Content area
Full Text
Abstract
Urdu compounds have two major elements. A large number of compounds take infixes, which are based on only vowel sounds. Furthermore, most of the compounds are formed by distinctive compounding words, each of which forms various compounds eg. nur-e-xuda (N) 'the light of God' and nur mehel 'lighthouse '. Infixes are mostly found in endocentric compounds. There are four major formations with the two infixes -e- and -o-. Toth the infixes show some morphological and phonological functions and convey possession, plurality and emphasis. The two infixes perform five functions, as the examples show: 1) rah-e-hdq 'the right path ': The constituents are nouns, and the infix -e- represents the genitive marker 2) sah ib-e- ilm 'scholar': The constituents are nouns, and the infix -e- represents the agentive particle vala, which also showspossession 'someone having something' 3) ddabt-e-alIja 'high court': The constituents are noun and adjective, and the infix only links the constituents phono logically 4)dsdr-0-rdsux 'resources': The constituents are both nouns, and the infix -o-represents the conjunctive particle or 'and' 5) xuj-o-xurrdm 'very happy': The constituents are adjectives, and the infix -o-conveys emphasis. The discussion of these functions in this paper is a position taken against Durant (2007), who limits the roles of infixes to just -e- representing the genitive ka.
Keywords: infix, endocentric, formation, compound, genitive, particle.
1. Introduction: Urdu Compounds
Most Urdu compounds are hybrids formations, the two constituents in which are from two different languages. They are heavily dominant and more frequent than normal, i.e. native + native, combinations. The formations include AN (Adjective + Noun), NA (Noun + Adjective), NN (Noun + Noun), AV (Adjective + Verb), NV (Noun + Verb) and the resulting compounds are mostly adjectives, nouns and verbs, but there are also adverbs, pronouns and postpositions. The compound types include endocentric, exocentric, copulative, postpositional and verbal compounds. Although these types are specific with their features, e.g. an endocentric compound is a hyponym of one of its constituents and a copulative has two independent constituents, the individual compounds are sometimes ambiguous and confusing. Soegaards (2005, p.322) exemplifies the ambiguity that although the Mandarin Chinese compound fumu (father-mother) 'parents' is a copulative compound, it can be given the endocentric interpretation 'a mother who acts like a father'. This...