REGULAR PLURAL FORMATION IN URDU: A MORPHOLOGICAL AND MORPHOSYNTACTIC ANALYSIS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63878/jalt1970Keywords:
Urdu, grammatical gender, morphological marking, plural formation, suffixation, syntactic agreement.Abstract
This study explores regular plural marking for Urdu nouns․ In Urdu‚ plural marking is achieved with the addition of the suffix markers -ے (ay)‚ -وں (on)‚ -یاں (yaan)‚ and -یں (ain)․ In this study regular plural marking of regular nouns and regular plural markers is assumed to be a grammatical number agreement trigger at the sentence level․ The patterns of regular nouns in the three relevant factors of the language are complex (gender‚ phonological structure‚ case)․ Fifteen regular nouns were chosen as examples to test root maintenance‚ suffixing‚ vowel variation‚ and gender alternations․ Data were collected from dictionaries and published texts. The results indicate that plural formation in Urdu is systematic and predictable, governed by established morphological patterns. However, the phonological environment may introduce variation: masculine nouns ending in ا form their direct plural with -ے (ay) and oblique plural with -وں (on), feminine nouns ending in ی take -یاں (yaan), and those ending in a consonant take -یں (ain). These plural markers encode number features that extend beyond the word level, triggering feature agreement on verbs and adjectives at the sentence level.
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