Corpus and Experimental Analysis of Passive Structures in Garrusi Kurdish

In this study, we investigate the formation of passive structures in Garrusi Kurdish across two datasets: experimental and narrative free speech. For our data collection, we interviewed 30 native speakers of this language variety, located in Mehraban District in Hamadan Province, Iran. For our methodology, we conducted an image-description task and a story-narration task. In the first controlled task, the speakers were asked to describe 20 event-oriented pictures prompted by questions relating to the intended construction. In the free narrative task, the speakers were asked to renarrate the film “The Pear Story.” According to our observations, the choice of voice and the use of passive structures vary depending on the context. Our investigations show that passive is a context-oriented and contact-sensitive feature in Mehraban Garrusi Kurdish. In the controlled descriptive context, where the actor was intentionally ignored, the speakers tended to use passive verbal structures, specifically the prototypical form. However, in the free narrative context, where they were allowed to freely renarrate what they observed, they tended to express active predications in the presence of the animate actor, resorting to anticausative forms with patientive subjects affected by inanimate actors. We also found that the rare emergence of the non-prototypical passive suffix, the non-passivization of certain verbal forms, and the exceptional existence of agent phrases in passive diathesis were products of contact-induced change occurring in interaction with Chaharduli Kurdish, Shahsevan Turkic, and Standard Persian.