Morphology [29/11]

of English
and Urdu
Languages
2015
This short research paper includes the comparison and contrast of [URDU vs
morphology of English and Urdu languages
ENGLISH]

To: Ma’m Yasmeen Fatima

Code# 5657
AIOU Islamabad

By: Ismat Manzoor

BD563661
 Contrast and Comparison of English and
Urdu Morphology

INTRODUCTION
What is Language?
A language is a systematic means of communication by the use of sounds or

conventional symbols. It is the code we all use to express ourselves and

communicate to others. It is a communication by word of mouth. It is the mental

faculty or power of vocal communication. It is a system for communicating ideas and

feelings using sounds, gestures, signs or marks. Any means of communicating ideas,

specifically, human speech, the expression of ideas by the voice and sounds

articulated by the organs of the throat and mouth is a language. This is a system for

communication. A language is the written and spoken methods of combining words

to create meaning used by a particular group of people.

Language, so far as we know, is something specific to humans, that is to say it is the

basic capacity that distinguishes humans from all other living beings. Language

therefore remains potentially a communicative medium capable of expressing ideas

and concepts as well as moods, feelings and attitudes.

A set of linguists who based their assumptions of language on psychology made

claims that language is nothing but ‘habit formation’. According to them, language is

learnt through use, through practice. In their view, ‘the more one is exposed to the

use of language, the better one learns’.

Written languages use symbols (characters) to build words. The entire set of words

is the language’s vocabulary. The ways in which the words can be meaningfully

combined is defined by the language’s syntax and grammar. The actual meaning of

words and combinations of words is defined by the language’s semantics.

English Language:
English is thought to be one of the most important languages in the world. There are

many reasons why English is so important. One of the reasons is that English is

spoken as the first language in many countries. There are 104 countries where

English is spoken as the first language.

Even in countries where English is not the native language, people use it for business

and tourism. English is used for these purposes in most countries. English is

considered the business language. English is the official language of the United

Nations. English is also the official language of airlines and airports. All airline pilots

that fly to other countries must be able to speak English.

Importance of English language is due to its international use. It is a fact that a vast

knowledge of the universe has been demonstrated in this language. For the

achievement of that knowledge, it is essential to understand this international

language. We may assume that it shares with the other highly developed languages

of Europe the ability to express the multiplicity of ideas and the refinement of

thoughts that demand expression in our modern civilization. We can make use of

English to promote our worldview and spiritual heritage throughout the globe.

English language is one tool to establish our viewpoint. We can learn from others

experience. We can check the theories of foreigners against our experience. We can

reject the untenable and accept the tenable. We can also propagate our theories

among the international audience and readers.

Urdu Language

Urdu, one of the most sophisticated languages, contributed to the political and

cultural development of society in a very significant way. The Urdu language is the

national language and one of two official languages of the country of Pakistan. The

other official language is English. It is also one of 22 of the official languages that
exist in India. It is also a language that is heavily associated with the Muslim religion,

and there are around 65 million speakers of Urdu worldwide. 52 million of these

speakers reside in India, with another 12 million in Pakistan. In minority

communities throughout the world, there are also a significant number of Urdu

speakers, in countries such as the UK, the US, Saudi Arabia, and Bangladesh. Urdu

is considered one of the major languages of the world after Chinese and English,

which is spoken and perceived at every level. The vastness and depth of Urdu is

amazing, having its roots in so many different languages and also in so many rich

and varied cultures. The Urdu Vocabulary has a word for every shade of emotions.

Urdu holds an important position in society. This is indeed an undeniable fact. The

intelligent use of our national language through media could be very helpful in order

to establish a national narrative on important issues.

The Urdu language uses a Persian-Arabic script, though it is written in a particular

format. This format is the Nastaliq calligraphy style, which was developed in the 14th

century in the country of Iran. It was originally used for the Persian alphabet, though

it has since been used for Arabic, and certain South Asian languages. It is still written

in many countries as an art form.

These days, the Urdu language has many different dialects not only in Pakistan, but

in India also. In recent years, the Pashto, Punjabi and Sindhi languages have been

very strong influences on the Urdu languages. Rather than resisting change, the

Urdu (and primarily Muslim) speakers of Pakistan welcome change as it enables

them to distinguish the language clearly.

Morphology
Morphology is the science and study of the smallest grammatical units of language

and of their formation into words, including inflection, derivation and composition.

According to Dorfman;

“ morphology is the study of the ways and methods of grouping sounds into
sound-complexes or words fo definitem distinct, conventional menaing.”

Bloomfield calls it the study of the constructions in which sound forms appear among

the constituents.

Morphology is “a level of structure between the phonological and the syntactic.” It is

complementary to syntax. Morphology is the grammar of words; syntax the

grammar of sentences. The way morphemes combine to form words is known as

the morphology of a language system, whereas syntax refers to the form of the

arrangement of words in phrases and sentences. Agreement, for example, is a

morphological feature and word order is syntactic feature of language system.

Urdu Morphology:
Urdu is a challenging language because of, first, its Perso-Arabic script and second,

its morphological system having inherent grammatical forms and vocabulary of

Arabic, Persian and the native languages of South Asia.

Urdu is a morphologically rich language. It has a variety of morphological

phenomena in various grammatical categories, e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives. Urdu

has a lot of Noun Morphology, both Derivational and Inflectional. Urdu is rich in

generating nouns from existing noun and non-noun words, and using inflections

even for gender of un- animated items, which is not possible in English. Honor is also

an interesting phenomenon in Urdu Morphology. There are more than 50

Morphological forms (and around 20 Surface forms) associated with a Verb. Like

Nouns, Adjectives are divided into two groups: those which have suffixes that

change to show gender and number (marked adjectives), and those which do not

(unmarked adjectives). There are other grammatical categories in Urdu that have

regular Morphological patterns, e.g. Numbers, Particles etc.

English Morphology:
Morphology in the English language is important because of its crucial impact on

ones understanding of a lexicon and how one interprets that lexicon in a sentence.

However, its importance is in more than just ones correct interpretation of a

sentence. It is also an important aspect in the language which allows the use and

entry of new words into English. The combination of different morphemes in the

English language has proven itself an important aspect in the development of the

language. Throughout history words have been often put together with other words

to create new and more descriptive words. For example, the word deadlock which is

a combination of two words put together, Dead (to die) and lock (to be chained or

have no access to). When the two words are put together the meaning becomes an

exaggerated way of expressing that the progress has stopped, things have become

stagnant, or inactive. It can also refer to a cell that would be used for solitary

confinement of a prisoner. As one can see Morphology is used in spoken language

and literature in creative ways to expand the English language and to help people

further express and better communicate with one another.

English morphology is particularly important because native speakers of English

create new words constantly. It is important to know how to change words to make

them different parts of speech (verb, noun, adjective, etc.) since English speakers

tend to continually change words and add suffixes and prefixes to create new words.

Every language which can be broken down into components can be studied by

morphology. To examine morphology of Urdu and English, we need to first

understand the components of a word. When we look at the smallest grammatical

unit in English we are talking about a morpheme. A morpheme is the smallest

meaningful unit of language, making it different from a word.

Morphemes

Morpheme can be defined as the smallest meaningful morphological unit of a

language that cannot be further divided or analyzed. In other words, morpheme can

be described as the minimal units of meaning.

Minimal units of grammatical structure such as the four components of un, faith, ful,

ness, are called morphemes. Telephones has three morphemes {tele}, {phone},

and {s}. Morphemes are customarily described as minimal units of grammatical

analysis, “ the units of ‘lowest; rank out of which words, the units of next ‘highest’
rank are composed. So morphemes are those distinct, minimal syntactical units

which form words. They can also be defined as the minimal units of meaning out of

which meaningful words are composed in various ways. A morpheme may be

monosyllabic as {man} and {a/an/the} or polysyllabic as {happy} and {nature}.

Morphemes are usually put into braces, i.e. curly brackets {} {the} {help} {less}

{boy} {s}

Morphs

Any phonetic shape or representation of a phoneme is a morph. To quote John

Lyons,

“When the word can be segmented into parts, these segments are referred to as

morphs.”

Thus the words shorter is analyzable in two morphs, which can be written

orthographically as /short/ and /er/. Each morph represents a particular morpheme,

but each morpheme does not have a morph. For example, the plural noun sheep has

one morph, but it has two morphemes {sheep} and {}. ‘Went ‘ has one morph, but

two morpheme {go} and {ed}.

Allomorphs:
Morpheme sometimes manifests itself in various phonetic shapes or forms. The

plural morpheme can be realized as /-s/ or /-z/ or /-iz/ and so on. Similarly, the past

tense morpheme can appear as /-d/, /-t/ and /-id/. Each of these morphs belongs to

the same morpheme. These are called allomorphs.

Plural Allomorphs: The plural morpheme in English ( which combines with a

noun morpheme to form a plural) is represented by three allomorphs /s/, /z/ and /iz/

in different environments (which are phonologically conditioned).

{e(s)}

/iz/ e.g. in the case of /s/, /z/, /∫/ /t∫/ /3/ /d3/ buses, vases , bushes, churches,

rouges, judges.

/s/ e.g. in the case of words ending in voiceless consonants (other than s, ∫, t∫)

cats and caps.

/z/ in the case of words ending in voiced sounds (other than z, 3, d3) e.g. boys and

bags

Similarly the present tense morpheme {-e(s)} has three allomorphs /s/, /z/, and

/iz/. e.g. gets, runs, washes

Past Allomorphs: The past tense morpheme of English, {e(d)} has also three

different (phonologically conditioned) alllomorphs /t/, /d/ and /id/.

{e(d)}

/t/ aftger morphs ending in voiceless sounds (except) /t/)

Booked, pushed etc.

/d/ after morphs ending in voiced sounds (except /d/)

Loved, bagged etc.

/id/ after morphs ending in /t/ an /d/ wanted /wanted/, wedded /weded/

Types of Morpheme:
Two types of morphemes have been identified on the basis of their occurrence in

larger constructions:

1- Free form

2-Bound form.

Free Morpheme:

A morpheme that occurs alone, or can stand alone is a free form. It does not

require the presence of another morpheme; in other words, such a morpheme does

not need the support of any other element. All content words are free forms.

Examples: house, church, girl, cat, walk, see, red, short, book, water.

Some form words are also free forms, always, though, but, never, and, or, if. The

meaning of such words is ‘contained in their ability to refer to some point in the world

outside’.
Bound Morpheme:
A second class of morphemes called bound form; contain elements that must

always be attached to some other elements. They cannot occur or stand

alone. In words like watery, invisible, reader, possibility, madness, cats, and manly

we can identify such morphemic particles as –y, in- , -er, - -ty, -ness, -s, and -ly.

Their meaning is in their grammatical functions such as noun-making, verb-forming,

pluralizing, adjectivising, and so on. They can be attached to any other free forms of

the same form class to construct similar segments. Isolated they do not stand by

themselves.
Two types of bound form that are widely used are prefix and suffix. As a class they

are known as affixes.

Infix is the free form or a root. Prefix precedes it e.g. in uncommon, recycle,

descend, un, re and de are prefixes. The prefix is derivational which means that it

always changes the meaning of a word and can also change its grammatical class.

For example; happy-> unhappy (change in meaning + both are adj),

able-> enable (change in meaning+ change in form adj->verb)

So they are also class maintaining and class changing.

Suffix follows a free form. Examples are less, ation, ment and ness in sleeveless,

temptation, government ,darkness etc. Prefixes and suffixes are word formative

elements

Suffixes are further classified into two categories in the basis of their function.

1- Inflectional

2- Derivational

3- Bound Base

Inflectional:

An affix that cannot take another affix is generally identified as inflectional

affix. If we add -s or -ed to present we will get derivative words presents and

presented. We cannot add another suffix to it. Inflectional suffixes do not change the

meaning of the original word. So in "Every day I walk to school" and "Yesterday I

walked to school", the words walk and walked have the same basic meaning. In "I

have one car" and "I have two cars", the basic meaning of the words car and cars is

exactly the same. In these cases, the suffix is added simply for grammatical

"correctness"

Example; dog->dogs, like-> he likes etc.

Derivational:

A significant feature of the derivational affix is that other suffixes can be

added to it. One of the functions of derivational affixes has been recognized as that

of ‘formation of new words’ . This is one of its functions. Another function is that they

maintain the form-class. Examples are: Globe (N) global (Adj), globalize (vb),

globalization (N)
Child (N), Childish (Adj) ), childishly (Adv), childishness (N). Each time a

derivational affix is added in the above examples, we see the form-class changing.

Bound Bases: Bound bases are tose morphemes which serve as roots for
derivational forms but which never appear as free forms.

Examples: in the word “conclude” –clude and in “perceive” –ceive are bound

bases.
Similarities Between English and Urdu Morphology

English Morphology Urdu Morphology

1- Morphs 1-Morphs
English language has phonetic Script of Urdu language is based on joint
representation of every morpheme. E.g. letter system and it is a phonetic
writer {rait}{ә} language so in Urdu phonetic
representation instead has harkaat
)‫ (حرکات‬zabr ‫ ــــ‬zair ِ‫ ــــ‬pesh ‫ــــ‬
‫ بچپن ــ بچپن‬e.g. {gher } {taraqi } {yafta}
2- Allomorphs Allomorphs
Allomorphs in English language are Urdu language has also phonologically
phonologically conditioned and also conditioned allomorphs. /‫ات‬/،/‫یں‬/ ،/‫یاں‬/،/‫ے‬/
morphologically conditioned. , for Morphologically conditioned morphs are
example, in plural morpheme and past ‫نتیجہ – ِِ نتا ئج‬ ‫خاتون— ِِ خواتین۔‬
morpheme, (/s/, /z/, /iz/ ) and (/d/, /t/,
/ed/) respectively are phonologically
conditioned.
3- Plural Morpheme 3- Plural Morpheme
English has plural morphemes and they In Urdu also plural morphemes are put
are put in after free morpheme to make after free morpheme. At the end of free
regular plural morphemes. morpheme. /‫ات‬/ ،/‫یں‬/ ،/‫یاں‬/،/‫ے‬/
For example s, es, ies,ves, are put in the ‫ کتابیں۔ ایجادات‬،‫ لڑکیاں‬،‫بچے‬
end to form plural morpheme.
Roses, cells, knives. etc
4. Gender morpheme Gender morpheme
Regular gender (feminine) morpheme is Here too gender morpheme are put at
put at the end of word. Like ess. the end of word. ‫ی‬
e.g. Prince  princess. ‫ پٹھانی۔ بیٹا بیٹی‬،‫پٹھان‬
Lion  lioness.
5. Past Morpheme. Past Morpheme.
In English regular past morpheme is Past morpheme is also regular. Like,
made by putting ed with first form of ‫گیا آیا آ ئے۔ آئی۔‬
verb.
Pass+ed, expect+ed, beg+ed
6- Irregular Inflections Irregular Inflections
There are many irregular inflections of Similarly Urdu has also irregular
plurals. inflections.
Foot—feet, mouse—mice, ‫مکتبہ— ِِ مکاتب خلق— ِِ اخالق خط— ِِ خطوط‬
syllabus—syllabi
7- Suffixes and Prefixes Suffixes and Prefixes
We use suffixes and prefixes to make Same is the case with Urdu. Class
new words. Some of them change their changing and class maintaining affixes
class while others are class maintaining. are there.
Motionless. Government, activate, ‫خوش پوش کمتر صحت مند خالہ زاد ۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔‬
darkness…. ‫بے قد ر ان گنت باحیا سرانجام‬
Uncommon disappoint, recycle,
Degrade. Decentralize
8- Zero Suffix 8-Zero Suffix
Many nouns in their plural inflections that In Urdu also there are zero suffixes.
have zero suffix. As in Sheep—Sheep Plurals like
Fish—Fish Cattle—Cattle ،‫ چچا زاد‬،‫پھوپھا‬
Gender change is ‫ مہمان یتیم غریب‬are gender zero suffix.
Cat—Cat, teacher—teacher,
Differences Between Urdu and English Morphology

English Morphology Urdu Morphology

1- No. of Morphemes 1-No. of Morphemes

English words can have many Urdu words have not more than 3
morphemes morphemes.
Denaturalization has 5 morphemes, ‫ اکثریتیں‬،‫غیر ترقی یافتہ‬

2-Subject Conditioned Morphemes 2-Subject Conditioned Morphemes

In English there is no system of subject In Urdu verb has inflections according to
conditioning subject.
Like verb “read” remains the same with e.g.
every subject. ‫میں پڑھوں گا‬
He will read ‫بچے پڑھیں گے‬
They will read I will read. ‫بچہ پڑھے گا‬

3- Prepositions 3- Postpositions
In English there are prepositions which In Urdu there are postpositions which
don’t effect subjects or objects of the effect subjects and objects in sentences.
sentences. e.g.
Children came ‫بچے آئے۔‬
I gave toffees to children ‫میں نے بچوں کو ٹافیاں دی۔‬
children is same in both situations. Inflections of word bcha changed.
Active Postposition also exists in Urdu
but not it English. ‫ نے‬It changes the
subject inflection to "‫" وں‬
‫بچوں نے اودھم مچا رکھا ہے۔‬
4-Suppletion 4- Suppletion
In suppletion the whole form of word There are no suppletions in Urdu.
changes instead of partial change. Good
becomes better
Adjective of noun “moon” is “lunar”
Tooth to “dental”
5- Adjectival Inflections. 5- Adjectival Inflections
English has adjectival inflections Urdu does not have adjectival inflections
Sweet sweeter, sweetest, It uses adverbs to show the degrees.
Pretty prettier prettiest. ‫اچھی بہت اچھی سب سے اچھی‬

6- Present Morpheme Present Morpheme.

English has present morpheme only for Urdu has complete present morphemes
singular subjects as ‫تا تے تی‬
Get gets, ‫کہتا کہتی کہتے‬
7- Mehmal 7- Mehmal
English does not have such kind of Urdu has some morphemes to be put
meaning less morphemes to join with with main noun words to exaggerate.
words in spoken language. They have no meanings at all. They are
used to generalize the talk.
‫بات چیت‬ ‫میل کچیل‬ ‫پانی وانی کام وام سچ مچ‬
‫گپ شپ‬
8- Infinitives 8- Masdar
English has infinitives that are the base In Urdu base form of verb is Masdar. It
form of verb. “to” is used to make has specific morpheme to be join with
infinitive. verb That is ‫نا‬
To read, to make, to set. for example. ‫بنانا پڑھنا کھیلنا رکھنا‬
SO it does not have separate morpheme
for it but “to” is a separate word.
 Conclusion

Morphology of a language is a very vast subject. In this research work similarities

and differences of Urdu and English morphology are found out. Every language has

a universal grammar. It matches to other languages in one or other aspect. We have

noticed that there are many similarities in the formation of words of English and

Urdu language. Though they are very different in every aspect, their origin, script,

grammar, sentence structure every thing is different but there are many similarities

do exist in both languages. Those similarities are in the structure and internal not

external or surface. As shown in the table of similarities, many words formation have

similar rules. In the table of Differences, we saw that there are many usages of both

the language that do not match. Sometimes these differences are too clear but some

differences are very little that they require attention to be noted.

So we come to conclusion that, though both the languages are different and don’t

have one another’s influence in formation but then too many similarities are found

just because of the existence of universal grammar that may be similar in all the

world for all human beings. In the same way any of two languages can be compared,

we will find many similarities in both of them.