Can pattern replication be easily established? The case of the Neo-Aramaic Neo-Construct

Abstract : NorthEastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) dialects innovated a head-marking attributive (a.k.a. genitive) construction, functionally similar to the old Semitic construct state but morphologically marked by a suffix. It has been argued that this pattern emerged as a replication of the co-territorial Kurdish Kurmanji dialects' Ezafe construction. In the paper we present this theory, alongside some difficulties due to various structural mismatches between the Kurmanji and NENA constructions. While Kurmanji influence cannot be excluded, we conclude that the Neo-Construct construction as a whole more likely arose from a universal tendency to encliticization associated with areal preference for head-marking.