Variation in Countability Properties and Noun Classes

Abstract

This paper establishes that Sorani Kurdish has a mass/count distinction that can be distinguished by looking at, which nouns occur with plural moprhology (-an), optional classifiers (e.g. dane, CLinainmate), unit denumerators (yek, ‘one’), fuzzy denumerators (nsikay panja ‘about fifty’), and other denumerators (herdû ‘both’). Moreover, properties of countability in Sorani Kurdish can be used to distinguish six classes of nouns that differ with respect to their acceptability with the aforementioned properties, examples of nouns in each class being setyare (‘car’), polîs (‘police’), miqes (‘scissors’), manga (‘cattle’), çiyakanî Himalaya (‘Himalayas’), and xîn (‘blood’). This data was gathered by comparing Sorani Kurdish near equivalents to English countability properties found in previous studies, and asking five speakers of Sorani Kurdish for their judgments, following semantic fieldwork methodology. This research expands what is found about countability in Sorani Kurdish grammar books. This paper shows that Sorani Kurdish has both a rich classifier system and mass/count distinction, a combination that has not yet been documented. Knowing these characteristics of Sorani Kurdish helps to create a clearer picture of the linguistic variation regarding countability and suggests a relationship between the number of countability properties and countability classes in a given language.