Grammatical Gender in Central and Northern Kurdish: A Study in Distributed Morphology (DM)

Baghawan, Azad Ameen

doi:10.32894/1992-1179.2026.171100.1388

	Grammatical Gender in Central and Northern Kurdish: A Study in Distributed Morphology (DM)
Kirkuk University Journal: Humanity Studies
Volume 21, Issue 2, June 2026, Pages 501-523 PDF (1.5 M)
Document Type: Research Paper
DOI: 10.32894/1992-1179.2026.171100.1388
Author
azad ameen baghawan^*
University of Kirkuk – College of Education for Human Sciences – Department of Kurdish Language
Abstract
Title: Distributed Morphology of Gender in Central and Northern Kurdish Dialects in Light of Distributed Morphology (DM) Theory. This research presents a comparative linguistic study of the phenomenon of "Grammatical Gender" in the Kurdish language, aiming to analyze the morphological and syntactic variations between the Central Kurdish and Northern Kurdish dialects. The study adopts the framework of Distributed Morphology (DM) as a robust analytical tool to explain how gender features are generated and distributed within the overall linguistic structure. The research problem centers on the apparent contradiction in gender representation; while the Northern dialect maintains distinct gender markers in nouns, pronouns, and the Ezafe construction, the Central dialect shows a tendency toward erasing these markers in the phonological interface. This research refutes the claim of gender loss in Central Kurdish by confirming that the gender feature remains present in the underlying syntactic and mental structure, though it undergoes a process of "Morphological Impoverishment" that leads to "Syncretism" in inflectional suffixes. The study employs a descriptive-analytical comparative method, where the analysis covers two primary levels: the syntactic level, which examines gender features as abstract elements in the underlying structure, and the morphological level, which analyzes the processes of Vocabulary Insertion in various contexts such as vocative cases, diminutives, and pronouns. The research has reached several fundamental conclusions, most notably that the differentiation between the two dialects is not a distinction in the core grammatical system, but rather in the final morphological representation of features. The persistence of gender markers in specific contexts, such as vocative and diminutive forms in the Central dialect, serves as physical evidence that the gender node has not vanished from the grammatical system. This suggests that linguistic evolution in this dialect follows the principle of linguistic economy, simplifying morphological markers without losing the semantic function of the grammatical rank.
Keywords
Distributed Morphology; Grammatical Gender; Morphological Simplification; Syntactic Structure

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