Pahari Nominal Morphology

A Case of Number and Gender Marking

Abstract

This study aims to provide the description of Nominal Morphology of Pahari, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the state of Azad Kashmir, Pakistan. The morphological analysis presented in this study is based on natural data collected primarily between 2013-2015. Based on the data, this study reveals that Pahari nouns inflect for number gender and case. Pahari distinguishes two genders (masculine, feminine) and two numbers (singular and plural). Pahari is one of the South Asian languages that respect natural gender assignment in nouns referring to animate referents. In addition gender of certain nouns can be predicted by some morphological and phonological rules. Generally, nouns ending in /a:/ are masculine and nouns ending in /i:/ are feminine. Inanimate abstract nouns are also either feminine or masculine according to their size. In Pahari these rules of gender marking are mostly consistent but with few exceptions. Some feminine nouns are derived from masculine nouns either through vowel modification or suffixation. This study further shows that the pluralisation of Pahari nouns can be determined by the gender of those nouns to a greater extant. Masculine nouns ending with /a:/ replace /a:/ with the plural marker /e:/ while the feminine nouns that end in /i:/, form their plurals by replacing /i:/, with plural marker /????/. The feminine nouns that end in vowel /a:/ or a consonant are pluralized by adding vowel /i??/ In addition to this, some of the nouns are pluralized by internal vowel modification. The grammatical overview of the language data presented in this study makes some generalizations about the noun morphology of the language.  It is an attempt to document some of the grammatical aspects of this language and lay foundations for further research on this indigenous language.