The Kurdish Adpositional System: New Perspectives

What is it about?

In this paper I present a basic descriptive overview of the adpositional system in Kurdish supported by illustrative examples from the Sorani dialect. Based on this, two classes are identified: simple and compound. Their morphological, syntactic and semantic properties are discussed in detail, highlighting the distinctions among them. The classification is further supported by the application of an extended P projection as proposed in Saeed (2015) which shares the basic ideas of Svenonius’ (2010) model of spatial P projection providing a new perspective of the role of spatial adpositions. I also examine the categorial status of several bound morphemes which attach to complements of some adpositions and argue that they are clitics associated with specific locative meanings. I propose the existence of PLACE head as a solution to the syntactic status of the locative clitics. I also show that postulating PLACE in the P projection does not clash with the existence of AxPart as they are two distinct elements syntactically and semantically.

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