Ergativity and Other Alignment Types in Neo-Aramaic

Abstract

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the cc by-nc-nd 4.0 license. chapter 1 1.2.1Above the Tigris: Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (nena) Dialect Bundle With about 150 dialects (Khan 2011), Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (nena) is by far the largest subgroup. Although the internal differentiation of nena is to some extent comparable to that of a language family and many dialects are not mutually intelligible, it is a common practice to speak of nena in terms of dialects. nena constitutes a notoriously complex dialect continuum, which itself is part of a larger continuum that also includes Neo-Aramaic dialects in Ṭur ʿAbdin (see §1.2.2). These dialects are spoken by Jewish (J.) and Christian (C.) communities in West and Northwest Iran (Iranian Kurdistan and Iranian Azerbaijan), North Iraq (Dohuk, Arbel, Sulaymaniyyah) north of the river Tigris and in Southeast Turkey (Hakkari, Van, Bohtan), many of whom have fled the area in the previous century. They are primarily named after the town where they are or used to be spoken with the additional specification of the religious affiliations of the speakers, since the dialects of the Jewish and Christian communities from the same town could differ greatly. Map 1 below displays the locations of several towns known to have (had) nena-speaking communities at least in the previous century, whose dialects will be discussed in this monograph. The names of the towns are generally Aramaic and do not necessarily reflect their equivalents in other regional languages.3 The Christian varieties in Bohtan (Southeast Turkey) and the Jewish varieties east of the Greater Zab river (Northeast Iraq and Northwest Iran) reveal particularly complex alignment types not found in the core nena area.After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the emergence of new nations such as Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey and the beginning of the Kurdish struggle for autonomy, the Aramaic speakers found themselves largely in the cross-fire between Kurds and central governments and left their traditional territory. Most of the Jewish community left the region in the 1950s and settled in the young state of Israel. During the First World War most Christians fled present-day Turkey, where an ethnic cleansing occurred in 1915. Since the 1960s the exodus of the Christian community began, taking refuge in Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and South America. Following the American invasion and occupation of Iraq, the instability in the area reached a catastrophic climax in the turmoil of the Syrian Civil War and Islamic State's (Daesh's) reign of terror in Syria and Iraq, until Islamic State was ultimately defeated in the battles of Mosul (July, 2017) and Raqqa (October, 2017). Many Christians chose to return and remain in Iraq, although the material damage alone is enormous.Thus, due to ongoing displacement in the Middle East and beyond, the dialectology of nena is for a large part a historical reconstruction of the once vibrant tapestry of variation before 1915.