Magin_Edward-thesis

63
root” (Whaley 1997:128). The following examples show that Northern Kurdish
characteristically represents more aspects of an isolating language. While some words
contain affixes (e.g. bi-bin, der-ê, tekî-a, ber-ê, tibil-ên, lev-ên, ve-d-xwar), others do not
(e.g. nêrgiz, ji, ber, min, têr, şîr), and the language largely consists of separate words. If
we compare Kurdish to Chinese, a language that has very few affixes, we would say that
it is a bit more synthetic.
(7) şîn_bi-b-in nêrgiz ji nu_ve 40 ber der-ê (BS1:11)
grow_IRR-grow-3PL narcissus from new_again before place-EZ.M
tekî-a
ber-ê
special.music-EZ.F old-OBL.F
‘May narcissuses grow new again before the door of the old places of worship.’
(8) tibil-ên min ji lêv-ên te têr şîr ve-d-xwar-Ø 41 (DD:5)
finger-EZ.PL 1O from lip-EZ.PL 2O plenty milk drink-IPFV-drink.PST-3SG
‘My fingers were drinking plenty of milk from your lips.’
The second parameter is also best understood as a continuum. On one end is the
ideal agglutinative language; on the other, the ideal fusional language. Agglutinative
languages have morphemes that may be easily divided from a word. In fusional
languages, like Ancient Greek, individual morphemes contain two or more bits of
meaning. In Whaley’s example, shown in (9), each of the morphemes following the verb
stem lu hold multiple bits of meaning concerning the verb.
(9) lu-ō 1S:PRS.ACT.IND (I am releasing) (Whaley 1997:134)
lu- ōmai 1S:PRS:ACT:SBJV (I should release)
lu-omai 1S:PRS:PASS:IND (I am being released)
lu-oimi 1S:PRS:ACT:OPT (I might release)
lu-etai 3S:PRS:PASS:IND (He is being released)
40 Possible alternative translation for ji nuve: ‘from now on.’
41 The verb vexwin ‘to drink’ allows for the modal prefix di- to be inserted after the ve portion of the verb.
As noted previously, Thackston (2006:35) calls ve a preverb, as there are many verbs with such an element
that could stand alone as verbs without the ve. This is not typical, though, of Northern Kurdish verbs. The
di- prefix usually cannot be inserted but is at the beginning of the verb. It may be that ve, hil and similar
elements may no longer contain separate semantic data but have become lexicalized and are considered a
part of the verb stem.