Semantic Domain of Verbs in Kashmiri English

A Corpus Based Comparative Study of Three Registers

Abstract

Variation in language is very often and shows specific patterns. Linguists are interested in finding such patterns, classifying and then explaining these patterns (Lange & Leuckert, 2020). The present study aims toexplore the semantic domain of verbs in the English variety spoken in Muzaffarabad, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (Kashmiri English). For the present study, a corpus was compiled from three registers of Kashmiri English namely Newspaper Corpus (NEWS), Academic Writing Corpus (ACADWR) and Academic Spoken Discourse (ACSD). The newspaper corpus was collected and compiled from the Daily Height that is published in Muzaffarabad. For academic writing corpus, the data was collected from M. Phil theses and doctoral dissertations available at the department of English, the university of Azad Jammu & Kashmir. In order to compile the spoken discourse corpus, the ESL class lectures and students’ presentations were recorded and transcribed in text format. The corpora of the three registers were further classified according to the type and sub-register. The corpora was analyzed through AntConc software for verb frequencies, concordance and collocation patterns. The findings show that the verbs which belonging to diverse semantics domains are commonly used in Kashmiri English. Among all semantics domains, the verbs of communication are found most frequently occurring verbs while the least common verbs are the aspectual verbs.