Ezafe in Northern Kurdish

Abstract

This chapter describes the forms and functions of the Ezafe in Northern Kurdish. The NP in this language is head-initial and Ezafe is used to link modifiers, including possessors, in the postnominal domain to their head nouns. The Northern Kurdish Ezafe reflects the phi-features such as number and gender, and the definiteness of the head noun, and it has different functions. It behaves like a typical adnominal linker that connects any type of postnominal modifier, such as attributive adjectives, adpositions and finite clauses, to the head noun. It also appears after null Ns and behaves like a prosodically independent element. Lastly, in certain Northern Kurdish dialects, it functions as a part of the verbal predicate and expresses stative, existential, and tense/aspectual readings.