Aspect and coercion in Kurdish: From the predicate level to the clause layer
This article seeks to examine aspect and coercion at the predicate level and within the three syntactic layers of nucleus, core, and clause in Kurdish. Utilizing Role and Reference Grammar as the framework, the study identifies lexical aspects with inherent aspectual features at predicate level. Predicates are categorized into five types: activity, accomplishment, achievement, semelfactive, and state, based on their lexical characteristics. The other layers mainly host derivative aspects and aspectual operators. In the Kurdish language, the nucleus layer hosts three imperfective operators and one perfect operator, each of which modifies the aspectual features of the five mentioned event types. At this level, each predicate with its own lexical aspect undergoes aspect shifting due to its combination with one of these operators. All kinds of aspect shifting are triggered due to the semantic dimensions of the aspectual operators at the nucleus level. Also, the findings show that at the core level, predicates may undergo coercion when combined with adverbial items or internal arguments that have special referential characteristics; the derivative predicates (such as active accomplishments) appear at this level. This study shows that the temporal operator at the clause level also has a significant impact on the eventual structure of predicates, and the verbs at the clause level affected by the time operator may undergo coercion. All kinds of aspect shifting at this level are aimed at harmonizing the eventual structure of the verbs with the semantic dimensions of the time operator.