The Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Dohok: A Comparative Grammar

Abstract

This thesis provides a linguistic analysis of key issues in the Neo-Aramaic dialect that was historically spoken by the Jewish community in Dohok, north-western Iraq. This linguistic variety belongs to the North-Eastern sub-branch of Neo-Aramaic – a group of dialects and languages used by Jews and Christians in parts of Turkey, Iraq and Iran. Like many other linguistic varieties from the North-Eastern branch, the dialect of Dohok now faces imminent extinction. This work is based on a language questionnaire and a corpus of personal narratives, descriptions of traditions and folktales which I collected in my own fieldwork among speakers now living in Jerusalem, Israel. My analysis includes comparisons with other North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic varieties. These comparative data help to identify both the distinctive and the shared features of the Jewish Dohok dialect, and thus help place this dialect within the general linguistic landscape of the North-Eastern group. Such a comparison also leads on a few occasions to a general discussion of linguistically noteworthy phenomena in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic, the analysis of which is the secondary aim of this work. In addition to documenting the linguistic diversity of Neo-Aramaic, this thesis also aims to make the field of Neo-Aramaic accessible to general linguists – inter alia, by providing data glossing. The discussion begins with the phonology and phonetics of both segments and larger units. This is followed by morphology, where I focus especially on the verbal system. At the heart of this dissertation is the investigation of syntax and morphosyntax. I describe and analyse strategies for the expression of pronominal objects, the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of copula clauses and the tense-aspect-modal system. The final chapter is the first quantitative study of Neo-Aramaic word order and compares the dialect of the Jews of Dohok with that of Sanandaj (Iran).