Explanation of Allomorphy in the Suppletive Verb Forms of Kalhori Kurdish: A Comparison of Two Approaches in Distributed Morphology

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Tahereh Jafari ¹

Shoja Tafakkori Rezaei ²

¹ Department of English Language and Linguistics, The Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

² Associate profess of Linguistics, Department of English Language and Linguistics, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

10.22067/jlkd.2026.95646.1348

Abstract

The present study adopts a descriptive-analytical approach within the framework of Distributed Morphology to examine the explanatory adequacy of Halle and Marantz’s (1993, 1994) traditional model and Siddiqi’s (2009) recent model in accounting for the allomorphy of suppletive forms in certain Kalhori Kurdish verbs. In addition to the linguistic intuition of one of the authors’, a 10 hour corpus consisting of interviews with 15 Kalhori Kurdish speakers was used for data collection and analysis. Based on the analysis conducted within the framework, it was concluded that Siddiqi’s (2009) model offers a better explanation of the allomorphy observed in Kalhori Kurdish suppletive forms. Given the insertion of weak suppletive allomorphs through secondary exponence and readjustment rules in the traditional model, as well as the increasing complexity of these rules required to account for the surface differences observed among the suppletive pairs in the data, this analysis appears to be inconsistent with the principle of linguistic economy. In contrast, the Fusion operation in Siddiqi’s (2009) approach brings the formal tense feature and the root together within a single node, thereby eliminating the need for null heads and complex readjustment rules, substantially reducing the computational of the grammar, and leading us to conclude that this model offers a more adequate account of Kurdish suppletive pairs.

Keywords

Allomorphy

Suppletive Forms

Fusion

Kalhori Kurdish

Distributed Morphology

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