Homophonous -ya in Kurdish: Passive Marking, Imperfective Morphology, and Possible Verbal Origins

This research note examines the distribution of forms resembling -ya across different morphological environments in Kurdish, with particular attention to passive marking and imperfective morphology in Southern Kurdish. It investigates whether these formally similar forms represent distinct morphological elements or reflect historically related processes of grammaticalization. Possible verbal origins involving hatin (‘come’), hel-hatin, and forms associated with de-/e- and gih/geh are considered as comparative hypotheses rather than established etymologies. By distinguishing morphological function from formal resemblance, the note proposes an approach to Kurdish historical morphology grounded in internal variation and comparative analysis.