Atefeh Shahbazi

RTG PhD student associate, member since 2022

Project "Non-active voices in Farsi, Kurdish and Baxtiari"

My research project concentrates on exploring non-active voice in three Iranian languages: Baxtiari, Kurdish, and Farsi. Non-active voice structures refer to a group of remarkably similar constructions that prevent external arguments from surfacing syntactically. These structures include anticausatives, dispositional middles, reflexives, mediopassives and passives, which involve events without a specific external agent. The main objective of my research is to determine whether there is a connection between the presence or absence of particular interpretations and the use of analytic or synthetic morphology. To achieve this, I challenge the notion that VoiceP is a spell-out domain. Through in-depth analysis, I seek to demonstrate that the choice between analytic and synthetic morphology does not dictate the interpretation of these structures. By challenging conventional assumptions and exploring theoretical frameworks, my research tries to shed light on the underlying mechanisms governing non-active voice constructions and contribute to a deeper understanding of the nature of voice phenomena in these languages.

Background information

Education: M.A. in general linguistics, Tehran University, Tehran, Iran.

Research interests: argument structure, Agreement, Ezafe construction, Nominalization, Negation, copula.