Agreement System in Shourabi Dialect

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Ph.D. Student of General Linguistics, Allameh Tabataba'i University  

Abstract

This paper generally deals with the function of personal verbal affixes, pronominal clitics and their syntactic relations in Shourabi agreement system, a dialect of Kouhmare language. Based on the tense system and the transitivity versus intransitivity of verbs, Shourabi follows the split system in its personal agreement system: Nominative-Accusative versus Non-Nominative-Accusative agreement systems. In Nominative-Accusative system which includes intransitive verbs in all tenses and transitive verbs in present tense, verbal suffixes agree with agent or subject in person and number, while in Non-Nominative-Accusative system which includes transitive verbs in all past tenses, agreement with Agent is realized through the oblique pronomical clitics. One specific characteristics of Shourabi is the existence of two separate sets of personal pro-clitics which, in some cases, are different from each other morphologically, syntactically and functionally. The first set is the unmarked while the second set is the marked one. In Nominative-Accusative Agreement System, Shourabi is like modern Persian, but in Non-Nominative-Accusative System, it is different. Non-Nominative-Accusative Agreement System includes the tripartite, ergative-absolutive and oblique-oblique sub-systems.

Keywords


Comrie, Bernard (1978) “Ergativity”, In W. Lehmann (Ed.), Syntactic Typology: Studies in the Phenomenology of Language, Austin & London: University of Texas Press, pp. 329-394.