The Layered Structure of Mukriyani's Noun Phrases in Role and Reference Grammar

In this paper, the Mukriyani’s layered structure of NPs (one of the Surani’s Kurdish dialects) has been examined according to Van Valin’s (2005) framework. In this framework, NPs consist of two projections: a constituent projection consisting of a Nucleus and a Core plus one or more Peripheries for each of them, and a grammatical projection consisting of operators. This research is a descriptive-analytic one in which the data have been extracted from the written sources of Mukriyani dialect, and also from the intuition of one of the researchers who is a native Mukriyani speaker. These data have been analyzed according to the mono-layered pattern of RRG and finally the proposed Mukriyani’s NPs pattern has been offered. Among the results of this research, we can refer to the independence of NPs’ structure from the linier order of their elements; however, the enclitics attached to the NUCN reflecting the number or definiteness are among the Core or NP operators. Another result of the research shows that in Mukriyani, the post-Nucleus adjectives make the Nucleus peripheries and the pre-Nucleus adjectives are among the Core operators.