—Kurmanji Kurdish— A Reference Grammar with Selected Readings

Wê rojê, germa havînê tu gêj kiribûyî. On that day the heat of summer had
made you dizzy.
Bi fikira ku belkî mêrik li hemberî
polîsan rabe û tiştekî bi kar bîne,
polîsekî demanca xwe jî kişandibû.
Thinking that the man might resist the
police and use something [as a weapon],
a policeman had drawn his pistol.
As in Persian, the past perfect tense in Kurmanji is not necessarily tied to
a temporal reference as it is in English. It is often used independently for a
past tense with a somewhat more remote signification where English would
have a simple past, particularly in narratives.
Gava min di hevpeyvîneke bi Osman
Sebrî re, pirsa ku wî “kengî dest bi
nivîsandinê kiriye” kiribû, wî gotibû
ku …
Tu heta niha li ku bûî? —Ez bîskê
çûbûm mala Ehmed. Ji wir jî em çûn
komelê.
THE VERB
When, during a conversation with Osman
Sebrî, I asked (not “had asked”)
when he had started writing, he said
(not “had said”) that … 1
Where have you been till now? —I went
to Ahmad’s house for a bit. From there
we went to the society. 2
§ 21.2. The Past Perfect Tense of Karîn and Zanîn. The past perfect form
of the verbs karîn ‘to be able’ and zanîn ‘to know’ is used as the normal
past tense. Thus ez/min dikaribûm means ‘I was able, I could,’ and min
dizanibû means ‘I knew.’ As in the present tense, the negatives of these
verbs are formed with ni-, as in ez/min nikaribûm ‘I wasn’t able, I
couldn’t’ and min nizanibû ‘I didn’t know.’ Negatives with di- (past perfect
progressive) are nedi-. Complements of the past perfect of karîn are
either in the present subjunctive or in the past conditional (see §25.1 below).
For sequence of tenses in clauses following the past perfect of zanîn,
1
In this example, both Persian and Turkish might very well have the past perfect
tense in both positions ( مدﻮ $ ﺑ هﺪ$
ﻴﺳ $ ﺮ$
ﭘ,
sormuştum and دﻮ $ ﺑ ﻪ$
ﺘﻔﮔ $ $ , demişti) to imply that
significant time has passed since the exchange occurred. Since the example is without
a secondary time reference, English would not use the past perfect.
2
Here the first verb is in the past perfect because the speaker wants to convey that
he had gone to Ahmad’s house before he and the others went somewhere else.
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