A Minimalist Account of Scrambling in Kalhori Kurdish

Abstract

Scrambling in Kalhori kurdish is a feature-based movement triggered by Focus feature. In this article, Scrambling in Kalhori Kurdish is studied based on Minimalism Program (Chomsky, 1995). In this language short distance, long distance and multiple scrambling occur .Specific direct object, specific indirect object, embedded object, WH – question phrase and verb phrase are scrambled constituents in Kalhori Kurdish but nonspecific object cannot be scrambled. Long and short distance scrambling can create new binding relationship which contrary to Mahajan (1990) and Miyagawa (2001) show one characteristic of A – Scrambling which can be considered a Webelhuth S Paradox. Using evidence such as the position of sentence verbs, phrase verbs and the presence of overt subject in tag question, it is proved that EPP feature on TpP cannot trigger short distance scrambling in Kalhori Kurdish. Therefore short scrambling is an A' – movement to the Spec of Focus Phrase on upper TpP. Uniformity in short and long distance scrambling as the main outcome of the study is in contrast to previous studies like Saito (1985), Miyagawa (2001) and Karimi (2005) while it is in line with Minimalism and and its main claims for minimal use of analytic devices and it is also consistent with facts of Kalhori Kurdish.

Keywords

• scrambling
• kalhori kurdish
• minimalism
• feature checking
• contrastive focus