The Position of the Verb Head in the Phonological Foot in Kurdish

Abstract

The Position of Head is an essential topic in Kurdish language phonology. This research attempts to determine the position of the verb head at the level of words, according to the metrical phonology theory. One syllable among a chain of connected syllables is more prominent than the adjacent syllables. In order to determine the verb head, we need to find out the syllable in the foot which bears the stress. The fundamental questions of this research are: Is the verb Head in the metrical foot located to the right or the left of the foot? Which type of structure is the verb foot? These questions will be answered through analyzing samples of metrical feet presented using the metrical grid. This research, reached the conclusion that the position of the verb head, and the type of verb foot -Badini dialect can be analysed via metrical phonology. Furthermore, the main and secondary stresses in the foot can be predicted by applying some rules. Depending on the collected data, it appeared that all syllables in Kurdish can be stress-bearers; hence, it is not easy to determine the position of the main stress. Consequently, the position of the main stress in the verb foot determines the Head of the verb. It can be stated that feet are bisyllabic in Kurdish, and that the first syllable is more prominent than the other one. In other words, the verb Head lies on the left side of the foot when written in International Phonetic Alphabet.