Syllable structure in Kurdish language rerevisited

A typological cross-dialectal study

Bibliographic Data

ID21820025
AuthorsAzad Mohammadi (0000-0003-3841-6100, University of Tehran), Gholamhossein Karimi Doostan (0000-0003-0016-9917, University of Tehran)
Year2025
Volume78
Issue4
Pages541-572
Publication date2025-11-25
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage Typology and Universals (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1867-8319 • E-ISSN: 2196-7148
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/stuf-2025-2023
OpenAlexW7124419240
LanguageEN
References cited21

The diverse dialects of Kurdish have long been the subject of scholarly debate on syllable structure, and this study examines the syllabification of Central Kurdish within the Optimality Theory framework. Data from a mini-corpus, drawn from native Central Kurdish speakers and enriched with findings from studies on Northern and Southern Kurdish dialects, provide the foundation for this investigation. The methodology involves extracting the constraints governing Central Kurdish’s syllable formation, where the nucleus consistently requires a single vowel and the onset is obligatory in a CV pattern that may extend to include a glide (forming CGV) at word-initial positions. The permissible coda appears either as a singleton or as part of a consonant cluster. Findings indicate that Central Kurdish and Southern Kurdish converge on a shared constraint ranking, producing the canonical C(G)V(C)(C) structure. Northern Kurdish dialects, however, display greater variation, with some allowing an unrestricted second consonant (C(C)V(C)(C)) and others restricting cluster composition. A Hasse diagram is employed to visualize these constraint relationships, highlighting Optimality Theory’s capacity to model both a core, maximally constrained syllable structure and peripheral trends. These results provide crucial insights into the dynamic interplay of phonological constraints that shape syllable structure across Kurdish dialects, advancing a unified typological understanding of the language

Consonant · Consonant cluster · Optimality theory · Phonology · Singleton · Sonority hierarchy · Syllabification · Syllable · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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