The Phonemic System of Modern Standard Kurdish.

Modern Standard Kurdish (MSK) is a written form of Kurdish adopted by the Iraqi Kurds to establish a standard written Kurdish substituting for the various Kurdish dialects spoken in Iraqi Kurdistan. MSK is based on the Sulaimani dialect, a sub-dialect of Southern Kirmanji (Sorani). Written documents published in Iraq after 1970 are the main source for this study. The documents include books and articles listed in the bibliography. They are written by the speakers of various Kurdish dialects. I used myself as the only principle reader, i.e., I was not able to find other readers of MSK in the United States; therefore, this initial study should be followed by additional studies. This study is based on the reading aloud of newly published documents and dozens of spectrograms. My native Kurdish dialect is the Bibani dialect of the Kirkuk Altun Kopri area. Since MSK is based on Sulaimani dialect, the sound system of MSK corresponds partially but not entirely to the dialect of Sulaimani. Differences between MSK and both Sulaimani and Bibani dialect are presented. The environments for allophonic variations such as vowel length in different environments, and phonological changes such as substitution, deletion, and insertion are described. The ranges of vowel length are given based on spectrograms. Chapter One is a historical sketch of the written form of Kurdish in Iraqi Kurdistan. Pre-MSK is introduced from the early period of written Kurdish when there was no Standard Kurdish until 1958 when The Republic of Iraq was established, and the standardization period evolved following its establishment around 1970. The evolution of Arabic script as adopted for Kurdish is discussed. Chapter Two introduces Kurdish vowels and gives rules for phonological change. In Chapter Three consonants are presented. Allophonic features such as voicing, and devoicing, of consonants are described and rules for phonological processes such as deletion, substitution, and insertion are given. Chapter Four demonstrates the predictability of stress in terms of morphology. Chapter Five describes syllable structure in MSK and Chapter Six gives general conclusions.Ph.D.Middle Eastern literatureUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/160911/1/8612458.pd