A Survey on Relative Clause Construction in Kurmanji

Relative clause construction in Iranian languages appears mainly in sentences as a subordinate clause and acts as a describer for the preceding noun. Following Dixon's (2010) framework, our aim in this paper is to study and describe the relative clause construction in Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish. This construction is generally of two types which can be considered as canonical and non-canonical with their own syntactic features. Relative clauses can be either restrictive or non-restrictive according to the information given about the head. Restrictive clauses cannot be omitted, because they give new information, while non-restrictives can; since the information they give are not always necessary. In Kurmanji, a third type can be identified which is called cleft relative clause in which the head is focused. In this dialect, relative clauses are absolutely in accordance with a head. These clauses are external and come after the head. The data on which this study is based on interviews with native speakers of Kurmanji as well as a book called Az Ensanəm.