—Kurmanji Kurdish— A Reference Grammar with Selected Readings

THE GRAMMAR OF KURMANJI KURDISH
SUBSTANTIVES
§ 1. The Noun. A Kurdish noun in the absolute state, i.e. without any ending
of any kind, gives (1) the generic sense of the noun and (2) the definite
sense. It is also the “lexical” form of the noun, i.e. the form in which a noun
is given in a vocabulary list or dictionary. Thus, a noun like kitêb ‘book’
may, depending upon the context, mean ‘books (in general)’ or ‘the book’
(the one that has already been introduced). There are no articles of any kind
in Kurdish.
§ 1.1. Gender. All Kurmanji nouns are either masculine or feminine. Each
and every word must be learned along with its gender, and there is little
helpful that can be said concerning determining gender, as grammatical
gender appears to be randomly assigned. Beings that are male or female by
nature are assigned to the corresponding grammatical gender class, and as a
rule, the names of towns, cities, and countries are feminine; all abstract
nouns ending in -î are feminine; all infinitives used as nouns are feminine;
and nouns ending in vowels tend to be feminine.
Words borrowed from Arabic, which has gender, do not necessarily correspond
to the gender assignment in Arabic. Kitêb ‘book’ is feminine in
Kurdish; the Arabic word from which it is derived, بﺎ$ ﺘﻛ $ kitāb, is masculine.
Words borrowed from Persian and Turkish, neither of which has gender, are
randomly assigned gender.
§ 1.2. Inflection. Nouns are inflected in four cases, nominative, oblique,
construct, and vocative. The construct case will be treated in §4 below, and
the vocative will be treated in §17.1.
There are no particular endings for the nominative, and the nominative
7