Agreement and Case-Marking in Kuhdashti Laki: A Comparative Syntactic Study

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Ph.D. student in general linguistics, Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran

2 professor in general linguistics, Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran

Abstract

Agreement, case marking, and word order are key mechanisms for encoding syntactic relations, each language employing them according to its typological structure. This study aims to describe and analyze the agreement and case-marking systems of Kuhdashti Laki and compare them with Khorramabadi Lori and Kalhori Kurdish within Haig’s (2008) framework. The findings show that in Laki, these systems are dual and dependent on tense and verb transitivity: in the non-past, the pattern is nominative-accusative, with the subject appearing directly without a case marker and the object typically marked by an accusative marker. In contrast, in the past tense, agreement shifts to a split ergative pattern where the transitive subject is marked via a pronominal clitic attached to the object, and the verb remains in the default third-person singular form without overt agreement. This structure distinguishes Laki from Kalhori Kurdish and Khorramabadi Lori, which maintain a consistent nominative-accusative system regardless of tense or transitivity. Despite surface similarities, the evidence shows that Kuhdashti Laki has an independent and coherent syntactic structure and should not be regarded as merely a dependent or mixed variety between Kurdish and Lori.

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