—Kurmanji Kurdish— A Reference Grammar with Selected Readings

If any one in a series of co-ordinated verbs in the past tense is transitive,
the ergative construction takes precedence and the agent is marked.
Rewşen Xanimê demekê bêdeng ma,
kûr kûr fikirî û cigarek vêxist.
Mme Rewshen remained silent for a
moment, lost in her thoughts, and lit a
cigarette.
In the example above, neither ma nor fikirî is transitive, but since the final
verb in the series, vêxist, is transitive and therefore ergative, the agent,
Rewşen Xanimê, is in the oblique case.
The ergative verb agrees in person and number with its patient (logical
object), but since the patient is in the nominative case and unmodified plural
nouns do not have an external plurality, the number is indicated only by the
verb, as in the following examples. Compare:
Wê kaxiz ji dest wî girt. She took the page from his hand.
Wê kaxiz ji dest wî girtin. She took the pages from his hand.
In the second example only the plural verb girtin indicates the plurality of
the patient kaxiz.
Me ew helbest xwend. We read that poem.
Me ew helbest xwendin. We read those poems.
Here only the plural verb xwendin indicates the plurality of the patient ew
helbest.
Just as in a series of co-ordinated nouns only the last noun shows case, in
a series of co-ordinated past transitive verbs with a plural patient, only the
last in the series shows the plural. In the following example, the patient,
destên xwe ‘their hands,’ is plural, but only the second of the two verbs,
anîn, shows the plurality.
Havalan destên xwe bi hustiwên hev
re bir û anîn.
KURMANJI KURDISH
The friends reached out and put their
hands on each other’s necks.
§ 18.3. Number Agreement in Extended Ergative Verbs. In the past
tenses of compound verbs whose complements can be extended through the
construct (like behs kirin ‘to discuss,’ which can be extended as behsa …
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