Clifton L. Pye

A Semantic Analysis of 'cut' and 'break' Verbs in Sorani Kurdish Clifton L. Pye

I compared the semantic extensions of cut and break verbs in Sorani and English in concrete and metaphorical contexts. The results show that there is significant overlap between Sorani and English in the concrete and metaphorical objects that are used and not used with each verb. I investigated the LCS components of cut and break verbs semantically by providing four different semantic tests, three for durativity and one for intentionality. These tests provide semantic evidence for the CAUSE and PRODUCE components in the LCS of the verbs. The results show that the semantic features of the verb change depending on the features of the objects and whether they are in metaphorical or concrete contexts. Some Sorani verbs demonstrate different semantic components from English verbs in their meaning as they are used in different contexts with different objects. I compared the syntactic and semantic features of Sorani verb to determine the degree to which their syntactic properties correlate with their semantic features. The results show a strong correlation between the syntactic and semantic features of some verbs in concrete and metaphorical contexts.