergative and nominative subjects behave fully in parallel syntactically. Adopting DM, we dissociated syntactic case checking and the morphological realization of case-agreement. We presented a uniform syntactic derivation for all the three case patterns in which the T head and little v head check the structural cases of the subject and the object, respectively, in syntax whereas morphological realization of case and agreement takes place post-syntactically at MS, (Marantz, 1991; Halle & Marantz, 1993). Furthermore, the vP and VP domains in Kurmanji are investigated. We presented the syntactic derivation of intransitive, transitive and ditransitive constructions and discussed the position of theme-goal objects and adjuncts within the vP and VP domains. Finally, we examined possible word-order variations in the Muş dialect of Kurmanji depending on the information structure of the sentence and discussed their syntactic derivations within the phrase structure that we proposed in this study.