Grammatical Constraints on the Borrowing of Nouns and Verbs in Urdu and English

Abstract

The present study aims at establishing grammatical constraints on the borrowing of nouns (Ns) and verbs (Vs) in Urdu and English by adopting Noam Chomsky's Methodological Naturalism within the field of generative grammar as the theoretical framework of the study. For this purpose, the corpus of Pure Urdu and Pure English sentences from textbooks and the Oxford Dictionary of English was used in this study. The data were analyzed in the light of Minimalist Program, and the findings of the study reveal that there are certain grammatical constraints on the borrowing of Vs in Urdu from Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, and Hindi as compared with English. It is observed that whenever Urdu borrows Vs from other languages such as Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit, it adds its little v with the fossil form of borrowed verbs in order to retain the grammaticality of the sentence while in English Vs borrowed from Latin, old English is said to be used in their fossil form and can be used with the inflection of the English and has no effect on the grammaticality of the sentence. The reason observed is the drop v phenomenon. Urdu does not drop its little v due to which whenever it borrows Vs it adds its little v along with root form of borrowed Vs otherwise the resulting structure is considered as ungrammatical. If we talk about the borrowed Ns, there are no grammatical constraints on their borrowing because they can inflect with inflectional morphology of Urdu and English language.

Grammatical and Syntactical Functions of Auxiliaries in English and Urdu

“…On the basis of their findings, Ehsan and Butt (2020) argued that Urdu auxiliary Hona only determines the tense-aspect in the sentence. Similarly, other researchers (Homer & Bhatt, 2020;Ehsan & Butt, 2020;Sharif, 2020;Ozarkar, 2020) suggest that light Vs that enjoy the status of auxiliaries in Urdu such as karna and Hona not only determine the tense but also determine the person and gender as well (Maqsood et al, 2019).…”

“…As regards Urdu, many researchers and linguists agree that kerna and Hona are the verbs that inflect for person, gender, number, and tense (Butt & Ramchand, 2001;Maqsood et al, 2019). Butt and Ramchand (2001) in their work have explained the Urdu auxiliary Hona regarding tense formation.…”

Clausal-Internal Switching in Urdu-English: An Evaluation of the Matrix Language Frame Model

“…Ali, Jabbar & Kiani (2021) postulated that the Uniformity of Clausal internal layer is controlled by phase heads C and v as both is the phase heads within Phase Theory (Chomsky, 2021). Maqsood et al (2019) claimed light verb only constrains verbal borrowing under the theoretical tent of the Minimalist Program (1995). She also claimed that nominal borrowing is irrestrictive of any external constraints.…”

“…Many researchers formulated their assumptions and stipulations in various frameworks and language pairs. However, the researchers, i.e., Al-Bataineh & Abdelhady, 2019;Ali, Jabbar & Malik, 2020;Aslam, Saleem, & Afridi, 2021;Balam, Parafita Couto, & Stadthagen-González, 2020;González-Vilbazo & López, 2011, 2012Khan & Khalid, 2018;Macswan, 2005a;MacSwan, 2019;Malik, 2017;Maqsood, Saleem, Aziz, & Azam, 2019;Shim, 2016;Van Gelderen & MacSwan, 2008;Zahra et al, 2021, agreed on one core dictum that no additional mechanism that is external to human cognition is a -CS-specific Constraint. However, empirically, all support such external mechanisms on their respective models except Malik (2017) and Ali, Jabbar & Malik (2020), and they have empathetically and vehemently claimed that no additional toolkit[s] is necessary to account for CS data except two halve of discrete lexicon [s].…”

Clausal-Internal Scrambling in Urdu Language: A Derivation by Phases

“…However, sometimes it did not need any overt movement. Instead, moved elements remained in-situ dislocate (Maqsood et al, 2019). Thus, languages vary concerning formal features and their association.…”