Investigating Three Morphemes “-ænæ”, “-æwæ” and “-æɾæ” in Hawrami: Postposition or Case Marker

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Assistant Professor, Payame Noor University

Abstract

In this paper we have investigated three frequent morphemes in Hawrami of Paveh, namely, “-ænæ”, “-æwæ” and “-æɾæ”. The nature of these morphemes is unknown. They are attached to nouns with a meaning like that of adpositions. We aim to explore what these morphemes are. We first elicited and classified 52 Hawrami prepositions, determined the structure of Hawrami Prepositional Phrase, introduced Oblique case and its markers in Hawrami, and then we put forward three hypotheses regarding the nature of the three morphemes. Based on our hypotheses, the morphemes are either postpositions, part of complex adpositions, or case markers. Analyzing the data we could not decide on the acceptability of either hypotheses. After all, we tried hypotheses with language universals, but this effort did not help, too. It seems that these three morphemes are disappearing or changing remnants of an old system in Hawrami postpositional or case system. We could not make any remark more precise than that.

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