Magin_Edward-thesis

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Barmanê. Sindî is from Zaxo, and Silêvanî is from a similar dialect area not far from
Zaxo. Silêman is from the village of Oreh, in the Barwarî area, north of Dohuk. The
village of Hizirvan is from an area closer to Dohuk. It is not known where Xalaf’s dialect
is from. Cegerxwîn was included in the corpus because of his renown among Kurds
everywhere. He was born near Batman, Turkey and his family fled to Syria when he was
11. While his dialect is a bit different from the rest of the corpus, his influence on Kurds
everywhere is undeniable. Kurds in the Badinan area of Iraq are still able to understand
much of his poetry.
Many people helped me in the initial selection process to assemble a body of
poems to represent Northern Kurdish poetry. After getting many of the poems translated,
I was able to form the group of poems that would become the corpus for this paper. Reşîd
Findî, vice-president of the Kurdish Academy in Erbil and one of the chief editors of
Nalbend’s entire collection of poems, chose a poem from each of the five main themes
Nalbend wrote in. Cegerxwîn’s poems were selected by Haval Zaxoyî, one of the chief
editors of a large collection of Cegerxwîn’s poetry. Sindî selected poems of various
themes from his recent publication, a collection of all of his poems. Teyb also chose
poems from one of his publications. Quçan and Dalyayê chose poems from their
publications and I received Silêman’s and Xalaf’s poems through direct correspondence.
Lastly, Şamal Akrayî, a journalist and translator, as well as Director of Akray Radio,
chose a poem by Silêvanî, and supplied me with his translation of the poem.
5.2 The analysis
The analysis that follows covers various aspects of linguistics on two levels:
phonological and syntactic. Pragmatic functions are also discussed where applicable. This
analysis is an empirical study and is, therefore, not exhaustive but consists of those
aspects of the poems that I found to be most noteworthy. In § 5.3, I discuss the
phonological level: verse forms, syllable count, and various rhyme positions. The content
of § 5.4, the syntactic level, covers syntactic deviations concerning word order, ellipsis,