Kurdish affixes in Sonqor Turkic

Summary

Affix function number of borrowed affixes

Description

Information and examples are from Bulut (2005; 2007) and Bulut (In press), which is partially based on material presented by Buluç (1975). The borrowed affixes are attested in various Turkic varieties belonging to the South Oghuz dialect group spoken in Iran and Iraq.

 

2 object pronoun enclitics. Only these two are attested in corpora, although it is very likely that other object pronoun enclitics (different person and number) are also borrowed (Christiane Bulut, personal communication 2012).

‑it ‘second singular’, e.g. almæ âllæm‑it (apple/buy.aorist.1sg‑2sg.dative) ‘I will buy you an apple’ (Buluç 1975: 183; Bulut 2007: 174)

‑şan ‘third plural’, e.g. yæyipt‑şan (eat.perfect.3sg‑3pl.accusative) ‘he has eaten them’ (Buluç 1975: 183; Bulut 2007: 174)

 

3 non‑interrelated suffixes

‑tar ‘comparative’, e.g. çux‑dar (much/most‑comparative) ‘more’ (Bulut 2005: 254), “the copied morpheme +tar displays no combinatorial restrictions; it combines with Turkic and Iranian adjectives alike” (Bulut 2005: 253)

‑aka ~ ‑eke ~ ‑ækæ ‘definite, specific’ (from Southern Kurdish, Gorani), e.g. ušaġ‑ækæ‑le’ (child‑specific‑pl) ‘those children’, mincuġ‑ækæ‑re (bead‑specific‑ablative) ‘of those pearls’, šê’r‑eke‑sin‑ne (poem‑specific‑possessor‑ablative) ‘about that poem by him’. This suffix “attaches directly to Turkic noun stems and precedes plural, possessive or case suffixes” (Bulut 2005: 254). See also Kossmann (2011), who cites a Sorani source form from Blau (1980: 46, 63). This form is also borrowed into Southern Iraqi Turkman.

‑iş ‘also, even’, e.g. yėmēduvyou have not even eaten’, ġēliş ‘come!’, ōḫiş ‘even an eye’ (Buluç 1975: 182). This suffix “is in all probability a copy of the Kurdish enclitic [...] which in southern Kurdish may be suffixed to either a nominal or a verbal form” (Bulut 2007: 175).

 

An additional borrowed suffix, ‑i ‘indefinite’ from Persian, “with similar function [as ‑aka]” (Bulut 2005: 254), is “in all instances of our material [...] attached to copied noun phrases” (Bulut 2005: 255), i.e. stems that are likewise borrowed from Persian. For this reason, this suffix is not included here, although there is some indirect evidence that “could prove that the copied unit +i is compatible with non‑Persian nouns” (Bulut 2005: 255).