Morpholo

gy of
English
and Urdu
Language
s

[29/11]

201
5

This short research paper includes the comparison and

contrast of morphology of English and Urdu languages

[URDU vs
ENGLISH]

To:

Mam 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 languages vocabulary. The ways in which the words can be

meaningfully combined is defined by the languages syntax and grammar. The

actual meaning of words and combinations of words is defined by the languages
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
English language has phonetic
representation of every morpheme. E.g.
writer {rait}{}

1-Morphs
Script of Urdu language is based on
joint letter system and it is a phonetic
language so in Urdu phonetic
representation instead has harkaat (

)zabr zair pesh

e.g.

{ gher } {taraqi }
{yafta}
Allomorphs
Urdu language has also phonologically
conditioned allomorphs. / ///
////
Morphologically
conditioned morphs are

2- Allomorphs
Allomorphs in English language are
phonologically conditioned and also
morphologically conditioned. , for
example, in plural morpheme and past
morpheme, (/s/, /z/, /iz/ ) and (/d/, /t/,
/ed/) respectively are phonologically
conditioned.
3- Plural Morpheme
English has plural morphemes and they
are put in after free morpheme to make
regular plural morphemes.
For example s, es, ies,ves, are put in
the end to form plural morpheme.
Roses, cells, knives. etc
4. Gender morpheme
Regular gender (feminine) morpheme is
put at the end of word. Like ess.
e.g. Prince princess.
Lion lioness.
5. Past Morpheme.
In English regular past morpheme is
made by putting ed with first form of
verb.
Pass+ed, expect+ed, beg+ed
Irregular Inflections -6
There are many irregular inflections of
.plurals
Footfeet, mousemice, syllabus
syllabi
7- Suffixes and Prefixes

3- Plural Morpheme
In Urdu also plural morphemes are put
after free morpheme. At the end of free
morpheme. // // ////

Gender morpheme
Here too gender morpheme are put at
the end of word.

Past Morpheme.
Past
is also regular. Like,
morpheme

Irregular Inflections
Similarly Urdu has also irregular
.inflections

Suffixes and Prefixes

We use suffixes and prefixes to make

new words. Some of them change their
class while others are class maintaining.
Motionless. Government, activate,
darkness.
Uncommon disappoint, recycle,
Degrade. Decentralize
8- Zero Suffix
Many nouns in their plural inflections
that have zero suffix. As in Sheep
Sheep
FishFish CattleCattle
Gender change is
CatCat, teacherteacher,

Same is the case with Urdu. Class

changing and class maintaining affixes
are there.

8-Zero Suffix
In Urdu also there are zero suffixes.
Plurals like

are gender zero suffix.

Differences Between Urdu and English Morphology

English Morphology

Urdu Morphology

1- No. of Morphemes
English words can have many
morphemes
Denaturalization has 5 morphemes,

1-No. of Morphemes
Urdu words have not more than 3
morphemes.

2-Subject Conditioned Morphemes

In English there is no system of subject
conditioning
Like verb read remains the same with
every subject.
He will read
They will read I will read.

2-Subject Conditioned Morphemes

In Urdu verb has inflections according
to subject.
e.g.

3- Prepositions
In English there are prepositions which
dont effect subjects or objects of the
sentences.
Children came
I gave toffees to children
children is same in both situations.

3- Postpositions
In Urdu there are postpositions which
effect subjects and objects in
sentences. e.g.

Inflections of word bcha changed.
Active Postposition also exists in Urdu

but not it English. It changes the

subject inflection to
" "

4- Suppletion
There are no suppletions in Urdu.

4-Suppletion
In suppletion the whole form of word
changes instead of partial change. Good
becomes better
Adjective of noun moon is lunar
Tooth to dental
5- Adjectival Inflections.
English has adjectival inflections
Sweet sweeter, sweetest,
Pretty prettier prettiest.

6- Present Morpheme
English has present morpheme only for
singular subjects
Get gets,

5- Adjectival Inflections
Urdu does not have adjectival
inflections
It uses adverbs to show the degrees.

Present Morpheme.
Urdu has complete present morphemes

as

7- Mehmal
English does not have such kind of
meaning less morphemes to join with
words in spoken language.

8- Infinitives
English has infinitives that are the base
form of verb. to is used to make
infinitive.
To read, to make, to set.
SO it does not have separate
morpheme for it but to is a separate
word.

7- Mehmal
Urdu has some morphemes to be put
with main noun words to exaggerate.
They have no meanings at all. They are
used to generalize the talk.






8- Masdar
In Urdu base form of verb is Masdar. It
has specific morpheme to be join with
verb That is
for example.

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 dont
have one anothers 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.