Verb Processes in Kurdish Language

Abstract

This paper presents a descriptive analysis of the processes underlying the usage of transitivity in Kurdish Language. Paul Simpson’s Transitivity model has been adopted in this work. Language use involves both systemic and functional components, the former comprising language grammar system requirements and the latter embracing cognitive/ functional processes underlying the use of a specific systemic component: namely, Material, Mental, Verbal and Relational.

    In a descriptive analysis of transitivity usage in Kurdish language, this paper examines participants’ roles and circumstances in identifying each process. The paper demonstrates that there is a correlation between the speakers’ worldviews and their choice of the processes in using transitivity to generate sentences.

    An adequate and different explanation of the verb concept has been presented on the basis of the semantic organization of a speaker’s experience rather than on viewing transitivity in terms of a grammatical requirement of direct objects. The originality of this paper lies in the various dimensions that such processes provide for analyzing Kurdish sentence structure. The paper can be of benefit as an entry point for studying and understanding the Kurdish verb lexicon and for the program of learning Kurdish language.