Interdisciplinary Journal of Linguistics

Department of Linguistics

University of Kashmir

Print ISSN: 0974-3421 Online ISSN: 0974-3421

This paper examines the clause combining in Koyee. Clauses like dependent (subordinate) and independent (co-ordinate) are discussed intensively. Clauses like serial verbs, complement clauses, adverbial clauses, converb clauses, relative clauses are best expressed in Koyee which are mostly controlled by multiple verb construction, finite or non-finite, including nominalized clauses. Coordinate clauses comprise conjunction, disjunction, adversative and exclusion in Koyee.

Language contact is a common phenomenon across world which gives rise to bilingualism and multilingualism. There are many consequences of language contact with borrowing being one of the widely studied consequences of it. The borrowing as a linguistic phenomenon has various perspectives which have been an interesting area of research especially after the studies carried out by Einar Haugen and Uriel Weinreich. No work has been done in the specific area of borrowing in terminology formation. This study is an attempt to analyse borrowing in terminology formation. The research is specifically carried out on the terminology used in glass industry.

Morphological analysis is an important part of any natural language processing (NLP) system. Morph analyzer is an algorithm for analyzing the lexical items of a natural language. It can be implemented effectively for the language which is rich in morphology. Morphemes are smallest building blocks that make words in a language. The present paper discusses the morphological analysis of Kashmiri language. Kashmiri is a highly inflectional language with more than 100 inflected forms for verbs. The word forms of a verb provide information about the different aspects of that particular verb. This information will be useful for developing the morph analyzer of Kashmiri. The verbs in Kashmiri get inflected for tense (present, past, future), number (singular, plural), gender (masculine, feminine) etc. For tense representation verbs in Kashmiri undergo various morphosyntactic changes like vowel changes, addition of suffixes etc. The complexity of word formation makes morphological analysis of Kashmiri verbs a difficult task. The present paper is an attempt at morphological analysis of the Kashmiri verbs. The approach used here for the analysis is Paradigm based approach. A paradigm is a set of inflected forms of a particular lexeme and these word forms are the realizations of that particular lexeme.

This paper presents a brief sketch of tense and aspect in Bhaderwahi, an Indo Aryan language spoken in Bhaderwah region of District Doda in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Bhaderwah is located in the PirPanjal Range---a linguistically diverse mountain range. This hilly terrain is home to many minority languages scattered in the whole region. The paper begins with a brief introduction of Bhaderwahi, which is followed by descriptive analysis of tense and aspect of the language.

The interpretation of the bare noun in classifier languages has been a research topic of great interest, especially, when it comes to the Southeast Asian languages. This paper is an attempt to understand the interpretation of bare and/or marked noun of the lesser studied language of the Southeast Asian languages, Magahi, an eastern language of India, from a typological point of view. It is argued that bare nominal in Magahi gives the interpretation of generic or indefinite nonspecific on the argument positions, considering the form of the predicate. Definiteness is expressed with a noun particle /-wɑ/ in the language. The paper, following relevant literature, claims that the noun particle in Magahi is actually a classifier. Moreover, following the typological understanding, more specifically, it is a definite bare classifier. The study suggests that /-wɑ/ particle, being the noun classifier, heads the nominal projection. This paper also suggests that Magahi requires a sophisticated nominal schema where there can be the possibility of more than one higher projection above NP.

Sociolinguistics, as a branch of linguistics, studies the relationship between language and society. One of the dimensions of Sociolinguistics is to correlate a linguistic and a social variable. A linguistic variable is a linguistic item which has identifiable variants, which are the different forms which can be used in an environment. The use of these variant forms in a given environment is shaped by the social factors like class, age, gender, education etc. Kashmiri language falls in the category of the languages in which the second and the third person pronominals qualify as linguistic variables which require a sociolinguistic investigation. In Kashmiri language, the second person pronoun has the variant forms ‘tsI’ and ‘tohj’; and the third person pronoun has the variant forms ‘yi’ and’ yim’ in the case of proximate, ‘hu’ and ‘hum’ in the case of remote within sight and ‘su’/’so’ and ‘tim’ in the case of remote out of sight referents. This study is a step in the direction to unveil the usage of pronominals by the Kashmiri speakers in the affinal kinship domain. The paper gives a qualitative and quantitative analysis of how the usage of pronominals is shaped by the factors like age, gender, settlement and education.

In recent times, the placement scenario has become very alarming, hitting the biggest institutes of the country. As per the data made available by IITs to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), only 66% of the students who have registered for campus recruitment landed a job offer in year 2016-17 as against 79% in year 2015-16. One of the major reasons for poor placement and employability is the poor and limited communication skills of students. Realizing the imperative need of communication skills which will enhance job readiness, these engineering institutes are now seeking external help from corporate firms which offer some short term and customized programs. Aspiring Minds is one such assessment firm that helps the government institutions, organizations and the corporate world to measure and identify the required talent through the assessment and employability test. The present paper discusses the placement challenges of an engineering college of Guru Gobind Singh Indraprashtha University, New Delhi, and analyses how far the assessment done by Aspiring Minds is useful in preparing the students for placements.

The Internet is increasingly being used for the delivery of educational material and it has also promoted self-learning. Internet-based learning allows students to learn at their own pace, access the information at a time that is convenient to them, and provides education to remote students who otherwise would not be able to travel to a classroom. “Technology is not a panacea that can replace language teachers and face-to-face classrooms; it is something that can be used to enhance language learning” (Sharma & Barrett, 2007). For the learners of English, there is a plethora of learning material available through CDs, VCDs etc. The internet is also one of the biggest sources harboring a vast amount of learning material that can be accessed absolutely 'free' of cost. Learning with computer assisted technologies involves an integration of the skills like listening, reading and visualizing [pictures/animations]. Thus the learning is more effective as more senses are involved. There is uniformity in the learning. This paper is an attempt to ascertain the efficacy of computer assisted learning materials in the learning of English language skills with emphasis on listening skills. This paper also provides a comprehensive listing of such resources available on the internet which promote reading with listening.

Translation has long been recognised as a difficult process at linguistic, paralinguistic and extra-linguistic levels. The process of translation is always characterised by some kind of translation adaptation mechanisms. This paper presents some of the issues in translation which are faced at the lexical level or what can be described as issues in lexical translation. This paper illustrates these issues with reference to the translation of an eminent Kashmiri Sufi Poet Shamas Faqir whose poetry provides rich insights about the semantics, pragmatics and lexical structure of Kashmiri language.

This paper explores the language shift in Sherpa, the ethnic migrated language community living in Kathmandu valley. The research focuses on language contact situations in different domains viz. social, cultural, personal, and official as well as media related activities where the informants are asked to use different languages i.e. Nepali, English, Hindi etc. along with the use of their own mother tongue i.e. Sherpa. This socio-ethnographic research aims at providing some clues as to how the discovery of a minority language triggers changes in representations and attitudes.

This paper intends to focus on the notion of segmental patterns registered across the English loan words in Yemeni Arabic of Hugariyyah variety. The adaptation process of loanwords in HYA conforms to the structural constraints of Arabic Phonology. During the process of adaptation onset positions are treated as more salient than coda positions. Deletion is not allowed in onset position and the ranking schemata is ONS>>*Complex >> Max >> SSP >> *Coda. In the similar fashion devoicing of the voiced obstruents is mere favourable in coda positions. In HYA English loanwords, the segments which are less salient and less sonorants are altered or deleted than their stronger counterparts in coda positions which support the accepted claim of positional faithfulness to the onset. The paper seeks to address whether idiosyncratic patterns displayed by loans in HYA supports the notion of the positional asymmetries and phonological strength in the loanwords. Furthermore, it provides reasons for the adaptation using the Optimality-Theoretic framework (Prince & Smolensky, 1993, McCarthy & Prince, 1995).

This paper deals with the structural description of nouns in the Pashtu language spoken in the Ganderbal district of Jammu and Kashmir. The aspects of noun morphology that have been considered in this paper include number, gender and case. These categories have been dealt within the broader frame of descriptive linguistics using the laid down techniques for the description of the noun morphology.

This article discusses the morphology and syntax of adjectives in Gyalsumdo, a Tibetan variety spoken in the Manang district of Nepal. We also present the derivation of adjectives, compounding of adjectives, and comparative and superlative construction in Gyalsumdo. In addition, we present the syntax of adjectives. A comparison is made with some other Tibetan varieties spoken in close geographical proximity, such as Nubri and Tsum shows that Gyalsumdo has some distinct forms in deriving comparative form.

The present curriculum incorporates teaching and testing procedures in the light of Communicative Language Learning (CLL). More than a decade ago the curriculum integrated Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and (CLL) in order to make language learning more creative, comprehensive and accessible to students of higher secondary level. Moreover, the testing is a crucial issue which projects the achievements of students and outcomes of teaching and learning included in the curriculum. Hence, teaching and testing are integral parts of curriculum and in the curriculum the teaching procedures and the testing techniques are inter-dependent in the process of education. However, the tests are required to design based on the Communicative method. Despite the government efforts for last two decades, the language testing in public examination has not been able to reach at the standard level and unfortunately it has remained in the nascent stage. The English language examination conducted by REB in Bangladesh is considered to be the only way to examine level of proficiency in English. It is reported that other assessment such as group work, class work, homework, investigation work, class test suggested in the curriculum are ignored by all stakeholders because of the overwhelming emphasis on public examination. Hence, strategies incorporated in the curriculum related to testing find little relevance with regard to developing four skills together. The research strives to explore weaknesses of this testing system and to suggest for the improvement. A total of seven questions have been framed to solicit information about the prevailing testing system in the light of English curriculum and syllabus. The questionnaires have been served to total twenty two English language teachers of rural and urban colleges affiliated to REB to collect data. The statistical results show more weaknesses than that of the strengths of this testing system. Moreover, the paper finds lack of a complete set of strategy related to teaching, learning and testing procedures of all four skills contained in this curriculum.

Morphological Analyser/Generator is an essential component of any NLP application. A morphological analyzer or generator supplies information concerning morphosyntactic properties of the words it analyses or constructs. Morphological Analysis and Generation are important components for building computational grammars as well as Machine Translation (MT). Morphological Analyzer is a program for analyzing the morphology of an input word; the analyzer reads the inflected surface form of each word in a text and provides its lexical form while Generation is the inverse process. Both Analysis and Generation make use of lexicon. A Morphological analyser is developed using either a paradigm based approach or a rule based approach. Words can be categorized into paradigms based on the similarity in grammatical features and word formation process. It is observed that for a particular grammatical feature there are some similarities in word formation process. A Paradigm defines all word forms that can be generated from given stem along with grammatical feature set associated with each word form. For paradigm construction, sample corpus of inflected words is taken. This paper deals with the development of a Kashmiri morphological analyser/generator based on a paradigm based approach. Different paradigms are built for nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs taking all the possible inflections into account. A list is prepared for all possible word forms from the lexicon. The words which take similar set of suffixes are grouped into single paradigm. For this analysis the linguistic resources required by the morphological analyzer include a lexicon and inflection rules for all paradigms. Inflection rules include the inflectional suffixes, and internal vowel change to the root to get its inflected forms.

Kinnauri belongs to Tibeto-Burman family of languages but it is spoken in the area where the dominant languages are from Indo-Aryan family of languages. It is interesting to examine the structure of Kinnauri language. The pattern of ‘ergativity’ and ‘agreement’ needs some special attention. The languages that act as the ‘contact languages’ in the area are Kumauni, Garhwali, Dogri, Kangri and many others from Indo-Aryan branch. Another important trait of the languages spoken in Himachal Pradesh is that they show a great deal of ‘influence’ of Punjabi language. This influence is mapped in the languages of the area beyond borrowing of the vocabulary or pronunciation. Some of these influences have been noticed even at the structure-level in the languages. It is also for this reason that the system of ‘ergativity and agreement system’ of Kinnauri becomes very important to examine. Kinnauri has ‘ergativity’ but its function is very different in the language and this function is the characteristic of Tibeto-Burman i.e. despite being marked with ergative case, the subject will have the preference and privilege of showing agreement with the subject noun in the sentence. Kinnauri does not show ‘grammatical gender’ marking as one of the phi-features on the verb-morphology. Thus, the implicational statement about the characteristics of the structure of the language with regard to ‘grammatical gender’, ‘ergativity’ and ‘agreement’ and their interplay would forecast that Kinnauri does not have the so called ‘object-verb-agreement’ as a system of agreement. If this is so, the agreement system proposed in Das (2006) becomes very relevant to analyze the system of ergativity and agreement in Kinnauri. The present paper on ‘ergativity and agreement in Kinnauri’ is an attempt to explore some of these interrelated issues of language structure in Kinnauri.

The present paper intends here to bring together an understanding of Ghalib’s poetic and dramatic strengths to show what principles of thought are operative alike in the poet’s word choices and in the “larger wholes” of his creative work. It is generally believed that resources for achieving this more unified and more encompassing perspective can be found in the theory of conceptual integration. The paper attempts to consider Ghalib’s art of figuration from several angles all tending to converge on the notion of compression. The second half of the paper focuses on his craft of versification, particularly as a mechanism for creating compressed and hybrid meanings. A certain “strange meaning” is seen all the way through Ghalib’s poetry, differently infected at different stages. New words and compounds are manufactured to express the peculiar mental states. These coinages are marked by an intense compression. Flood of thoughts within a reasonable space of compressed language, employing old words in new combinations to elaborate new concepts giving them original tones and symbolical meaning based in his own peculiar experiences.

The present study examines the nature of verb morphology deficits in Yemeni Arabic (YA) speakers with agrammatic aphasia with a view to finding out to what extent the emerging patterns could be explained within theoretical accounts proposed to explain verb morphology deficit in agrammatic aphasia. For this objective, we present data from YA verb inflection collected from five subjects with Broca's aphasia in three experimental tasks: repetition, completion, and grammaticality judgment. Two major findings emerge from our study. First, the performance of the agrammatic subjects in the sentence repetition task have revealed that YA agrammatic aphasics maintain sensitivity to the word-structure properties of their native language manifested in preservation of the verb inflections of both the perfective and imperfective with the absence of uninflected bare stems. Second, agrammatic subjects examined in this study show impaired knowledge of tense as compared to subject-verb agreement. These findings are discussed in view of existing theoretical accounts of verb morphology deficit in agrammatic aphasia.