THE JEWISH NEO-ARAMAIC DIALECT OF DOHOK : TWO FOLKTALES AND SELECTED FEATURES OF VERBAL SEMANTICS

5 The Neo-Aramaic dialects are modern vernacular forms of Aramaic, which has a documented history in the Middle East of over 3,000 years. Due to upheavals in the Middle East over the last one hundred years, thousands of speakers of Neo-Aramaic dialects have been forced to migrate from their homes or have perished in massacres. As a result, the dialects are now highly endangered. The dialects exhibit a remarkable diversity of structures. Moreover, the considerable depth of attestation of Aramaic from earlier periods provides evidence for the pathways of change. For these reasons the research of Neo-Aramaic is of importance for more general fields of linguistics, in particular language typology and historical linguistics. The papers in this volume represent the full range of research that is currently being carried out on Neo-Aramaic dialects. They advance the field in numerous ways. In order to allow linguists who are not specialists in Neo-Aramaic to benefit from the papers, the examples are fully glossed.


THE JEWISH NEO-ARAMAIC DIALECT
OF DOHOK:

Introduction
This paper presents a selection of primary data from the hitherto unstudied NENA dialect of the Jews of the town of Dohok, located in north-western Iraq (this dialect is henceforth referred to as 'Jewish Dohok'). Glossing is provided for a part of the texts to ensure accessibility for readers who are not NENA specialists and notes on noteworthy linguistic features are supplied. These texts are complemented by a brief grammatical study, which is based on the texts. This study surveys selected features of verbal semantics 1 of Jewish Dohok. In particular, the study focuses on verbal forms with a grammatical function that is distinct from the function of the corresponding forms in many other NENA dialects. This demonstrates the importance of studying each dialect in its own right. The paper aims to situate the Jewish Dohok dialect typologically within the broader NENA family. In addition, it draws attention to certain less prototypical functions of the verbal forms in question. Such functions apparently reflect the subjective creative use of the tense-aspect-mood system in order to achieve a particular discourse effect.
The Jewish Dohok dialect is most closely affiliated with a group of Jewish dialects that were historically spoken West of the Great Zab River, and are known by their speakers and scholars as Lišana Deni ('our language'). Dialects belonging to this group were spoken also in Zakho, Amedia, Betanure, Nerwa (north-western Iraq) and Challa (south-eastern Turkey). Today, the Jewish Dohok dialect is on the verge of extinction, having only about twenty remaining active speakers. These speakers were born in the 1930s or 1940s in Dohok, or in the 1950s in Israel� As far as I know, all of them live today in Israel, mostly in the Jerusalem area.
In the following section, two folk tales are presented� I recorded these in 2018 in Castel (near Jerusalem). They were narrated by Mr Tzvi Avraham (aged 79).
The stories presented here give a taste of the rich oral literature of the NENA-speaking Jews. 2 Though stories such as the ones presented here were narrated in the Jewish community in Aramaic, many of them are likely to have been Kurdish (or Arabic) in origin (Sabar 1982, xxxii). The folktales are indeed sometimes situated in the realia of the Kurdish world-a fact illustrated in the following stories by the direct speech in lines 19 and 20 of the first story. A part of this speech is given in Bahdini Kurdish. 3 Other stories, however, appear to be distinctly Jewish, as shown by their ideological character. This was the view of the narrator himself. I have collected several stories that feature the figure of a poor, yet wise Jew, who-contrary to everyone's expectation-emerges as the hero of the story. Such folktales are apparently aimed at raising the morale of the Jews by presenting them in a very positive light (e.g. showing their resourcefulness).
2 See Aloni (2018) for the folk literature of the Lišana Deni Aramaic speakers� All of the other communities of the area-NENA-speaking Christians, as well as Kurdish-and Arabic-speaking communities-also possess a wealth of oral literature. These different story-telling traditions have historically undoubtedly been in contact with one another (e.g., Coghill 2009). 3 For background on the folk literature of the Aramaic-speaking Jews, see Sabar (1982) and other publications by this author.

The Verbal System of Jewish Dohok
In addition to their cultural value, the following folktales also attest to the complexity of the verbal system. The verbal system of Jewish Dohok, as is the case with that of other NENA dialects, can convey nuanced meanings of tense, aspect and mood, and enliven and structure the narrative, e�g�, draw attention to noteworthy situations, divide story units (cf. Coghill 2009;Khan 2009). Some noteworthy forms found in the stories are used as the starting point of the grammatical survey. Reference will also be made to 'the corpus'. This is a body of Jewish Dohok texts consisting of orally-delivered personal narratives, folktales and descriptions of customs that I have collected from five different speakers. Methodologically, this study draws from the notions of Function Grammar (Dik 1997), which maintains that the meaning of a given verbal form is context-dependent, in that it emerges from the interaction of the form with the other arguments in the context. The relevant context may be the clause or the broader discourse. In some cases a form conveys a general meaning, but the specific meaning arises from the contextual usage of the verbal form. In such cases, the verbal form is said to be 'unmarked' for the specific contextual meaning (Comrie 1976, 111-12). For example, while the future is most often 'perfective' (that is, the clause does not focus on the internal temporal composition of the situation such as its iteration or temporal duration), in Jewish Dohok, there is only one form for the expression of futurity. This means that the prototypically-future verbal form itself is aspectually unmarked and the specific aspect of the verb depends on contextual usage. A similar question of interaction between different factors contributing to 'meaning' applies to lexical semantics: sometimes-though not always-grammatical meaning interacts with lexical meaning (Comrie 1976, 41-51), suggesting that lexical meaning may also be a relevant factor in the semantics of verbs. 4 The following overview of the verbal system will aid the reader in following the stories and the grammatical survey. Jewish Dohok has four inflectional bases: šaqəl, šqəl, šqul and šqil� 5 The šaqəl form is semantically the most versatile one� Its grammatical meaning is determined by a verbal prefix or its absence. In addition to these bases, the infinitive form šqala is also used in some constructions.
The table below presents the inventory of verbal forms, their prototypical grammatical functions and the glosses used to mark them in this paper. A category is left blank if the form is considered unmarked for that feature (i.e. it may express different values of this feature). In light of the aforementioned versatility of šaqəl, I have adopted a glossing system in which only the meaning-specifying verbal affixes-and not the inflectional base itself-are tagged. 6 The base itself is glossed only with the lexical meaning of the verb. *This applies to Patterns II, III and IV (whose traditional names in Semitic philology are, respectively, 'stems II and III' and 'the quadriliteral stem'). In these forms, whic realis h always begin with m, the future prefix b-/p-has been lost after being assimilated to the following m, e.g.: *b-mašxən-Ø (fut-warm_up-he) 'he will warm up' > *m-mašxən > mašxən� This has led to their merger with the šaqəl forms, i.e.: Ømašxən-Ø (irr-warm_up-he) 'he may warm up'. In order to indicate this morphological ambiguity, all Pattern II, III and IV šaqəl forms and those that may have been underlyingly p-šaqəl are glossed as irr/fut� **The alternative to šqəlle, used with object suffixes.

Transcription and Translation Conventions
As the overview of the verbal system will have made apparent, the complexity of the meanings of verbal forms cannot be fully captured by a glossing system. The glosses that are used here, therefore, are conventional. The table above may be consulted for a more nuanced characterisation of the forms. As for the transcription, a minimalist system is used. This assumes a phonetically predictable opposition of long vowels (open, unaccented syllables) and of short ones (elsewhere). Consequently, vowel length or shortness is only indicated when not predictable from this rule. One of the exceptions to this are monosyllabic words with a with an open syllable (the most common of which are xa 'one, a certain', la 'no' and verbal negator, ma 'what' ta 'for (+noun)'), which are always short. Being lexically predictable, shortness in these words is not marked� Monosyllabic prepositions and conjunctions (that is, with the exception of monophonemic ones) are transcribed as separate words� In the vast majority of cases, however, they do not carry nucleus stress, and lexical stress in them is inaudible.
Typically, only nucleus stress is marked ( ̀) , and the end of an intonation unit is indicated by the symbol 'ˈ'. Sometimes, however, a single intonation unit apparently has two nucleus stresses, both of which are indicated� Lexical stress is only indicated when it is not penultimate (in morphologically complex verbal forms, this typically has implications for vowel length, which is also marked).
The symbols '-' and '=' are employed in the transcription. '=' is used for enclitics. In Jewish Dohok, the only certain (i�e� phonetically verifiable) type of clitic is the present copula, so this sign is used only in those cases. The symbol '-' is used for certain units that are morphologically complex, but prosodically are one word� This is done to make the reading more transparent� Foreign words and phrases which reflect spontaneous codeswitching, rather than being loans, are marked with superscript 'H', 'A' and 'K'. These indicate, respectively, Modern Hebrew, Arabic or Bahdini Kurdish as the source. In these words, phonological detail, i�e� vowel length and lexical stress, is not indicated. Morphologically unintegrated loanwords are not parsed� The recordings of the two stories are available online at https://nena.ames.cam.ac.uk/�

Text 1: A Man is a Wolf to a Wolf
There was a household who used to live on… 2� bab-ət beθa d-Ø-ʿāyǝš-Ø-wa mǝn ṣìw-e.ˈ father-gen house rel-irr-live-he-pst from wood-pl …a father of a household who used to make his living by woodcutting. 7 3� g-ezǝl-Ø-wa go ṭùra,ˈ q-qāṭe-Ø-wa ṣìw-e.ˈ hab-go-he-pst in mountain, hab-cut-he-pst wood-pl He used to go to the mountain and cut wood.
When he came, they would eat and live on this, from the selling of the wood� 11� xa yoma zǝl-le l-ṭùra,ˈ b-qaṭe-Ø ṣìw-e,ˈ 8 Note that the modal word is gǝbǝn is followed by a realis form, though irrealis forms are standard in such contexts. These two verbs are therefore not a single construction but are separated by a hesitation. This is indicated in the translation. Indeed, it is the only attestation of such a sequence of verbs (modal verb + realis verb) in my corpus. The informant himself rejected other such constructions during an interview. 9 The activity 'woodcutting' in the construction gʿešǝn bǝt qaṭʾǝn ṣìwe in the sentence above is expressed by a finite form (literally 'I live by that I cut wood'), rather than by the infinitive qṭaʾa 'cutting'. The infinitive is expected here, and is in fact attested after the verb ʿ-y-š 'to make a living' in sentences 9-10 above: gʿešiwa (…) mǝn mzabonǝt ṣìwe� He replied 'Every day, I will give you one golden coin. in-mountain but wolf=cop.prs.he� 'Indeed, I met a friend on the mountain, but he is a wolf.

ʾu-g-ewəð-Ø ṣìw-eˈ
and-hab-make-he wood-pl So every day, he goes to the mountain, cuts wood Let's host him, invite him for a feast at our house.

35� ʾu-A Ø-mstaʿən-Ø A go beθa kəs-lan
and-irr/fut-help_oneself-he in house-ms by-us ʾu-Ø-doq-ax qàðr-e.ˈ and-irr-hold-we banquet-pl he will enjoy himself at our house, and we will feast together�' He says to her 'Leave him alone� He's a wolf� He's an animal� what fut-come-he in man-pl? man-pl fut-fear-they What does it mean "He will come among people"? People will be afraid.
A wolf that enters the city will alarm them�' Our house is on the outskirts of town.
He will come straight to our house and go back. No one will see him�'

some-banquet good�
So he told the wolf 'My wife will make for you a great banquet.' 12 Note that it is the feminine singular subject suffix that is used nonreferentially for the impersonal construction pəšla drangi (pfv.stay-she late 'it got late'). Indeed, the non-referential use of a feminine singular subject affix is common in NENA. Moreover, a feminine non-referential object morpheme is also attested in many NENA dialects, for instance: ʾărəq-a-le (pfv.run-her-he 'he fled'). For non-referential object affixes and likely contact dimension with Kurdish, see Mengozzi (2007

Survey of Selected Functions of Verbal Forms
In this section I present a commentary on the grammatical meanings of selected verbal forms (mostly of those attested in the texts above). As remarked, the goal of this section is to highlight some of the more distinctive features of Jewish Dohok in the context of NENA, and to draw attention to certain nonprototypical, creative applications of verbal forms that are intended to create particular discourse effects.

Expression of Realis Mood through šaqəl-wa
The šaqəl form typically expresses irrealis present and future, while its past counterpart šaqəl-wa is prototypically past irrealis� In addition, however, šaqəl-wa also sometimes occurs in sentences conveying realis mood. The prototypical realis counterparts of šaqəl and šaqəl-wa have the habitual indicative prefix k-, thus k-šaqəl (present) and k-šaqəl-wa (past). 22 22 Overview of the use and origin of the habitualindicative prefix across the NENA dialects can be found in Khan (2007) and in Rubin (2018, As the previous paragraph implies, there is an asymmetry between the verbal forms: the k-prefix is omitted in forms conveying realis mood in the past, but in the present, such omission of the prefix is virtually unattested in the corpus. 23 In the texts presented above, šaqəl-wa occurs in clauses that can be identified as subordinate relative clauses (though asyndetic), as well as 'He would bring them [and] place them on his donkey…' 57:130-39), who presents some alternative reconstuctions. 23 For the past tense, a sample of the corpus (about 4000 words) was studied, and the ratio between k-šaqəl-wa and šaqəl-wa in Pattern I verbs in clauses interpreted as realis was found to be 11:1, though this ratio could be slightly different if the whole corpus were taken into account. 24 The first number refers to the text (first or second), the second indicates the line within that text� If the absence of the habitual indicative prefix is a matter of phonetic elision, this elision is highly irregular (i.e. it is not restricted to a single phonetic environment). A more likely explanation for its absence, therefore, is linked to the original semantics of the kprefix and to its process of diachronic grammaticalisation� Namely, the k-prefix (and its dialectal variants) most likely originated as a progressive or presentative marker (Khan 2007, 94), which was added to the base šaqəl, the latter subsequently becoming restricted to irrealis mood. The progressive and presentative functions are bound especially closely with the (actual) present, since they are typically used to draw attention to situations overlapping with speech time. This, in turn, suggests that the habitual indicative prefix in NENA originated in the present tense (ibid), and only later began its spread into habituality and the past tense. In light of this, it is likely that in Jewish Dohok, the k-prefix has not been fully grammaticalised as a marker of realis and habituality. Specifically, it does not always occur in contexts that are not directly associated with the original function of this morpheme, viz. present tense presentative or progressive. This hypothesis would explain the lack of obligatoriness of k-in the case of the past� Partial grammaticalisation can also be postulated for other dialects� C� Barwar, for instance, has the realis prefix ʾi-� According to Khan, however, ʾi-qaṭəl and ʾi-qaṭəl-wa-in contrast to qaṭəl and qaṭəl-wa-are used to indicate 'discourse prominence'. In other words, ʾi-qaṭəl and ʾi-qaṭəl-wa forms are apparently restricted to clauses conveying a high degree of pragmatic assertiveness (Khan 2008, 590-91). The domain of assertiveness (presenting a situation as new to the listener; Cristofaro 2003, 29-33) is itself likely to be related to the actual present, which draws attention to a situation in the present that is typically assumed by the speaker to be new or surprising for the hearer. Thus, the original domain of the realis prefix is not only the actual present, but also pragmatic assertion. The synchronic distribution of the ʾi-prefix in Barwar may still reflect this origin.

Expression of Emphatic Negative Imperative through la k-šaqəl (prototypically realis)
The negative form la k-šaqəl is used more broadly than its affirmative kšaqəl counterpart, which conveys realis present� The form la kšaqəl negates not only the present, but also the future, which, in the affirmative, is expressed by p-šaqəl� Modally, these future forms convey the sense of 'near-realis'. That is, it conveys the higher-certainty, predictive type of epistemic future. 25 This prototypical function notwithstanding, la k-šaqəl can also sometimes be used for an emphatic negative imperative. Prototypically, the negative imperative is expressed by the irrealis la šaqəl, e�g� la Ø-aθ-ət (neg irr-come-you MS ) 'do not come'. 26 One such case is attested in the texts (1/87, see below), and a few parallel examples are found elsewhere in my corpus: 1/87 là-k-eθ-ət (neg hab-come-you MS ) ʾarbi yoma xeta ʾaxxa.ˈ 'You will not be coming here for another forty days.' H ʾaz H g-əmri là-k-eθ-etu (neg hab-come-you PL ) mən dəšdaša,ˈ lazəm zonetu pantaròne.ˈ 'So they say you won't be coming [wearing] a thawb, you have to buy trousers.' Given that la k-šaqəl is typically used for predictive, 'near-realis' future, its use for a negative command is likely to be intended to have precisely that effect: it serves to present the event as almost certain. In other words, the command is so emphatic that it must certainly be obeyed. Its fulfilment may, therefore, be expressed as 25 See Akatsuka (1985) on epistemic modality as a scale� 26 For a discussion on different morphological expression of the imperative and for their various pragmatic functions in NENA, see Khan (2010, 65-70) and Hoberman (1989, 136). if it is certain by using the predictive form. Such an interpretation fits the context of sentence 1/18, in which the wolf threatens to eat the man if he-despite the prohibition-comes again. The second sentence above is a command of a school official to his pupils, so it was uttered from a position of authority. This function of la k-šaqəl also occurs in other NENA dialects. For example, native speakers of the Christian Shaqlawa dialect describe the difference between an imperative conveyed by the predictive form (corresponding to the Jewish Dohok la kšaqəl) and with the irrealis form (corresponding to la šaqəl) in the following way: 'the former means that there can be no discussion whether the command will or will not be obeyed, so it sounds much more authoritative.' 27

Expression of the Resultative and of the Continuous Aspect (in Stative Verbs)
The resultative construction in Jewish Dohok is composed of the copula (in the 3 rd person present, the deictic copula must be used) with the resultative participle šqila, inflected for gender and number of the subject. This is illustrated by the following constructions from the texts: In such constructions, the focus of the predication is on the persisting state that follows an event, rather than on the event itself. Such usage is confirmed by other constructions from my corpus. 28 This, in turn, indicates that the copula + šqila construction in Jewish Dohok is best understood as a resultative rather than a full perfect� 29 In this dialect, it is largely used only with verbs that have a clear state following the activity-typically, stative verbs (e.g. the state of sitting following the event of sitting down). This type of usage is attested in the sentence 2/57 above (flan welu ʾəθye), where the focus is on the result of arriving. We can paraphrase: 'Some men are here.' The only transitive verbs that can occur in the resultative construction in Jewish Dohok are possessive transitives, such as in 2/85 (sawoyox wele šqila mən sawoyi pare). 30 In transitive verbs such as šqila, the focus of the predication is on the subsequent state of having in one's possession. We can thus paraphrase: 'my grandfather had a loan�' 28 I am indebted to Paul Noorlander for drawing my attention to this, and for helping me test various verbs in the resultative construction during fieldwork in Jerusalem in September 2019. 29 For the distinction between the two, see (Nedjalkov 2001, 928-30). For the semantic scope of the copula + šqila construction in other NENA dialects, see, for instance, Khan (2008, 653-58). For a historical overview of these constructions, see Noorlander (2018, 328-31). 30 This construction is apparently past. Formally, the word wele can be parsed either as pfv.be-he (root hwy), which is one of the past copulas, or deix.cop.he, that is, the present deictic copula. Contextually, the former interpretation is more likely-if the grandfather was still alive, the king could easily check the truthfulness of the Jew's claim.
In the case of stative verbs, the resultative function overlaps semantically with the continuous aspect, which also refers to a state that is ongoing at the time of reference and had begun at some point in the past� 31 When asked to produce a sentence that includes a stative verb with continuous meaning (though typically not a verb of cognition, emotion or sensation), speakers commonly use the copula + šqila construction, for example: 'That man who is standing (/has stopped) by the house is my brother.' By contrast, in other dialects, the copula + šqila construction has become a full perfect� This is the case in Christian Barwar, where copula + šqila can be used with the verb 'to kill' (Khan 2008, 735), there being no direct effect or state of agent resulting from the act of killing. Such perfects express a more abstract situation resulting from a previous event. The construction still does not express a specific event bound to a specific point in time, but rather the event is only an implicature. There is, however, another use of the copula + šqila construction in C. Barwar (as well as in the dialects that come originally from the Ṭyare region), which expresses a specific past event in narrative� This is a past perfective, though the event is presented as cognitively distant (typically in fictitious folktales). In this function, the ordinary ('enclitic') copula is used, rather than the deictic one (Khan 2008, 669). 32 31 A similar situation is attested in languages such as Chinese or Japanese (Shirai 1998). 32 This usage, though genre-restricted, is arguably typologically the most advanced one, based on the model of diachronic change proposed by Bybee : stative > resultative > perfect > preterite (Bybee, Perkins Revere, and Pagliuca 1994, 81-82).

Expression of the Continuous Aspect
The texts presented above include no cases of verbal forms that are exclusively dedicated to the marking of continuousness. 33 Indeed, in the corpus as a whole, there are very few such forms, even though there are multiple cases of k-šaqəl which-contextuallyclearly describe predications of a continuous nature. In NENA dialects in general, there are two main constructions for the expression of the continuous aspect� These also commonly include the progressive function. The first-and more common one-is formed by a copula and b-Infinitive (in Jewish Dohok, wele bə-šqala), which in dialects such as Christian Urmi has been reanalysed as its own inflectional stem (Khan 2016, 185). In the second construction, a copula or a presentative particle is combined with the prototypically realis present form (in Jewish Dohok, wal/hol/hole k-šaqəl). In many NENA dialects, these constructions are widespread. In the more typologically advanced dialects such as Christian Urmi, Jewish Arbel and Christian Qaraqosh, the (originally) continuous construction has even been extended into non-progressive domains (e.g. habitual present or even perfective past in the narrative) (e.g., Christian Urmi- Khan 2016, vol.2, 185-200). 34 In Jewish Dohok, however, as mentioned above, the continuous constructions are extremely rare in the corpus. This feature, as well as the restricted function and use of the resultative construction, points to the conservative character of Jewish Dohok, even in relation to the other Lišana Deni dialects� 33 Following Comrie, 'continuous' is used here to describe a state or event which is ongoing at the point of reference (Comrie 1976, 25). A continuous construction can, therefore, be used with both stative and dynamic verbs. By contrast, the term 'progressive' implies a progress, which is compatible only with dynamic verbs. The term 'continuous' is preferable here, even though many NENA grammars use the term 'progressive', since the constructions discussed here can be used in Jewish Dohok-as well as in other NENA dialects-also with stative verbs . 34 On a general discussion on the continuous (in Khan, 'progressive') constructions in NENA, see Khan (2007, 95-97).
Another noteworthy feature of Jewish Dohok is that it possesses both of the continuous constructions. These two constructions, moreover,-judging from the available data-have distinct functions.

Wele bə-šqala
This construction is only attested twice in the corpus. In both of those cases, it describes a bodily state that is not of a cognitive, emotional or sensory nature. Sentence 3f/36 below describes a state that is ongoing in the time between the Jew's visits to the king� mà d-g-məθele dərmaneˈ ʾu-mà d-g-oðiˈ l-èwe bə-traṣa (neg-cop� prs.he in-healing).ˈ (3f) 'Whatever medicine they bring and whatever they do, he is not getting better.' zəlle H misken H ʾo huðaya l-bèθa,ˈ l-ewe bə-dmàxa (neg-cop�prs�he in-sleeping)ˈ mən zdòʾŏθe.ˈ (3f) 'The poor Jew went home, he is not sleeping for his fear�' With other verbs, wele bə-šqala could not be elicited from most speakers� 35 This suggests that in Jewish Dohok wele bə-šqala is-in contrast to other dialects-precisely not a progressive construction. Rather, it conveys the non-dynamic continuous aspect, but even in this function it is highly restricted, being attested only with physical states� In many NENA dialects, by contrast, the parallel construction with a copula + b-Infinitive expresses the progressive function. A situation similar to that in Jewish Dohok, however, is attested in early-NENA sources, suggesting that the situation in Jewish Dohok is a conservative one. Such early-NENA evidence is supplied by the early Christian (apparently archaising) NENA poetry from north-western Iraq (Telkepe and Alqosh), dating to the 17 th -19 th centuries (Mengozzi 2012). In these texts, (copula +) b-Infinitive is very rare, and functions as a 'circumstantial modifier or a complement of the predicate, whereas it rarely occurs in combination with the copula' (Mengozzi 2012, 34, citing Poizat 1999. Similarly, in Jewish Dohok, wele bə-šqala is only attested with states� In this dialect, however, those states are predicative (i.e. they contain a copula). Thus, in contrast to the early-NENA poetry, they are not necessarily presented as overlapping temporarily with the predicate of the clause, on which they are syntactically dependent� Rather, they may simply overlap with a given period of time specified by the broader context. Moreover, it remains to be seen how the continuous/progressive in NENA fits with the typical grammaticalisation paths of the progressive� Cross-linguistically, progressive constructions typically involve dynamic verbs, and-according to Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca (1994, 133)-often develop from (metaphorically) locative constructions.

Wəl/hol/hole k-šaqəl
In contrast to wele bə-šqala, wəl/hol/hole k-šaqəl is only attested with dynamic verbs in the corpus (five times in total). 36 The first element of these constructions is a presentative particle wəl or hol, or hole (i�e� apparently a fossilised 3ms form). Consider the following examples from the corpus: θela mən tàma,ˈ ʾay baxta H miskèna H ˈ hole g-baxš-a-lu (prog habstir-she-them) ṭlòxe.ˈ (3h) She came from there, that H poor H woman, and [now] look, she is stirring the lentils� g-yāʾəl-wa go màṭbaxˈ k-xāpəq-wa-la g-nāšəq-wa-la.ˈ b-amrá-wā-le d-prùq-li. ʾana wəl gə-mbàšlan (prog hab-cook-I),ˈ ʾatta gəbe ʾoðan ʾixàla.ˈ 'He used to enter the kitchen, hug her, kiss her. [But] she would tell him 'Leave me'� Look, I am cooking, I need to make food now�' It is the presentative elements-wəl, hole or hol-that convey the continuous aspect� Presentative particles typically draw attention to an event that can be witnessed by the hearer. This, in turn, often has the purpose of highlighting the significance of the event� In narrative, therefore, presentatives have the effect of placing the listener in the midst of the unfolding events, as if he or she were witnessing them personally� 37 This, in turn, means that such presentative forms are likely to be used for situations that are happening in the here-and-now, and are, therefore, aspectually continuous. Still, in light of the rarity of these constructions in Jewish Dohok, it is highly unlikely that the presentative particles in constructions combined with k-šaqəl have been fully grammaticalised as continuous markers. Instead, these particles probably perform a discourse function (drawing attention to significant events happening in the here-and-now), which happens to overlap with a grammatical function (marking continuousness).

Conclusions
This paper has presented two folktales from the hitherto unstudied NENA dialect of the Jews of Dohok accompanied by linguistic glosses (for a part of text), translation and comments on a few noteworthy constructions. These stories exemplify the rich and long-standing genre of orally transmitted folktales, typical for many of the NENA-speaking communities.
These stories were followed by a brief grammatical study of a few aspects of verbal semantics, focusing primarily on features attested in the texts themselves� I concentrated especially on forms and functions that are noteworthy either from the point of view of Jewish Dohok itself, or from the perspective of NENA more broadly. I showed that the prototypically realis and predictive la k-šaqəl can be used for deontic modality (imperative), apparently to create a stronger imperative by presenting it as predictive ('near-realis'). I also showed that the prototypically past irrealis šaqəl-wa can be used for the realis past. I suggested that this is due to the incomplete grammaticalisation of the kindicative habitual prefix, which is likely to have originated as a presentative-progressive marker in the present and is not yet obligatory in the past. In addition, I studied the construction copula+šqila (resultative participle), noting that it tends to be used only with stative and possessive transitive verbs. In light of this restriction, it should be analysed as a resultative and not as a fully-developed perfect, in contrast to many other dialects� Additionally, I showed that forms dedicated exclusively to the marking of continuousness are used only marginally. Moreover, one of them is apparently reserved for stative verbs. This is apparently a conservative feature in Jewish Dohok; which distinguishes this dialect even from the closely related dialects, such as Jewish Amedia or Jewish Zakho�