A typological study of motion event in Kurdish verbs

The present study aims to investigate the representation of motion events in Kalhori Kurdish (KK) using Talmy's Lexicalization Patterns Model (1985, 2000), with the goal of typologically analyzing how motion events are encoded in the language. This qualitative research involved the collection of 200 Kurdish motion verbs through unstructured interviews. The results indicate that KK employs nine distinct conflation patterns, with the two-component conflation patterns—motion + manner and motion + path—showing the highest frequencies, respectively. Additionally, the three-component pattern of motion + path + manner also exhibited a notable frequency, following the two-component patterns. Based on these findings, it can be concluded that KK utilizes both path-based and manner-based motion verbs. Furthermore, the higher frequency of the three-component pattern suggests that KK should be classified as a bipartite language.