Masoud Mohammadirad

This book is a comprehensive grammatical description of the Hewramî variety of Tekht, grounded in current linguistic methods. Hewramî is one of the most morphologically complex West Iranian languages. It is spoken by several thousand people in the high mountainous Hewraman region situated between Iranian and Iraqi Kurdistan. This work is primarily based on a corpus of 46 narratives, collected during several trips to the Hewraman region between 2016 and 2023. This corpus was supplemented by elicitation tasks to provide a detailed account of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Hewramî. Additionally, the grammar touches on prosody and information structure. The analysis is grounded in linguistic theory, particularly informed by the functional-typological approach. This grammar is complemented by a text collection available via https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/531.

A grammar of Hewramî

Geoffrey Khan

Paul M. Noorlander

Dorota Molin

This comparative anthology showcases the rich and mutually intertwined folklore of three ethno-religious communities from northern Iraq: Aramaic-speaking (‘Syriac’) Christians, Kurdish Muslims and—to a lesser extent—Aramaic-speaking Jews. The first volume contains several introductory chapters on language, folkore motifs and narrative style, followed by samples of glossed texts in each language variety. The second volume is the anthology proper, presenting folklore narratives in several distinct varieties of North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic and Northern and Central Kurdish. The stories are accompanied by English translations. The material includes different genres such as folktales, legends, fables and anecdotes, and is organised into seven thematic units. The folkloristic material of these three communities is shared to a large extent. The anthology is, therefore, a testament to the intimate and long-standing relations between these three ethno-religious communities—relations that existed in a multilingual environment centuries before the modern era of nationalism.

Masoud Mohammadirad

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