Magin_Edward-thesis

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instances in Iraq where these affixes are unstressed. 39 A fourth rule of Thackston (2006:5)
states that for verbs that possess no prefix, the stress falls on the last syllable of the verb
stem.
4.4 Grammar
The grammar sketch that follows is not meant to be exhaustive but to provide the
reader an introduction to Northern Kurdish. My hope is that this will enable the reader to
become comfortable in perusing the corpus and be able to find answers to most basic
questions regarding the grammar. The grammar is based on the Bahdini subdialect of
Northern Iraq, which is the dialect that dominates the corpus. Some differences between
Bahdini and the Northern Kurdish which is spoken by the Kurds in Turkey and Syria are
noted within this chapter as well as in Chapter 5.
4.4.1 Typology
4.4.1.1 Morphological typology
According to Whaley (1997:128), morphological typology is understood to vary
on two parameters: Index of Synthesis and Index of Fusion. The Index of Synthesis
parameter may be viewed as a continuum where on one end you have the ideal isolating
language, where every word is monomorphemic. On the other end there is the ideal
synthetic language, where “complete utterances are formed by affixing morphemes to a
39 I have observed that in Bahdini this does not seem to be the case. In the examples Thackston lists, diaxive
and biaxive, ‘talk’ or ‘speak,’ stress is different in each case. In Bahdini of northern Iraq, speakers drop the
soft i vowel when the modal prefix di- is added to a word stem beginning with a vowel. The sound of dichanges
to t-. Hence, another syllable is not added but the speaker says taxive with stress on the first
syllable. This verb, however, is irregular in that the initial syllable is stressed. When the modal prefix bi- is
added, a speaker will say either biaxive, with no elision of the i after the b, or baxive, as in the case with
taxive. Stress in the first instance will be on the first syllable of the verb stem, not on the prefix. Also, when
a modal prefix is added to a word beginning with a consonant, there is no change in the point of stress.