A Semantic-Pragmatic Study of /Ɂæra/ in Kurdish : a Cognitive Perspective

The aim of this study was to investigate the place of /Ɂæra/ and its polysemy in Kalhori Kurdish based on the principled-polysemy approach ( Tylor & Evanz 2001,2003; Evanz & Tylor 2004a, 2004b; Evanz 2005,2004,2006), which presents basic and applied criteria for identifying different and primary meanings of prepositions. The study is analytic-descriptive and data-based. The data was collected from interviews with Kalhori speakers, and their originality was verified by native speakers. This study focused only on some samples for each distinct meaning due to the limitation of time and space. The research findings show that /Ɂæra/ questions the causality, as a wh-word in the initial position of a sentence or wh-in-situ and before a verb. The findings as well show that it has eight meanings and two semantic clusters, and that in the initial position, its meaning is “for”, and that when placed before a noun or noun phrase, it functions as a preposition.  A semantic network presented shows the distinct meanings of /Ɂæra/ as a preposition.