3
1
2022
1711615833137_3878
17-22
https://submissions.qlantic.com/index.php/qjssh/article/download/267/50
https://submissions.qlantic.com/index.php/qjssh/article/view/267
| Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 2022) |
|
|
| ||
Research Article |
|
| The Morphological Adaptation Process and Borrowing in Urdu Language |
Aasima Bibi 1 |
|
| To Cite: Bibi, A. (2022). The Morphological Adaptation Process and Borrowing in Urdu Language. Qlantic Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 3(I), 17-22. https://doi.org/10.55737/qjssh.766455337 |
| Abstract |
In Language is always subjected to changes and this dynamic process goes on. This process makes the languages more sophisticated and up to date. Language changes occur through many processes, word-formation processes are the key processes among them. Borrowing and word’s adaptation is the most common process through which languages evolve mostly in this global era as languages’ contact takes place widely. Borrowing is the process in which one language borrows words from another language and adapts those words in its vocabulary.The Urdu language is the national language of Pakistan, as it has come in contact with different languages, and it has a wide capacity to adapt many words and borrow them. It has a rich phonetic system so it can easily own borrowed words. This paper analyzes the process of borrowing and words adaption in the Urdu language. The research has been carried out qualitatively by using a descriptive-analytical approach.
| Key Words |
Morphological Adaptation, Borrowing, Urdu, Language
| Introduction |
Language evolution is a continuous process. It evolved in response to the demands of the situation and the passage of time. Languages borrow for a variety of reasons, including communication, status, and foreign interference. Borrowing happens when speakers of one language interact with speakers of another language (s). Borrowed words usually seem as close to the source terms as feasible while also adopting the receiving language's morphology. Borrowing, on the other hand, shows continual linguistic evolution that includes communication.
This paper focuses on the morphological adaptation and borrowing processes of the Urdu language. it shows how the process of borrowing has expanded the vocabulary of the Urdu language and how this process has influenced the Urdu language.
“Urdu is a mixture of Persian, Arabic and Turkish words formed with the intermingling of invading Muslim armies and local Hindi-speaking Hindus. It’s a Turkish word which means Army camp, hoard, etc.” Urdu is Pakistan's national language, and it is nearly identical to Hindi. Urdu's vocabulary differs from Hindi's in that it incorporates many Persian and Arabic words. Urdu is an oriental language with a few hundred years of history. Urdu is an Indo-European language. Many words from Persian and Arabic are used in Urdu. It is fundamental to Pakistan's culture and identity. Even today, the word Urdu is used in Turkish to refer to an army. Urdu was influenced by a variety of factors throughout its development. The Turkish courtiers dominated the Indian court during the twelfth century. As a result, the earlier form of Urdu was influenced by Turkish culture to some extent, but not to a large extent. Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Hindi, and Punjabi were among the languages that had a significant influence on Urdu. All of these languages were the most advanced at the time. Persian was the most impactful language on Urdu among them (Munawar, 2022).
The borrowing of vocabulary from other languages is an indication of a live and evolving language. One such language is Urdu. All Urdu speakers were not converted to Islam by incorporating Persian or Arabic terms in their language's corpus, and they are not currently converted to Christianity by including English words in their language's corpus. On the contrary, perhaps the Indian governing elite believes that if they use Arabic and Persian language, they will convert to Islam, thus they are consciously attempting to replace most of these phrases with Sanskrit ones. This approach may have sociopolitical benefits, but it will also have sociopolitical consequences (Sipra, 2013).
| Borrowing |
Language evolution is a continuous process. It evolved in response to the demands of the situation and the passage of time. Borrowing is a naturally occurring phenomenon when two or more languages come into touch. Borrowing from foreign languages is as ancient as human languages themselves- (Kachru, 1998). It has an impact on numerous languages throughout the world, including Urdu.
Borrowing is the process of transferring lexicons from one language to another without returning them. Loan words are employed to convey a speaker's status, attitude, and linguistic proficiency. "Borrowing refers to the incorporation of foreign features into a group's native language by speakers of that language," according to Thomson and Kaufman (1988).
According to Haugen (1952), linguistic borrowing analysis is the basic reference point for the study of borrowing. Borrowing, he explained, is the use of linguistic forms from two languages that are not combined randomly; rather, a speaker switches fast from one to the other, or switches just for a word, phrase, or sentence. "An attempt to reproduce patterns previously discovered in another language in a different language" (Haugen, 1952).
Borrowing occurs in different ways:
It might be a direct borrowing with minor changes, or it can be a direct borrowing with no changes to the source term
The second option is to act as a translator for a word that is already in use in the vernacular.
The third factor is the use of both native and foreign languages.
Urdu has borrowed vocabulary from a variety of languages, and it has been impacted by a variety of languages, including Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, which were introduced to India by traders, conquerors, and preachers. Turkish is the sole language that was only spoken by invaders or rulers, but Arabic was brought by traders and early conquerors and was only spoken in Sindh and southern Punjab today. Over the centuries, conquerors, merchants, and missionaries spoke Persian, the most important of the three languages (Munawar, 2022).
| Purpose of the Study |
This paper studies the process of borrowing in the Urdu language, it will show that the Urdu language has borrowed for how many languages. This study is going to trace the dynamic process of words adaptation and borrowing. This study will add both to Urdu and English linguistics, as it scans the process of borrowing in the Urdu language. It also seeks the morphological adaptation of borrowed words as well.
| Scope of the Study |
Borrowing is a word formation process which helps in the expansion of language’s vocabulary and reduces the linguistic gap between languages. Urdu language has also gone through borrowing process continuously and it’s still its borrowing. This paper analyses the borrowing process of Urdu language and will add its contribution to the existing literature of both English and Urdu language. The process of borrowing is highly needed to be analyzed to understand the linguistic attitude and change behavior, it indicates cultural influences and various linguistic parameters of a language.
| Research Statement and Research Questions |
This research focuses on the processes of borrowing and words adaptation in Urdu language. It tries to identify the most borrowed syntactic category of Urdu language and looks for its adaptation. Furthermore, this paper aims to answer the following research questions.
Which syntactic category, the Urdu language has widely borrowed from other languages?
What kind of morphological adaptations the borrowed word has gone through?
| Research Methodology |
This paper investigates the borrowing and word adaptation process of the Urdu language, the research has been carried out qualitatively by using a descriptive-analytical approach. The data and material have been collected from different relevant books, research articles, research papers, Newspapers articles and websites. The data collected from these different sources and bases on the analysis of that data conclusions have been drawn.
In the introductory part of the paper, the concept of borrowing has been explained, the literature review has listed the relevant existing literature. In the discussion section, the data from the previous sources have been analyzed and the the last section of the paper deals with results and conclusions.
| Literature Review |
This section reviews the previous work related to the process of adaptation and borrowing in Urdu, it gives an overview of both Urdu and English linguistic existing data. The process of borrowing and word adaption is the concern of morpho-syntax within linguistics. Morphology is the study of word and words formation while syntax is the study of sentence formation and its structure.
"The word grammar is morphology." It encompasses word form, construction, situation, word connections, and how new and complicated words are created." The goal of morphological analysis, based on these viewpoints, is to account for all current or possible lexical items. As a result, morphometric incorporation entails "reshaping the loan words morphology and phonology in the beneficiary language based on the recipient language's morphology and phonology.". (Audring & Masini, 2018)
Various studies reveal that for the expansion of vocabulary languages adds new words through coinage or borrowing or any other word-formation process. This process may be internal or external. Borrowing words is the adaption of words from external other languages, languages lend words for different reasons.
“Deficit hypothesis” claims that “Borrowing entails linguistics gaps in a language and the prime motivation for borrowing is to alleviate the linguistics deficit, especially in the lexical resources of a language”. This theory defines the linguistics deficit as the main reason for borrowing and states that the speakers fill the linguistic gap through borrowing. On the other hand “Dominance hypothesis” shows the flow direction of borrowing in natural language contact and states that “when two cultures come into contact, then the direction of culture learning and subsequent word-borrowing will lead from dominant to the subordinate.” (Dashti & Dashti, 2017)
Many authors have written about the borrowing process of Urdu languages from different aspects, like Syed Munawar in his article in The Dawn Newspaper titled” Language: Urdu and the borrowed words “ have listed the borrowed words in the Urdu language from different languages. The article is a major contribution to this study and is hence frequently cited and referenced in this paper (Munawar, 2022).
Another such study has been carried out by Dr Muhammad Aslam Sipra “A Linguistic Study of Borrowings from English to Urdu “. This study has given a thorough insight into the borrowing process especially from English to Urdu, the factors which caused this borrowing and the effect of the historical events on the process. It has separately listed the word exactly adopted and the words which are adapted (Sipra, 2013).
Although Urdu has borrowed thousands of words from different languages and different studies have pinpointed that, this research paper looks for the most borrowed category and adaptions made during its borrowing.
| Analysis and Discussion |
Urdu has borrowed many words from different languages, the source languages include Persian, Turkish, Arabic, English, and other languages. There are thousands of words that have been borrowed from different languages, different research has been carried out for the identification of borrowed words in Urdu from different languages.
Syed Munawar in his article in The Dawn Newspaper titled” Language: Urdu and the borrowed words “ has given statistical data of the borrowed words which could be summarized like, there are 2,608 words common in Turkish and Urdu among which only 24 words are purely Turkish, while the rest are taken from Persian, English, or Arabic language. Urdu has borrowed 1,546 pure Arabic words most of them are Quranic words, 485 words are pure Persian 110 words which are commonly used in Arabic and Persian. He has cited a list of borrowed words which is as under;
From Persian language “aab-o-hawa (weather), ambaar (heap), asoodah (well off), ashiyana (home/nest), arzoo (desire), arasta (decorated), badan (body), bahaar (spring season), bohran (crisis), buland (high), badter (worst), Beyzar (dejected), kahkasan (galaxy), kiswar (country), kutubkhana (library), madad (help), marasim (relations), masroor (ecstatic), mard (man), maakhana (pub), medaan (ground), murdar (dead),” and from Arabic language “bait (house), azeem (great), barq (thunder), jahil (illiterate), jannat (heaven), jamal (beauty), jaib (pocket), jehad (holy war), dakhil (interior), jurm (crime), dalil (proof), deen (religion), ambiya (prophets), ahim (important), fatwa(religious decree), atraf (sides), fashi (eloquent), ghafil (indolent), fikr (thought), khaber (news), hakim (ruler), haal (present), khalis (pure), khas (special), harb (war), hilal (crescent), khilaf (opposite), hudood (limits), and so on”. Turkish words are “Urdu ,Begum ,Baji , Yaldram, Jauq , Ghool , Yalghar ,Yurish ,Qadghan ,Quli ,Qanchi ,Qanat ,Ailchi, Ataleeq ,Anna,Tamgha ,Chaqmaq ,Tuzak , Qurq , Kaash ,Chugha ,Yaghi ,Chi ,Tughra “.
Dr Muhammad Aslam Sipra in his research paper “A Linguistic Study of Borrowings from English to Urdu” has listed the following words in the list of borrowed words from English to Urdu, “ambulance, antenna, art ,café’, radio, report, tank, computer, heater, motorcycle, dictionary, camera phone, cricket, government, refrigerator, air freshener, hanger, syllabus, photo, mobile, engine, editor vacuum cleaner, air conditioner, diaper, laptop, school, pencil’ glass, media , cycle , perfume, switch, report, college, pen, operation , world cup, television, programme, microphone, dryer, gas, bag, police, receiver, cell,”
The above sequence of words have been obtained from the above two cited article, they have enlisted them in the list of borrowed words, these words count 190 words. This data is randomly collected to include varieties. Urdu is a language with a greater linguistic capacity which adopt word belonging to any part of speech, however, this randomly taken data shows that Noun is the most borrowed syntactic category followed by adjectives and adverbs. Among the above 190 listed borrowed words almost 116 words belong to category and 20 among them belongs to the adjective category and the rest belongs to other different syntactic categories.
When these words are used in the Urdu language, most of them are used as they are, however mostly subjected to phonological adaption according to the articulation of native speakers. Mostly, their semantic content and the syntactic category remain the same.
| Results and Findings |
This paper studied the process of borrowing and words adaptation in the Urdu language. The sample data of borrowed words were taken from two articles. The total words in the sample were 190 words among which 116 counted nouns and 20 adjectives and the rest were belonging to other categories of words. Based on the analyzed data that Noun is the most borrowed category of words in the Urdu language followed by adjectives and adverbs.
These words are adopted with some phonetic variations and the syntactic and semantic characterization almost remain the same.
| Conclusion |
Language change is a dynamic process, which keeps the language alive and up to date. Languages expand their vocabulary through a morphological process called the word-formation process. Borrowing is one of the most active word-formation processes through which languages borrow words from each other.
Urdu is an Indo-European language which was originally originated as a pidgin which later expanded through word-formation processes. It has borrowed thousands of words from different other languages. It has borrowed words from Persian, Arabic, Turkish, English and other regional languages as well. This paper thoroughly shed light on the process of borrowing of Urdu langue and found that noun is the most borrowed syntactic category followed by adjectives. Furthermore, it was also observed that the syntactic and semantic characterization almost remain the same however the words are adopted with some phonological variations.
| References |
Arkadiev, P., Klamer, M., & Masini, J. (2018). Morphological theory, language description and typology. Handle.net, 435–454. https://hdl.handle.net/1887/138113.
Aslam Sipra, M. (2013). A Linguistic Study of Borrowings from English to Urdu. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature, 2(1), 203–207. https://doi.org/10.7575/ijalel.v.2n.1p.203.
Dashti, A. A., & Dashti, F. (2017). Morphological Adaptation of English Loanwords in Twitter: Educational Implications. International Journal of Higher Education, 6(3), 231. https://doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v6n3p231
Edgar, W. S. (2007). Postcolonial English: Varieties around the World. English World-Wide, 29(2), 232–235. https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.29.2.11det
Georg Bossong, Comrie, B., Yaron Matras, Yaron Matras, & Sakel, J. (2007). Grammatical Borrowing in Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Berlin, New York Mouton De Gruyter.
Sarah Grey Thomason, & Kaufman, T. (1998). Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. University Of California Press.
Spencer, A., Butt, M., & King, T. H. (2005). Case in Hindi. In M. Butt & T. H. King (Eds.), Proceedings of LFG (Vol. 5, pp. 429-446). Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information.
Thomason, S. (2007). Language Contact and Deliberate Change. Journal of Language Contact, 1(1), 41–62. https://doi.org/10.1163/000000007792548387
1 Secondary School Teacher in English.
| Id | Article Title | Authors | Vol Info | Year |
| Id | Article Title | Authors | Vol Info | Year |