Clifton L. Pye

Transitivity Alternations in Sorani Kurdish: a Semantic-syntactic Investigation Clifton L. Pye

This study explores the semantic components and the syntactic alternations of a group of cut and break verbs in Kurdish. The results indicate that there is no clear semantic line between cut and break verbs in Kurdish. Guerssel et al. (1985) consider these verbs to represent two distinct semantic classes of verbs. They assume that the syntactic behavior of a verb can be explained in light of its semantic representation. Guerssel et al. did not consider all the semantic and pragmatic contexts that determine verb meaning and use. I investigated the use of Kurdish verbs in different syntactic and semantic contexts. I chose contexts in which the verbs indicate real as well as metaphorical actions.