Applicative Construction: A Description and Theoretical Implications

Application, descriptively speaking, is a grammatical term used to refer to a morphosyntactic process which affects the argument structure of a verb through either the introduction of a new argument to the argument structure of the verb or the promotion of an indirect argument with an oblique status to a direct argument status. Description, and let alone analysis, of application and the ensuing applicative constructions in Iranian languages have largely failed to draw the attention of researchers working on these languages; accordingly, the current research represents the first serious attempt to study application and the applicative constructions in an Iranian language, that is Kalhuri Kurdish. To be more specific, this papers aims at introducing a set of descriptive tools to characterize the applicative construction and at elaborating on the theoretical dimensions and implications of such constructions in the light of empirical findings from Kalhuri Kurdish. As such, the current research is setting a preliminary basis for further exploration of the properties of such constructions in Iranian languages.