Comparative construction morphology of diminutive forms in English and Urdu

Abstract

This research paper investigates the function of diminutive morphology in English and Urdu languages with a focus on production, similarities, and differences in inflectional bound morphemes in the noun and adjective categories, and studies the usage patterns and impacts of diminutive forms in Urdu and English on interpersonal communication. The researchers, who are native Urdu speakers and English as a second language speakers, analyze the form and meaning of diminutive morphemes in both languages using Booij’s (2018) Construction Morphology model. Multiple sources are consulted for data collection, including corpora, dictionaries, linguistic databases, literary works, and language resources. The findings suggest that both English and Urdu retain a morphological function, but English has fewer inflectional morphemes than Urdu. Conversely, Urdu employs a large variety of suffixes, particularly for denoting the diminutive aspect, which distinguishes its semantic and pragmatic expressions from those of English. Despite both languages having inflections and using gradient production, English has lost more inflections due to undergoing more periods of change. Further, the usage patterns and impacts of diminutive forms in Urdu and English contribute to the richness and complexity of interpersonal communication. These provide speakers with a range of linguistic resources to express nuances of meaning, convey emotions, and shape social interactions. The paper concludes by noting that this research can help language learners and language scholars better understand the complexities of morphological structures in languages.

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