Descripción textual de los casos de uso del sistema

Clausal secondaries, whether full clauses or infinitival phrases, can appear regu-larly in the CSC.

(14) JZakho: Noun–Infinitival Phrase ṭēr-ət

bird-cst

maḥkōye speak.inf

‘a speaking bird’ (Cohen 2012: 111 (88)) (15) JZakho: Noun–Infinitival Phrase

waʿd-ət

‘time of his coming’ (Cohen 2012: 111 (87)) (16) JZakho: Noun–Infinitival Phrase

(mṭē-le)

‘The time arrived for the three friends’ coming’ (Cohen 2012: 98 (32)) The following example is especially interesting, since the secondary consists of two conjoined infinitives. Moreover, it is split by the occurrence of the copula la, marking the entire CSC as a predicate. In JZakho (as in many other NENA di-alects), the copula is a second-position clitic with respect to the predicate phrase.⁵ Yet as this example clearly shows, the copula cannot split the construct state primary from its secondary and thus appears instead after the first conjoined secondary.⁶

(17) JZakho: Noun–Conjoined infinitives urx-ət

‘It is a road of going and not returning.’ (Cohen 2012: 111 (87))

As stated, full clauses can appear as well in the secondary position. The pri-mary noun can have various functions in the relative clause (subject, object, etc.)

5In other words, the copula typically appears after the first minimal unit of the predicate, be it a free noun or a CSC. A similar behaviour is exhibited by the Syriac enclitic personal pronouns, which can be seen as precursors of the copula; see Gutman & Van Peursen (2011: 121ff.) for a discussion and examples.

6Such cases should be clearly differentiated from cases where the copula itself is part of the secondary, in which case it can appear directly after the primary in a special attributive form (see §5.5.2).

(18) JZakho: Noun (subject)–Clause šaps-ət

week-cst zəl-la went-3fs

‘Last week (lit. The week that passed)’ (Avinery 1988: 191 (1617)) (19) JZakho: Noun (subject)–Clause

ʾō

‘This rain which fell (=rained) a little’ (Avinery 1988: 171 (1274)) (20) JZakho: Noun (object)–Clause

xabr-ət word(s)-cst

mír-rē-la

said-a3ms-dat3fs

‘the words he told her’ (Cohen 2012: 97 (24)) (21) JZakho: Noun (object)–Clause

xabər

‘the words his wife said about the lion’ (Cohen 2012: 97 (23))

Interrogative pronouns can head the CSC with clausal secondaries. In such cases they act as a head of a free relative, loosely speaking. In this construction, they are always marked by the construct state suffix.⁷

(22) JZakho: Pronoun–Clause

‘from what I told you’ (Cohen 2012: 94 (4)) (23) JZakho: Pronoun–Clause

‘whoever is standing in front of you will be killed’ (Cohen 2012: 96 (14))

7As Cohen (2012: 96) notes, the free forms of the interrogative pronouns are used as markers of either direct or indirect questions. No apocopate forms of the interrogative pronouns are

To this group one may tentatively add the pronoun/quantifier kud ‘each’:

(24) JZakho: Pronoun–Clause ku-d

each-cst

[ʾāwəz-lox

sbjv.do.3ms-dat.2ms

hawūsa]

favor

‘anyone who does you a favor’ (Cohen 2012: 94 (1))

In the above example I analyse kud as having a base-form ku augmented by a construct state suffix. However, a free form of kud is not attested (Cohen 2012:

94, fn. 5), though historically it is very probably derived from *kull + d (Sabar 2002: 181b).⁸Moreover, as Cohen (2018: 3) notes, disregarding its construct state marking, it can be equated with a determiner of the JZakho system. Thus, one may reasonably question whether this should be seen as a genuine instance of construct state marking, or rather a fossilized remnant of it. Interestingly, in-stances of ku are found in Nerwa (Sabar 2002: 181b), but these may be cases of back-formation.

Finally, note that the interrogative ēma ‘which’ can be complemented directly by a noun-phrase, which embeds in it a clause. In this case too, the construct state-marked interrogative pronoun functions rather as a determiner:

(25) JZakho: Pronoun–Noun Phrase ēm-ət

which-cst [julle clothes

d=

lnk=

[ʾājəb-le please-3ms

ləbb-ox]]

heart-poss.2ms (ṭḷōb take.imp

mən from d-e

gen-def kwīna) tent

‘Ask for whatever clothes which please you from that tent’ (Cohen 2012:

96 (16))

5.3.3 Adverbial primaries

Many adverbials are in fact nouns used adverbially, such as the noun waʿda ‘time’

(thus example (15) on page 119 can be understood adverbially: ‘when he comes’).

These behave as nouns, having potentially two construct state forms: one suffixed and one apocopate, besides their free forms.

In contrast to these, there are true prepositions or conjunctions (often mono-syllabic, or shorter). Some of these take a construct state suffix obligatorily when

8The form kull, meaning ‘all’, is used in JZakho only together with possessive pronominal suf-fixes. Compare this with example (43) on page 163 of Qaraqosh and see further Khan (2002a:

282f.).

complemented by a syntactic word, be it a noun or a pronoun. Such is the case of ʾəmm-əd [with-cst] (example (5)=example (26) on this page):

(26) JZakho: Preposition–Noun ʾəmm-əd

with-cst gōra man

‘with the man’ (Cohen 2010: 82) (27) JZakho: Preposition–Pronoun

əmm-ət with-cst

gyān-e refl-3ms

‘(together) with itself’ (Cohen 2012: 115 (106))

One can nevertheless identify the base form, as it appears together with the possessive pronominal suffixes (see example (4) on page 116). Moreover, it is clear that it stems etymologically from classical Aramaicם ִעʿĭm (Sabar 2002: 97a).

Some prepositions allow for two forms to appear before syntactic words: one with the suffix -əd and one without it. The shorter form should not be seen as an apocopate form, as it is not derived from a full free form (except for those prepo-sitions derived from nouns), but should rather be seen as the simple form of the preposition (see also the system of Barwar in Table 4.2 on page 101). Functionally, the simple form is equivalent to a construct state marked form, yet from the point of view of the classification system used here it represents an unmarked primary.

In this vein, contrast the following construct state marked example with exam-ple (102) on page 144, representing an unmarked juxtaposition construction.⁹ (28) JZakho: Preposition–Noun

b-əd in-cst

bəllūre flute

‘with a flute’ (Cohen 2010: 85 (16))

The construct state marked form can precede phrasal and clausal secondaries:

(29) JZakho: Preposition–Infinitival Phrase ʾəmm-ət

with-cst

[maʾōre transfer.inf

dīd-a]

lnk-3fs

‘while transferring her’ (Cohen 2012: 111 (87))

9The preposition b- ‘in’ should be kept apart from its homonym particle b-, which joins the infinitive to form a gerund (Cohen 2012: 99, fn. 9; Sabar 2002: 103a). Note, moreover, that the preposition b-əd can precede an infinitive (without forming a gerund), as in example (3) on

(30) JZakho: Preposition–Participial Phrase

‘(And he took the fish) with his joy attained (=happily).’ (Cohen 2012: 122 (142))

‘(The sheep did) as she told him.’ (Cohen 2012: 104 (67))