نشریه پژوهشهای زبانشناسی (Apr 2020)
Investigating the Syntactic Structure of Small Clauses in Kurdish (Mokryani Variant): A Minimalist Approach
Abstract
Abstract The present study aims at providing a proposal within the framework of the Minimalist Program regarding both the category status of the small clause (SC) and the case marking of its internal noun phrases in the Mokryani Variety of Kurdish. In this article, three hypotheses related to SC have been examined, according to which the mentioned structure is a word projection of its predicate, the inflection group, and the tense phrase. The analyses presented in this article showed that the first hypothesis causes problems in the extended projection principle, case marking, and X-bar theory. In the second hypothesis, in order to meet the requirements of the inflection group, we considered the existence of phonemes without a phonetic manifestation. However, the examination of the empty elements in linguistic constructions showed that they are not in line with the main nature of the Minimalist Program regarding the optimization of linguistic constructions and is contrary to the ‘Economy Principle’. In the final analysis, based on Hiraiwa’s (2001) Multiple Agreement and Chomsky’s (2005, 2006) Inheritance Feature, the syntactic category of the small clause must be treated as a tense phrase. Keywords: Mokryani Variant, the Minimalist Program, Small Clause (SC), Multiple Agreement, Case. Introduction Verbs, predicates in general, are considered as an essential part of sentence structures determining the number of obligatory arguments and their theta roles. The arguments are divided into internal and external ones. Haegemen (1994: 59) distinguishes these two arguments believing that internal arguments receive their theta role directly from the verb, while the theta role of external ones is the result of predicate and internal argument interaction. The latter are realized as both noun phrases and clauses. The clauses are divided into three types including finite clauses in which the verb is inflected for tense and it has agreement. Moreover, they are introduced by complementizers. Second type is called non-finite clauses in which the verb is not inflected for tense and it has no agreement. The third type is small clauses, SCs, which are traditionally called “verbless clause”. In fact, they do not include any verb. There have been numerous description of SCs. Cardinalti and Guastis (1995:1) consider them as a dynamic unresolved issue. The clause has an [NP XP] structure which are realized as the argument of consider-type verbs and the XP is headed by a past participle, gerund, infinitive, adjective phrase, preposition phrase and noun phrase. They have no inflected verb. The current study is trying to investigate the SC status in Kurdish language, Mokryani variant appearing as the complement of the verbs like færz kerden (consider), zanin (know), bæ hesew henan (consider) and bæ næzær haten (seem, consider). As a result, the present study tries to investigate the syntactic structure of SC and case assignment to its internal noun phrases in Mokryani variant. Materials and Methods Kurdish is a western Iranian language belonging to Indo-European family (McCarus (1959), Abdulla (1967), Fattah (1997), and Thackston (2006)). Dabirmoghadam (2013, 601) classified Iranian dialects as northern, central and southern Kurdish. Northern Kurdish is the communicative language of people in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Western Azerbayjan in Iran, which is also called Kormanji or Badinani. Central Kurdish is the spoken language of Kordestan, Khorasan, Mazandaran and Sistan-va-Balouchestan all in Iran. This dialect includes several variants Mokryani, Ardalani, Babai, Jafi and Sourani. Mokryani, the studied variant in the study is also called “Mahabadi” which is spoken in Oshnaviye, Boukan, Saqez and Baneh, in Iran. Central Kurdish is a dialect spoken in Kermanshah and Ilam. The present study is a kind of descriptive-analytical one in which the data are collected from everyday speaking among Kurdish People. Besides, Kurdish is a native language of the author, so native-speaker judgment is applied to analyze the data. The study is conducted in the framework of Minimalist Program, MP. “Agreement’ is regarded as one of the most important operations in MP. Kremers (2003: 6) believe that “agreement” provides a relationship between two elements, in case one of the elements has matching syntactic features. There are two elements, probe and goal, in each operation. Chomsky (2000, 112) defines agreement as the result of probe and goal agreement. Each head, can enter agreement, only if it is active. It means that there should be some uninterpretable features. In fact, active head starts searching for matching features to interpret their uninterpretable features. Hiraiwa (2001) expands this agreement to “multiple agreement” in which a head is able to search for more than one goal simultaneously. In fact this agreement is the revised form of “multiple checking” by Hornstain et al. (2005: 280). Discussion and Conclusion Chomsky (1981) and Safir (1983) consider SC as a separate syntactic phrase receiving a unique theta role from the verb. Stowell (1981, 1983) is one of the pioneers who has studied internal structure of SCs and their syntactic category. He suggests that syntactic category of SCs is a maximal projection of their internal predicate. Therefore, as the first candidate, SC is considered as the projection of the head category of its predicate, although this analysis leads to the violation of projection principle, case marking and X-bar theory. Kreps (1994) suggested that IP be the other plausible candidate to determine the categorical status of this clause. Therefore, as the second candidate, SC is treated as a sentential constituent headed by an IP node. According to this analysis, the IP contains an I- node headed by [-tense] and [+Agr] and a VP node headed by a null copular verb BE taking an NP, AP, or PP as its complement. In spite of the advantages of considering SCs as an IP, it causes some problems challenging the assumption. Indeed, such an assumption, containing two null nodes, violates the main and significant derivational constrain of Minimalism, called “Economy Condition”. Finally, sustaining clausal analysis, SC is considered as a TP. Unlike the IP analysis of SC, this one has no null node which is in accordance with the main goal of Minimalism. Furthermore, the theories “Inheritance Feature” of Chomsky (2005, 2006) and “Multiple Agree” of Hiraiwa (2001) have been adopted to explain the existence of tense, agreement, and case in SCs. In conclusion, this chain is considered as a TP in Mokryani Variant, in which the case marking of internal noun phrases is justified by theories “Inheritance Feature” of Chomsky (2005, 2006) and “Multiple Agree” of Hiraiwa (2001).
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