Copyright
Paul M. NoorlanderPublished On
2026-01-07Page Range
pp. 149–198Language
- English
Print Length
50 pages
3. Passivisation in Northeastern Neo-Aramaic
Chapter of: Passivisation in Semitic, Iranian, Armenian, and Beyond(pp. 149–198)
This chapter provides an overview of the valency reducing devices in Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) dialects, spoken by Jewish and Christian communities of southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq and western Iran. This study highlights the loss of historical voice morphology and the emergence of innovative passive-like constructions. It discusses the extension of inchoative constructions to the passive, the use of auxiliaries (become, be, come), and the influence of neighbouring Iranian languages on passive constructions and valency alternations, particularly in the patient orientation of the infinitive and the use of complex predicates (also known as light verb constructions). The chapter also discusses ergative-like patterns and agentless constructions, offering insights into the typological and areal dimensions of NENA agentless verbal forms and the oblique case-marking of agents.
Contributors
Paul M. Noorlander
(author)Research Associate in Hebrew and Aramaic Studies at University of Cambridge
(PhD, Leiden University, 2018) is a Research Associate in Hebrew and Aramaic Studies at the University of Cambridge and Lecturer in Hebrew and Aramaic at Leiden University. He has published widely on Semitic languages, both ancient and modern. His main research concerns the typology of endangered Neo-Aramaic dialects from an areal-diachronic perspective. He is a laureate of a Rubicon Fellowship awarded by the Dutch Research Council and is the author of Ergativity and Other Alignment Types in Neo-Aramaic: Investigating Morphosyntactic Microvariation (Leiden: Brill, 2021).