Document Type : مقالات علمی پژوهشی
Author
Ph.D. in Linguistics, Lecturer at Farhangian University, Khorramabad, Iran
Abstract
In the present article, different types of semantic relationships between the components of endocentric compound words in Gahvarehei Kurdish are investigated. The corpus of the research data includes endocentric compounds that have been obtained from the everyday speech of native speakers of Gahvarehei Kurdish, which is one of the dialects of the southern Kurdish branch and is common in Gahvareh section in Dalahoo County, Kermanshah province, Iran. The results of the research show that endocentric compound words in Gahvarehei Kurdish in terms of structure include: noun-noun head-initial, noun-noun head-final, noun-adjective, adjective-noun and preposition-noun. Various semantic relationships between the components of these structures can be found, such as origin, material, gender, content, possession, use, type, dependence, similarity, instrument, kinship, manner, time, amalgamation, taste, physical condition, age, function, production tools and place. The research findings, which include a list of semantic relationships between the components of endocentric compound words in Southern Kurdish, can be a complement for other lists provided by researchers in other Iranian languages as well as other languages in the world and lead us to a comprehensive classification of different types of semantic relations in compound words.
1. Introduction
Compounding is one of the most important word-formation processes in many languages of the world. In Kurdish, the process of composition, along with derivation, is one of the two main and most widely used processes of word formation. The discussion of semantic relationships between the constituent components of compound words and the presentation of lists or regular classifications of them is one of the important topics in the studies of the field of word formation, especially in the case of endocentric compound words. Our goal in this study is to provide a comprehensive classification of the types of semantic relationships between the components of the noun-noun, noun-adjective, and adjective-noun compounds in Gahvarehei Kurdish. Accordingly, the main question of this study is what are the types of semantic relations in endocentric compound words in Gahvarehei Kurdish?
The research data consists of endocentric compounds collected from the daily speech of Kurdish speakers residing in the city of Gahvareh (Dalahoo County, Kermanshah Province, Iran). The common language type in this region is considered to be one of the southern Kurdish dialects in terms of linguistic characteristics, and it is closely related to the Kalhori dialect, but it has differences with it in terms of phonology and vocabulary.
2. Literature Review
To date, some studies have been conducted on the processes of word formation, and in particular the discussion of compounding and compound words in various Kurdish dialects and varieties, among which the following can be mentioned: process of repetition in Kalhori (Jahanfar, 2017); compound verbs in Kalhori dialect (Afshar & Zarei, 2017); comparison of word-formation processes in Persian and Kurdish languages (Jendo Ismail, 2018); and word-formation processes in Ilami Kurdish dialect (Sherafat, 2020). However, the discussion of the semantic relationship between components of compound words has been neglected and no study has been conducted in this field. Therefore, we will review studies that have been conducted on the endocentric compound words in Persian and other Iranian languages.
Sabzevari (2010) based on CARIN theory (Competition among Relations in Nominals) has investigated the relationship between the components of Persian compound nouns and the role of this relationship in the semantic classification of these words. He points out that the semantic interpretation of a compound word depends on the relationship between its components and the descriptor of the compound noun (i.e. the non-head element) determines the type of relationship between the head and the dependent. Asi and Badakhshan (1389), after examining the various characteristics of compounding that distinguish compound words from syntactic phrases, have analyzed the types of compounds in Persian. After discussing the types of existing classifications, they finally considered Scalise & Bisetto’s classification (2009) as the most complete classification, and based on that, they divided the types of Persian compounds into three main groups: subordinate, attributive, and coordinate, each of which can be exocentric or endocentric. Following Costello and Keane (2000), Sabzevari (2019) considered three types of semantic relations in Persian nouns: 1) relational compounding; 2) Property compounding; 3) Conjunctional compounding.
3. Methodology
The present research was carried out using a descriptive-analytical method and the data collection method was such that the researcher wrote down every compound word that he encountered in his family environment, work environment, and surrounding community in three months (in total 820 cases). Then, based on a criterion called the ‘hyponymy test’, endocentric compound words were distinguished from other types of compound words. In total, 345 of the collected compound words were of the endocentric type. Finally, the obtained words have been analyzed and classified in terms of the type of semantic relationship between their components based on the approach of Adams (2001) and Moldovan et al. (2004).
4. Results
The results of the study show that all compound words in Gahvarehei Kurdish are formed around the core axis of the noun category but other lexical categories such as verbs, adjectives ، adverbs and so on cannot be in the head position of these words. Dependents can be a noun, adjective, or preposition, and somehow modulate the meaning of the head and limit its inclusion. Therefore, these types of combinations are structurally divided into four types: noun-noun, noun- adjective, Adjective – noun, and preposition – noun. The diversity of semantic relationships between the components of compounds leads to a range of meanings in them. The types of relationships identified in each of the structures examined in this study are as follows:
Table 1
Semantic Relationships in Endocentric Compounds of Gahvarehei Kurdish
Head-initial NOUN- NOUN
origin, gender, content, ownership, usage, type, dependence
Head-final NOUN- NOUN
similarity, instrument, kinship, origin, place, manner, time, content, type
NOUN- ADJECTIVE
color, taste, relationship, physical state, age, gender, sex, function, means of production, origin
ADJECTIVE - NOUN
gender, size, age, physical state
PREPOSITION - NOUN
location
The findings of the research, which includes a list of semantic relationships between components of endocentric compound words in Gahvarehei Kurdish, along with the findings of Iranian researchers such as Sabzevari (2011) and Karimidostan and Vahid (2015) can lead us to provide a comprehensive classification of the types of semantic relations in compound words in Iranian languages. These findings can also complement the lists provided by researchers of other world languages (such as Adams, 1973; Ryder, 1994; Costello and Keane, 2000; Adams, 2001; Moldovan et al., 2004; Estes and Jones, 2008; Szubert, 2012).
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