The syntax of verbal inflection in Central Kurdish

Abstract

This thesis examines the syntactic structure of clauses in Central Kurdish, focusing specifically on the syntax of verbs and verbal categories including tense, aspect, agreement, argument structure and their interplay with various verb types. It thus provides the first account to a number of syntactic phenomena in the language, which has not been subject to much detailed investigation before. In analysing the phrase structure for the language, a number of proposals concerning the derivation of affixes are reviewed. Within the current theory of syntax, suffixation of morphemes to lexical heads is derived via head movement, considering strict locality and the Linear Correspondence Axiom (Kayne 1994), while prefixation is not derived by movement. Although such theory has a strong support from typological investigation (Julien 2002), it does not account for a language which has both prefixation and suffixation. Central Kurdish thus poses a serious challenge since inflected verbs are formed via both suffixation and prefixation. It is argued, however, that the difference in morpho-phonological properties between prefixes and suffixes brings about the difference in their method of derivation. This in turn accounts for much of the derivation of basic clause structure in the language. A distinguishing characteristic of the syntax of Central Kurdish is related to its agreement pattern. The thesis argues that the tense-based split ergativity in the language is best accounted for by a theory in which case can be assigned by agreement. Although there is no morphological realization of case in Central Kurdish, the agreement-driven approach adopted in this study accounts for the agreement morphemes and the pronominal clitics found within the verbal complex of the language. The difference in the nature of ‘present’ and ‘past’ verb stems is responsible for the difference in the clausal structure of past and present tense, which is clearly reflected in the crossed agreement (split-ergative) pattern. This study also accounts for the syntax of complex predicates in Central Kurdish in which light verbs are highly productive in their formulation. Any syntactic account of verbal inflections and agreement pattern is thus not complete if it cannot be applied to these complex predicates. It is shown that the composite of light verb plus the non-verbal element is responsible for the argument structure of the whole predicate. The analysis of the non-verbal elements, which have special characteristics, confirms the analysis proposed throughout the study, especially with regard to the account suggested for the split-ergative agreement of the language.