lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
of Northern India and Pakistan, has two standardised
register
Register or registration may refer to:
Arts entertainment, and media Music
* Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc.
* ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller
* Registration (organ), th ...
s:
Hindi
Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...
Devanagari
Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental syste ...
Perso-Arabic script
The Persian alphabet ( fa, الفبای فارسی, Alefbâye Fârsi) is a writing system that is a version of the Arabic script used for the Persian language spoken in Iran ( Western Persian) and Afghanistan (Dari Persian) since the 7th cent ...
, typically in the
Nastaʿlīq
''Nastaliq'' (; fa, , ), also romanized as ''Nastaʿlīq'', is one of the main calligraphic hands used to write the Perso-Arabic script in the Persian and Urdu languages, often used also for Ottoman Turkish poetry, rarely for Arabic. ''Nast ...
style.
On this grammar page, Hindustani is written in the
transcription
Transcription refers to the process of converting sounds (voice, music etc.) into letters or musical notes, or producing a copy of something in another medium, including:
Genetics
* Transcription (biology), the copying of DNA into RNA, the fir ...
outlined in . Being "primarily a system of
transliteration
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
" (
cf.
The abbreviation ''cf.'' (short for the la, confer/conferatur, both meaning "compare") is used in writing to refer the reader to other material to make a comparison with the topic being discussed. Style guides recommend that ''cf.'' be used onl ...
IAST
The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during ...
), these are its salient features: subscriptdots for
retroflex consonant
A retroflex ( /ˈɹɛtʃɹoːflɛks/), apico-domal ( /əpɪkoːˈdɔmɪnəl/), or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the har ...
long vowel
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, f ...
plosive
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases.
The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...
s; and
tilde
The tilde () or , is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish, which in turn came from the Latin '' titulus'', meaning "title" or "superscription". Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in ...
s for
nasalised vowel
A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are produced wit ...
s.
Phonology
The sounds presented in parenthesis in the tables below signify they are only found in loanwords from either
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
or
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
. More information about phonology of Hindustani can be read on
Hindustani phonology
Hindustani language, Hindustani is the ''lingua franca'' of northern India and Pakistan, and through its two standardized Register (sociolinguistics), registers, Hindi and Urdu, a co-official language of India and co-official and national langua ...
Hindustani natively possesses a symmetrical ten-vowel system. The vowels are always short in length, while the vowels ːːːːːːːare always considered long, in addition to an eleventh vowel /æː/ which is found in
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
s.
Vowel
occurs as a conditioned
allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
of (
schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...
) in proximity to , if and only if the is surrounded on both sides by two schwas. and is realised as separate vowel. For example, in ( – 'to say'), the is surrounded on both sides by schwa, hence both the schwas will become fronted to short , giving the pronunciation . Syncopation of phonemic middle schwa can further occur to give .
Consonants
Hindustani has a core set of 28
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
s inherited from earlier Indo-Aryan. Supplementing these are two consonants that are internal developments in specific word-medial contexts, and seven consonants originally found in loan words, whose expression is dependent on factors such as status (class, education, etc.) and cultural register (Modern Standard Hindi vs Urdu).
Allophony of and
and are
allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
s in Hindustani. These are distinct phonemes in English, but both are allophones of the phoneme in Hindustani (written in Hindi or in Urdu), including loanwords of
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
and
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
origin. More specifically, they are '' conditional allophones'', i.e. rules apply on whether is pronounced as or depending on context. Native Hindi speakers pronounce as in ( – , 'vow') and in ( – 'food dish'), treating them as a single phoneme and without being aware of the allophonic distinctions, though these are apparent to native English speakers. The rule is that the consonant is pronounced as semivowel in onglide position, i.e. between an onset consonant and a following vowel.
Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
s and
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
s are outlined in the table below. Hovering the mouse cursor over them will reveal the appropriate
IPA
IPA commonly refers to:
* India pale ale, a style of beer
* International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation
* Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound
IPA may also refer to:
Organizations International
* Insolvency Practitioners ...
information, while in the rest of the article hovering the mouse cursor over forms will reveal the appropriate English
translation
Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...
.
Morphology
Nouns
Hindustani distinguishes two genders (masculine and feminine), two noun types (
count
Count (feminine: countess) is a historical title of nobility in certain European countries, varying in relative status, generally of middling rank in the hierarchy of nobility. Pine, L. G. ''Titles: How the King Became His Majesty''. New York: ...
and non-count), two
numbers
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...
nominative
In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Engl ...
,
oblique
Oblique may refer to:
* an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / )
*Oblique angle, in geometry
*Oblique triangle, in geometry
* Oblique lattice, in geometry
* Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the b ...
, and
vocative
In grammar, the vocative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which is used for a noun that identifies a person (animal, object, etc.) being addressed, or occasionally for the noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and numer ...
). Nouns may be further divided into two classes based on
declension
In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ar ...
, called type-I, type-II, and type-III. The basic difference between the two categories is that the former two have characteristic
termination
Termination may refer to:
Science
*Termination (geomorphology), the period of time of relatively rapid change from cold, glacial conditions to warm interglacial condition
*Termination factor, in genetics, part of the process of transcribing RNA ...
s in the nominative singular while the latter does not.
The table below displays the suffix paradigms. A
hyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. ''Son-in-law'' is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes (figure d ...
symbol (for the marked type-I) denotes change from the original termination to another (for example ''laṛkā'' to ''laṛke'' in the masculine singular oblique), whereas a
plus
Plus may refer to:
Mathematics
* Addition
* +, the mathematical sign
Music
* ''+'' (Ed Sheeran album), (pronounced "plus"), 2011
* ''Plus'' (Cannonball Adderley Quintet album), 1961
* ''Plus'' (Matt Nathanson EP), 2003
* ''Plus'' (Martin Ga ...
sign (for the unmarked type-II) denotes an ending which should be added (''seb'' to ''sebõ'' in the masculine plural oblique). -Ø denotes that no suffix is added to the noun stem. The next table of noun
declension
In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ar ...
s shows the above noun case paradigms in action.
Notesː
# The
semi-consonant
In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are the ...
-y- is added after the noun stem before adding the declension suffix in the plural declension when the noun stem ends in a vowel.
# A small number of marked masculine nouns like ''kuā̃'' display
nasalization
In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is .
In the Internationa ...
of all terminations.
# Some masculine nouns (which refer to family relations) ending in -ā don't change in the nominative plural and fall in the unmarked category. i.e. ''pāpā'' "father", ''vālid'' "father", ''cācā'' "
uncle
An uncle is usually defined as a male relative who is a sibling of a parent or married to a sibling of a parent. Uncles who are related by birth are second-degree relatives. The female counterpart of an uncle is an aunt, and the reciprocal relat ...
", ''rājā'' "
king
King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king.
*In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...
".
# Unmarked nouns ending in ''-ū'' and ''-ī'' generally shorten this to ''-u'' and ''-i'' before the oblique (and vocative) plural terminations, with the latter also inserting the semivowel ''y''.
# Many feminine
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
loanwords such as ''bhāṣā'' ('language') and ''mātā'' (mother) end in ''-ā'', therefore the ending ''-ā'' is not always a reliable indicator of noun gender.
# In Urdu, many Arabic words may retain their original dual and
plural
The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...
markings in Urdu. i.e. ''vālid'' "father" → ''vālidain'' "
parent
A parent is a caregiver of the offspring in their own species. In humans, a parent is the caretaker of a child (where "child" refers to offspring, not necessarily age). A ''biological parent'' is a person whose gamete resulted in a child, a male t ...
s".
# The ''-iyā'' ending is also not always a reliable indicator of gender or noun type. Some words such as ''pahiyā'' ('wheel') and
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
''takiyā'' ('pillow') are masculine type-I: ('wheels'), ''takiye'' ('pillows'). Feminine loanwords such as
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
''duniyā'' ('world') and
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
loan
In finance, a loan is the lending of money by one or more individuals, organizations, or other entities to other individuals, organizations, etc. The recipient (i.e., the borrower) incurs a debt and is usually liable to pay interest on that d ...
s ending in final unpronounced ''-h'' are handled as masculine marked nouns. Hence → . The former is the Urdu spelling, the latter the Hindi. The pronunciation is in both cases.
Adjectives
Adjective
In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Tra ...
s may be divided into declinable and indeclinable categories. Declinables are marked, through termination, for the gender, number, case of the nouns they qualify. The set of declinable adjective terminations is similar but greatly simplified in comparison to that of noun terminations. Indeclinable adjectives are completely invariable, and can end in either
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
s or
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
s (including ''ā'' and ''ī ''). A number of declinables display nasalisation of all terminations. Nominative masculine singular form (''-ā'') is the
citation form
In morphology and lexicography, a lemma (plural ''lemmas'' or ''lemmata'') is the canonical form, dictionary form, or citation form of a set of word forms. In English, for example, ''break'', ''breaks'', ''broke'', ''broken'' and ''breaking'' a ...
.
All adjectives can be used either attributively, predicatively, or substantively. Substantively they are declined as nouns rather than adjectives. The semblative postposition ''sā'' is used with adjectives for modifying or lightening their meaning; giving them an "-ish", "-esque", "like", or "quite" sense. e.g. ''nīlā'' "blue" → ''nīlā sā'' "bluish". Its emphasis is rather ambiguous, sometimes enhancing, sometimes toning down, the sense of the adjective.
* ''Examples of declinable (type-I) adjectives:'' ''baṛā'' "big", ''choṭā'' "small", ''acchā'' "good", ''burā'' "bad", ''kālā'' "black", ''ṭhanḍā'' "cold"..
* ''Examples of declinable (type-II) adjectives:'' ''dāyā̃'' ''"right (direction)", bāyā̃ "left (direction)".''
* ''Examples of indeclinable adjectives'': ''xarāb'' "bad", ''sāf'' "clean", ''bhārī'' "heavy", ''murdā'' "dead", ''sundar'' "beautiful", ''pāgal'' "crazy/mad", ''lāl'' "red".
Comparatives and superlatives
Comparison
Comparison or comparing is the act of evaluating two or more things by determining the relevant, comparable characteristics of each thing, and then determining which characteristics of each are similar to the other, which are different, and t ...
s are made by using the
instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to instru ...
postposition
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
''se'' ( see below) the noun takes the oblique case and the combination of ''"noun + postposition"'' gets the instrumental case, and words like ''aur'', ''zyādā'' ("more") and ''kam'' ("less") are added for relative comparisons. The word for "more" (zyādā) is optional, while "less" (kam) is required, so that in the absence of either, "more" will be inferred.
In the absence of an object of comparison the word for "more" is now no longer optional:
Superlatives are made through comparisons with ''sab'' ("all") with the instrumental postposition ''se'' as the suffix. Comparisons using "least" are rare; it is more common to use an antonym.
In Sanskritised and Persianised
register
Register or registration may refer to:
Arts entertainment, and media Music
* Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc.
* ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller
* Registration (organ), th ...
s of Hindustani, comparative and superlative adjectival forms using suffixes derived from those languages can be found.
Numerals
The numeral systems of several of the Indo-Aryan languages, including Hindustani and Nepali, are typical
decimal
The decimal numeral system (also called the base-ten positional numeral system and denary or decanary) is the standard system for denoting integer and non-integer numbers. It is the extension to non-integer numbers of the Hindu–Arabic numeral ...
systems, but contracted to the extent that nearly every number 1–99 is irregular. The first four, and sixth,
ordinal numbers
In set theory, an ordinal number, or ordinal, is a generalization of ordinal numerals (first, second, th, etc.) aimed to extend enumeration to infinite sets.
A finite set can be enumerated by successively labeling each element with the least n ...
are also irregular. The suffix ''-vā̃'' marks ordinals five and seven onwards. The ordinals decline in the same way as the declinable adjectives. The suffix -''gunā'' (translates as "times" as in multiplying) marks the multipliers which for the first three multipliers changes the numeral root. The collective forms of numerals take the same form as the oblique plural case for masculine nouns. They are formed by adding the suffix -''õ'. There are two types of adverbials. The first type is formed using the suffix -''bārā'' but only for the numerals 2, 3, and 4 (but it's rarely used for 3 and even more rarely for 4). The second type of adverbial is constructed periphrastically using the quantifier ''bār'' meaning "times" (as in turns). The adverbial "''dobārā''" could be translated as "again" or "for a second time", similarly "''tibārā''" and "''caubārā''" mean "for a third time" and "for a fourth time" respectively. However, the periphrasatic adverbial constructions "''do bār''", "''tīn bār''" etc. translate as "two times", "three times" etc. respectively.
''H = Hindi; U = Urdu''
Postpositions
The aforementioned
inflection
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...
al case system only goes so far on its own, and rather serves as that upon which is built a system of
agglutinative
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative langu ...
suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
es or
particle
In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass.
They vary greatly in size or quantity, from ...
s known as
postposition
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
s, which parallel
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
's
preposition
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
s. It is their use with a noun or verb that necessitates the noun or verb taking the oblique case (though the bare oblique is also sometimes used
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...
ially), and it is with them that the locus of grammatical function or "case-marking" then lies. There are eight such "one-word" primary case-marking postpositions.
Primary postpositions
* Out of these 8 postpositions, the
genitive
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
and semblative postpositions ''kā'' & ''sā'' decline to agree with the
gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...
,
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
, and case of the object it shows possession of and the object whose semblance is described.
* For some verbs like ''bolnā'' (to speak/say), the speaker can use both the
instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to instru ...
marker ''se'' and the
accusative
The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...
/ dative marker ''ko''. For example, ''rāhul se bolo'' and ''rāhul ko bolo'' both translate to the same ''"Say it to Rahul.".'' However, the nuance expressed by both are different, instrumental marker ''se'' has a softer tone to it. ''rāhul se bolo'' is more like a suggestion in form of an imperative while ''rāhul ko bolo'' is an order.
* Beyond the list above, there are a large range of compound postpositions, constructed majoritarily from the genitive marker ''kā'' (in its oblique cases ''ke'' & ''kī'') plus an adverb. When using with pronouns, these all the compound postpositions can only be used with the genitive oblique case pronouns and the genitive ''kī/ke'' must be omitted before attaching them with the genitive oblique case.
Secondary postpositions
Some compound postpositions do not have the genitive marker as their primary postposition, such as:
Tertiary postpositions
Some other compound postpositions with two secondary postpositions (called tertiary postposition) can be constructed by adding primary postpositions to some of the compound postpositions shown above.
Pronouns
Personal and non-personal pronouns
Hindustani has
personal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...
s for the first and second persons, while for the third person
demonstrative
Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
s are used, which can be categorised deictically as proximate and non-proximate. ''tū'', ''tum'', and ''āp'' are the three ''2P'' pronouns, constituting a threefold scale of sociolinguistic formality: respectively, ''intimate'', ''familiar'', and ''formal''. The ''2P'' intimate conjugations are grammatically singular while the ''2P'' familiar and formal conjugations are grammatically plural. For the non-personal pronouns (demonstrative, relative, and interrogative) the plural forms are also the formal forms.
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not co ...
s in Hindustani do not distinguish
gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...
however they distinguish the
nominative
In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Engl ...
,
oblique
Oblique may refer to:
* an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / )
*Oblique angle, in geometry
*Oblique triangle, in geometry
* Oblique lattice, in geometry
* Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the b ...
, and the common
accusative
The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...
grammatical case
A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and Numeral (linguistics), numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In vari ...
s. The latter-most, often called a set of contracted forms, is used synonymously with the dative/accusative pronoun constructed from the oblique case by suffixing the dative/accusative
postposition
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
''ko''. So, for e.g., ''mujhe'' and ''mujhko'' are synonymous dative/accusative pronouns.
The ''1P'' and ''2P'' pronouns (except the formal ''2P'' pronoun ''āp'') have their own distinctive genitive forms ''merā'', ''hamārā'', ''terā'', & ''tumhārā'' unlike the non-personal pronouns whose genitive forms are constructed employing the
oblique case
In grammar, an oblique (abbreviated ; from la, casus obliquus) or objective case (abbr. ) is a nominal case other than the nominative case, and sometimes, the vocative.
A noun or pronoun in the oblique case can generally appear in any role exc ...
pronoun to which the genitive postposition ''kā'' is suffixed (''OBL''. + ''kā''). The personal pronouns (except the formal 2P ''āp'') colloquially can also take the genitive oblique case before primary postpositions. So, instead of ''mujhe'' or ''mujhko'', the
periphrastic
In linguistics, periphrasis () is the use of one or more function words to express meaning that otherwise may be expressed by attaching an affix or clitic to a word. The resulting phrase includes two or more collocated words instead of one in ...
construction ''mere ko'' is fairly commonly heard as a synonym to ''mujhe/mujhko'' in colloquial speech.
To construct the ergative case pronouns, the ergative postposition ''ne'' is suffixed to the nominative case forms rather than the oblique case forms for the personal pronouns, while the ''
demonstrative
Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
interrogative
An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its declarative counterpart "Hannah is ...
'' pronouns have unique ergative oblique case forms to which ''ne'' gets suffixed. So, rather than *''mujh-ne'' and *''tujh-ne'', it's ''maĩ-ne'' and ''tū-ne'', and for the non-personal pronouns (e.g., for demonstrative plural) it's ''inhõ-ne'' and ''unhõ-ne.'' The ''1P'' plural and the ''2P'' familiar pronouns also have an emphatic ergative case form which respectively are ''hamī̃ne'' and ''tumhī̃ne'' which are derived using the exclusive emphatic particle ''hī'' as ''ham + hī + ne'' and ''tum + hī + ne.'' For the rest of the personal pronouns, the inclusive emphatic particle ''hī'' must come after the pronoun in ergative case and never between the pronoun and the postposition ''ne''. So, rather than *''maĩ-hī-ne'', it's periphrastically constructed as ''maĩne hī.'' As for the non-personal pronouns, both ways of constructing the emphatic forms are grammatically valid. So, for e.g. the demonstrative proximal singular emphatic pronoun ''isīne'' and ''isne hī'' are synonymous. The emphatic forms for the relative pronouns are constructed periphrastically as well, but they instead use the inclusive emphatic particle ''bhī.'' So, the emphatic form of the relative singular ergative pronoun ''jisne'' is ''jisne bhī'' meaning "whoever" and not ''*jis-bhī-ne'', which not a valid construction.
Compound postpositions must be used with the genitive oblique cases when using them with the personal pronouns (except the ''2P'' formal ''āp''). So, when using the compound postposition ''ke andar – "inside"'', *''mujh-ke andar'' and *''mujh andar'' are grammatically invalid constructions and instead it should be ''mere andar –'' ''"inside me"''. The compound postpositions that have the primary postposition ''kī'' in place of ''kā'' must have the genitive oblique case declined to the feminine gender. So, when using the postposition ''kī taraf'' – "towards", it should be ''merī taraf'' and not ''*mere taraf.''
;Note:
# Postpositions are treated as
bound morpheme
In linguistics, a bound morpheme is a morpheme (the elementary unit of morphosyntax) that can appear only as part of a larger expression; a free morpheme (or unbound morpheme) is one that can stand alone. A bound morpheme is a type of bound form, ...
s after pronouns in Hindi, but as separate words in Urdu.
# The varying forms for the demonstrative nominative case pronouns constitute one of the small number of grammatical differences between Hindi and Urdu. In Hindi, yah "this" / ye "these" / vah "that" / ve "those" are considered the literary pronoun set while in Urdu, ye "this, these" / vo "that, those" is the only pronoun set.
# The above section on postpositions noted that ko (the dative/accusative case) marks direct objects if
definite
In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between referents or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those which are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical d ...
. As "the most specific thing of all is an individual", persons (or their pronouns) nearly always take the dative case or postposition.
# It is very common practice to use plural pronouns (and their accompanying conjugation) in formal situations, thus tum can be used in the second person when referring to one person. Similarly, some speakers prefer plural ham over singular maĩ. This is usually not quite the same as the "
royal we
The royal ''we'', majestic plural (), or royal plural, is the use of a plural pronoun (or corresponding plural-inflected verb forms) used by a single person who is a monarch or holds a high office to refer to themselves. A more general term fo ...
"; it is rather colloquial.
Reflexive pronouns
''apnā'' is a (genitive)
reflexive pronoun
A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that refers to another noun or pronoun (its antecedent) within the same sentence.
In the English language specifically, a reflexive pronoun will end in ''-self'' or ''-selves'', and refer to a previously n ...
: "my/your/etc. (own)". Using non-reflexive and reflexive together gives emphasis; e.g. ''merā apnā'' "my (very) own". ''xud'', ''āp'', and ''svayam'' are some (nominative; non-genitive) others: "my/your/etc.-self". Bases for oblique usage are usually ''apne (self)'' or ''apne āp (automatically)''. The latter alone can also mean "of one's own accord"; ''āpas mẽ'' means "among/between oneselves".
Indefinite quantifier pronouns
''koī'' and ''kuch'' are
indefinite pronoun
An indefinite pronoun is a pronoun which does not have a specific familiar referent. Indefinite pronouns are in contrast to definite pronouns.
Indefinite pronouns can represent either count nouns or noncount nouns. They often have related for ...
animate
Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most anima ...
singular ("someone") and ''kuch'' for animate plural and inanimates ("something"). As quantifiers/adjectives ''koī'' is used for singular
count noun
In linguistics, a count noun (also countable noun) is a noun that can be modified by a quantity and that occurs in both singular and plural forms, and that can co-occur with quantificational determiners like ''every'', ''each'', ''several'', ...
s and ''kuch'' for mass nouns and plural count nouns. ''koī'' takes the form ''kisī'' in the oblique. The form ''kaī'' is a
paucal
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and other languages present number categories of ...
equivalent to ''koī'', being used in the context of "several" or "a few" things. ''kuch'' can also act as an
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...
, qualifying an adjective, meaning "rather". ''koī'' preceding a number takes the meaning of "about, approximately". In this usage it does not oblique to ''kisī''.
Adverbial pronouns
Note:
* The feminine plural forms are commonly used as singular respect forms and the feminine singular forms often are used interchangeably with the feminine plural forms.
* The declension pattern followed is the same as how genitive pronouns and postpositions decline.
Emphatic pronouns
Emphatic pronouns of Hindustani are formed by combining the exclusive emphatic particle ''hī'' or the inclusive emphatic particle ''bhī'' (with the interrogatory and relative pronouns respectively) and the pronoun in their regular oblique and nominative case. Usually, combining the emphatic particles and the pronouns with end with the consonant -h form a new set of emphatic nominative case and emphatic oblique case pronouns. The rest of the pronouns can also be combined with the exclusive emphatic particle but they do not form true pronouns, but simply add the emphatic particle as an adposition after them. The Relative and Interrogatory pronouns can only take the inclusive emphatic particle ''bhī'' as an adposition and never the exclusive emphatic particle ''hī.''
Adverbs
Hindustani has few underived forms.
Adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...
s may be derived in ways such as the following —
# Simply obliquing some nouns and adjectives:
#* ''nīcā'' "low" → ''nīce'' "down"
#* ''sīdhā'' "straight" → ''sīdhe'' "straight"
#* ''dhīrā'' "slow" → ''dhīre'' "slowly"
#* ''saverā'' "morning" → ''savere'' "in the morning"
#* ''ye taraf'' "this direction" → ''is taraf'' "in this direction/this way"
#* ''kalkattā'' "
Calcutta
Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...
" → ''kalkatte'' "to Calcutta".
# Nouns using the instrumental marker ''se'' "by, with, -ly":
#* ''zor'' "force" → ''zor se'' "forcefully" (lit. "with force")
#* ''dhyān'' "attention" → ''dhyān se'' "attentively" (lit. "with attention")
# Adjectives using post-positional phrases involving "way, manner":
#* ''acchā'' "good" → ''acche se'' "well" (lit. "by/in a good way")
#* ''xās'' "special" → ''xās taur pe'' "especially" (lit. "on a special way")
# Verbs in conjunctive form:
#* ''hãs'' "laugh" → ''hãske'' "laughingly" (lit. "having laughed")
#* ''meherbānī kar'' "do kindness" → ''meherbānī karke'' "kindly, please" (lit. "having done kindness")
# Formative suffixes from Sanskrit or Perso-Arabic in higher registers of Hindi or Urdu
#* Skt. ''sambhava'' "possible" + ' → ' "possibly".
#* Ara. ''ittifāq'' "chance" + ''-an'' → ''ittifāqan'' "by chance", "coincidentally".
Verbs
Overview
The Hindustani
verb
A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
al system is largely structured around a combination of
aspect
Aspect or Aspects may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art
* Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company
* Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England
* ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
and tense/ mood. Like the nominal system, the Hindustani verb involves successive layers of (inflectional) elements to the right of the lexical base.
Hindustani has 3 aspects:
perfective
The perfective aspect ( abbreviated ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole; i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the i ...
, habitual, and progressive, each having overt morphological correlates. These are
participle
In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
forms, inflecting for
gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...
and
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
by way of a vowel termination, like adjectives. The perfective, though displaying a "number of irregularities and morphophonemic adjustments", is the simplest, being just the
verb stem
In linguistics, a word stem is a part of a word responsible for its lexical meaning. The term is used with slightly different meanings depending on the morphology of the language in question. In Athabaskan linguistics, for example, a verb stem ...
followed by the agreement vowel. The habitual forms from the
imperfective
The imperfective (abbreviated or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical aspect used to describe ongoing, habitual, repeated, or similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. Although many languages have a g ...
participle; verb stem, plus -''t''-, then vowel. The continuous forms
periphrastic
In linguistics, periphrasis () is the use of one or more function words to express meaning that otherwise may be expressed by attaching an affix or clitic to a word. The resulting phrase includes two or more collocated words instead of one in ...
ally through
compound
Compound may refer to:
Architecture and built environments
* Compound (enclosure), a cluster of buildings having a shared purpose, usually inside a fence or wall
** Compound (fortification), a version of the above fortified with defensive struc ...
ing ( see below) with the perfective of ''rahnā'' "to stay".
The copula ''honā'' "to be" can be put into five grammatical moods:
indicative
A realis mood ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Mos ...
infinitive
Infinitive (abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all languages. The word is deri ...
, the imperative, and the conjunctive. Mentioned morphological conditions such as the subjunctive, "presumptive", etc. are applicable to both copula roots for auxiliary usage with aspectual forms ''and'' to non-copula roots directly for often unspecified (non-aspectual)
finite
Finite is the opposite of infinite. It may refer to:
* Finite number (disambiguation)
* Finite set, a set whose cardinality (number of elements) is some natural number
* Finite verb, a verb form that has a subject, usually being inflected or marke ...
forms.
Finite verb
Traditionally, a finite verb (from la, fīnītus, past participle of to put an end to, bound, limit) is the form "to which number and person appertain", in other words, those inflected for number and person. Verbs were originally said to be ''fin ...
al
agreement Agreement may refer to:
Agreements between people and organizations
* Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law
* Trade agreement, between countries
* Consensus, a decision-making process
* Contract, enforceable in a court of law
** Meeting o ...
is with the nominative subject, except in the '' transitive perfective'', where it is with the
direct object
In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
, with the erstwhile subject taking the ergative construction ''-ne'' (see
postpositions
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
above). The perfective aspect thus displays split ergativity.
Tabled below on the left are the paradigms for adjectival
concord
Concord may refer to:
Meaning "agreement"
* Pact or treaty, frequently between nations (indicating a condition of harmony)
* Harmony, in music
* Agreement (linguistics), a change in the form of a word depending on grammatical features of other ...
(A), here only slightly different from that introduced previously: the f. pl. can nasalise under certain conditions. To the right are the paradigms for
personal
Personal may refer to:
Aspects of persons' respective individualities
* Privacy
* Personality
* Personal, personal advertisement, variety of classified advertisement used to find romance or friendship
Companies
* Personal, Inc., a Washington, ...
concord (P), used by the subjunctive.
Copula in Hindustani
All the verbs in Hindustani except the verb ''honā'' (to be) are
defective
Defective may refer to::
*Defective matrix, in algebra
*Defective verb, in linguistics
*Defective, or ''haser'', in Hebrew orthography, a spelling variant that does not include mater lectionis
*Something presenting an anomaly, such as a product de ...
and cannot be conjugated into these following moods and tenses in their non-aspectual forms (or simple aspect):
* ''present indicative''
* ''imperfect indicative''
* ''presumptive mood''
* ''present subjunctive''
The verb ''honā'' (to be) serves as the copula whose conjugations are used to form the three aspectual (or compound) forms of verbs (habitual, perfective, and progressive). In the tables below all the conjugations of the copula ''honā'' (to be) are shown on the left and all the conjugations of the verb ''karnā'' (to do) (like which all other verbs have conjugations) are shown on the right.
''1'' ''the pronouns tum and āp can be used in both singular and plural sense by adding plural indicator words'' ''like sab (all) and log (people), akin to the English pronouns you'' and ''y'all.''
''2 the contrafactual mood serves as both the past subjunctive and the past conditional mood.''
Compound tenses
Periphrastic Hindustani verb forms consist of two elements. The first of these two elements is the aspect marker. The second element (the copula) is the common tense-mood marker.
Mood & aspects
Hindustani has three aspects, ''Habitual aspect'', ''Perfective Aspect'' and the ''Progressive Aspect''. To construct the progressive aspect and forms, Hindustani makes use of the progressive participle ''rahā'' which is derived from the verb ''rahnā'' ("to stay" or "to remain"). Unlike English and many other Indo-European languages, Hindustani does differentiate between Continuous and the Progressive aspects. So, for e.g. the sentence "''maĩ śarṭ pahan rahā hū̃''" will always translate as "''I am (in the process) of wearing a shirt.''" and it can never be used to mean "''I am (already) wearing a shirt''.". In English, however, ''"I am wearing a shirt."'' can be used to mean both the idea of progressive action and a continuous action. To convey the continuous state of an action the ''perfective adjectival participle'' is employed. So, ''"I am (already) wearing a shirt."'' translates in to Hindustani as "''maĩ śarṭ pahnā huā hū̃.''" All the personal compounds forms of the verb ''karnā'' (to do) in all the three aspect and all the grammatical moods are shown in the table below:
Different copulas
The ''habitual'', ''progressive'', and ''imperfect'' aspectual participles can be used with copulas other than ''honā'' ''(to be)'' such as ''rahnā (to stay)'', ''ānā (to come)'', ''jānā (to go)''. These copulas can be converted into their participle forms and can be conjugated to form personal compound aspectual forms. Each of the four copulas provides a unique nuance to the aspect.
Participles
The participle forms of any verb is constructed by adding suffixes to the verb root. The participle forms of the verb ''karnā'' ''(to do)'' are shown in the tables below:
Verb forms
A summary of all verb forms is given in the tables below. The sample verb is intransitive ''dauṛnā'' "to run", and the sample inflection is 3rd. masc. sg. (P = ''e'', A = ''ā'') where applicable.
Notes
*Much of the above chart information derives from .
*The future tense is formed by adding the suffix ''gā'' (~ ''ge'' ~ ''gī'') to the subjunctive, which is a contraction of ''gaā'' (= ''gayā'', perfective participle of ''jānā'' "to go"). The future suffix, conjunctive participle, and suffix ''vālā'' are treated as bound morphemes in written Hindi, but as separate words in written Urdu.
*The present copula () seems not to follow along the lines of the regular P system of terminations; while the subjunctive copula () is thoroughly irregular. So here are all of their forms.
*For the 1. subj. sg. copula and list ''hū̃'' while lists ''hoū̃''.
* lists the formal imperative ending as ''-iye'', while lists it as ''-ie'' but ''-iye'' after ''ā, o, ū''.
*The euphonic
glide
Glide may refer to:
* Gliding flight, to fly without thrust
Computing
*Glide API, a 3D graphics interface
*Glide OS, a web desktop
*Glide (software), an instant video messenger
*Glide, a molecular docking software by Schrödinger (company), Schr ...
''y'' is inserted in perfective participles between prohibited vowel clusters. It is historically the remnant of the old perfective marker. The clusters are ''a + ā'', ''ā + ā'', ''o + ā'', and ''ī + ā'', resulting in ''āyā'', ''ayā'', ''oyā'', ''iyā''. e.g. ''khāyā/khāye/khāyī/khāyī̃'' (''khā''- "eat").
*In addition, the combinations ''ī + ī'' and ''i + ī'' give ''ī''. e.g. ''piyā/piye/pī/pī̃'' (''pī-'' "drink").
*As stated, agreement in the transitive perfective is with the direct object, with the erstwhile subject taking the ergative postposition ''ne''. If however the direct object takes the postposition ''ko'' (marking
definiteness
In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between referents or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those which are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical d ...
), or if no direct object is expressed, then agreement neutralises to default m. sg. ''-ā''.
*Is this regard, there are a small number of verbs that while perhaps logically transitive still do not take ''ne'' and continue to agree with the subject, in the perfective. e.g. ''lānā'' "to bring", ''bhūlnā'' "to forget", ''milnā'' "to meet", etc.
*Besides supplying the copulas, ''honā'' "to be" can be used aspectually: ''huā'' "happened, became"; ''hotā'' "happens, becomes, is"; ''ho rahā'' "happening, being".
*''-ke'' can be used as a colloquial alternative to ''-kar'' for the conjunctive participle of any verb.
*Hindustani displays a very small number of irregular forms, spelled out in the cells below. Historically, there were many more irregular forms (e.g. ''muā'' for ''marnā'' 'to die') but most have been regularised. Notably, some dialects regularise the perfective of ''karnā'' to ''karā'' and the formal imperative of ''kijiye'' to ''kariye''.
* The irregular forms are underlined in the above table.
* There are two subjunctive stems for the verb ''honā,'' one being regular and the other being irregular. The regular set is the ''future subjunctive forms'' and the regular ones are the as the ''present subjunctive forms''. ''honā'' is the only verb in Hindi to have distinct forms for the future and the present subjunctive, for all other forms there is one common subjunctive form which is used as both the present and the future subjunctive.
*However, it is ''jā-'' that is used as the perfective stem in the rare instance of an intransitive verb like ''jānā'' being expressed passively, such as in a passivized imperative/subjunctive construction: ''ghar jāyā jāye?'' "Shall ego home?" (lit. "Shall home be gone to y us").
Set of related verbs
Transitives are morphologically contrastive in Hindustani, leading to the existence of related verb sets divisible along such lines. While the derivation of such forms shows patterns, they do reach a level of variegation so as to make it somewhat difficult to outline all-encompassing rules. Furthermore, some sets may have as many as four to five distinct members; also, the meaning of certain members of given sets may be idiosyncratic.
These below are the verb forms that a verb in Hindi can have —
# Intransitive
## Involitional — these are actions that cannot be done intentionally.
### Dative — these involitional verbs require the subject to be in the dative case.
### Non-dative — these verbs require the verb to be in the nominative case.
## Volitional — these are actions that can be intentionally done.
### Ergative — these verbs can take in the ergative case (the subject can be in the ergative case).
### Non-ergative — these verbs cannot take in the ergative case (the subject can only be in the nominative case).
# Transitive
## Direct — the subject themselves experiences the action but the subject and the object are not the same
## Indirect — the subject imparts the action onto the object, the object is the experiencer of the action, it is usually translated into English as "to make (someone/something) verb"
## Reflexive — the verb does action on the subject itself, the doer and experiencer of the action is the same subject
## Causative — the subject causes the action to happen. ''Translationː'' ''"to cause to be verbed"'', the agent takes the instrumental postposition ''se''. Thus ''Y se Z banvānā'' = "''to cause Z to be made by Y''" = "''to cause Y to make Z''" = "''to have Z made by Y''" = "''to have Y make Z''", etc.
Starting from direct transitive verb forms, the other verb stems i.e., intransitive, causative, reflexive, indirect stems are produced according to these following (not exhaustive) assorted rules —
# Root vowel changeː
#* ''a → ā''
#* ''u / ū → o''
#* ''i / ī → e''
# Sometimes the root vowel change accompanies the root's final consonant changeː
#* ''k → c''
#* ''ṭ → r̥''
#* ''l → Ø''
# Suffixation of ''-ā'' to form the indirect or reflexive formː
#* Root vowel changeː ''ū/o → u; e/ai/ā/ī → i''
#* Insertion of
semivowel
In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are the ...
''l'' between such vowel-terminating stems
# Suffixation of -''vā'' (in place of ''-ā'' where it would occur) to form the causative verb stem
Light verbs
Compound verb
In linguistics, a compound verb or complex predicate is a multi-word compound that functions as a single verb. One component of the compound is a ''light verb'' or ''vector'', which carries any inflections, indicating tense, mood, or aspect, bu ...
s, a highly visible feature of Hindi–Urdu grammar, consist of a verbal stem plus a
light verb
In linguistics, a light verb is a verb that has little semantic content of its own and forms a predicate with some additional expression, which is usually a noun. Common verbs in English that can function as light verbs are ''do'', ''give'', ''have ...
. The light verb (also called "subsidiary", "explicator verb", and "vector") loses its own independent meaning and instead "lends a certain shade of meaning" to the main or stem verb, which "comprises the lexical core of the compound". While almost any verb can act as a main verb, there is a limited set of productive light verbs. Shown below are prominent such light verbs, with their independent meaning first outlined, followed by their semantic contribution as auxiliaries. Finally, having to do with the ''manner'' of an occurrence, compounds verbs are mostly used with completed actions and imperatives, and much less with negatives, conjunctives, and contexts continuous or speculative. This is because non-occurrences cannot be described to have occurred in a particular manner. The auxiliaries when combined with the main verb provides an aspectual sense to the main verb it modifies. Light verbs such as ''jānā "to go", ānā "to come", cuknā'' when combined with the main verb give the formed compound verb a perfective aspect, while retaining the original meaning of the main verb.
The first three light verbs in the above table are the most common of auxiliaries, and the "least marked", or "lexically nearly colourless". The nuance conveyed by an auxiliary can often be very subtle, and need not always be expressed with different words in English translation. ''lenā'' and ''denā'', transitive verbs, occur with transitives, while intransitive ''jānā'' occurs mostly with intransitives; a compound of a transitive and ''jānā'' will be grammatically intransitive as ''jānā'' is.
Finally, having to do with the ''manner'' of an occurrence, compounds verbs are mostly used with completed actions and imperatives, and much less with negatives, conjunctives, and contexts continuous or speculative. This is because non-occurrences cannot be described to have occurred in a particular manner.
Conjuncts
Another notable aspect of Hindi–Urdu grammar is that of "conjunct verbs", composed of a
noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
or
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Tra ...
paired up with a general verbaliser, most commonly transitive ''karnā'' "to do" or intransitive ''honā'' "to be", "to happen", functioning in the place of what in
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
would be single unified verb. All conjunct verbs formed using ''karnā'' are transitive verbs and all conjunct verbs formed using the verb honā are intransitive verbs.
In the case of an adjective as the non-verbal element, it is often helps to think of ''karnā'' "to do" as supplementarily having the senses of "to cause to be", "to make", "to render", etc.
In the case of a noun as the non-verbal element, it is treated syntactically as the verb's (direct) object (never taking the ''ko'' marker; governing agreement in perfective and infinitival constructions), and the semantic
patient
A patient is any recipient of health care services that are performed by healthcare professionals. The patient is most often ill or injured and in need of treatment by a physician, nurse, optometrist, dentist, veterinarian, or other health c ...
(or
agent
Agent may refer to:
Espionage, investigation, and law
*, spies or intelligence officers
* Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another
** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuranc ...
: see ''gālī khānā'' below) of the conjunct verbal expression is often expressed/marked syntactically as a genitive postposition (''-kā'' ~ ''ke'' ~ ''kī'') of the noun.
With
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
it is the verb stems themselves that are used. All English loan words are used by forming compound verbs in Hindi by using either ''honā'' (intransitive) or ''karnā'' (transitive).
Passive
The
passive
Passive may refer to:
* Passive voice, a grammatical voice common in many languages, see also Pseudopassive
* Passive language, a language from which an interpreter works
* Passivity (behavior), the condition of submitting to the influence of o ...
construction is
periphrastic
In linguistics, periphrasis () is the use of one or more function words to express meaning that otherwise may be expressed by attaching an affix or clitic to a word. The resulting phrase includes two or more collocated words instead of one in ...
. It is formed from the perfective participle by addition of the auxiliary ''jānā'' "to go"; i.e. ''likhnā'' "to write" → ''likhā jānā'' "to be written". The agent is marked by the instrumental postposition ''se''. Furthermore, both intransitive and transitive verbs may be grammatically passivized to show physical/psychological incapacity, usually in negative sentences. Lastly, intransitives often have a passive sense, or convey unintentional action.
Syntax
Word order
Hindustani is a word order free language, in the sense that word order does not usually signal grammatical functions in the language. However, the
unmarked
In linguistics and social sciences, markedness is the state of standing out as nontypical or divergent as opposed to regular or common. In a marked–unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one. The dominant defau ...
word order in Hindustani is SOV. It is neither purely left- nor right-branching, and phenomena of both types can be found. The order of constituents in sentences as a whole lacks governing "hard and fast rules", and frequent deviations can be found from normative word position, describable in terms of a small number of rules, accounting for facts beyond the pale of the label of "SOV".
* Subject precedes the direct object of the sentence if both the dative and the accusative case marks the objects of a sentence. Prescriptively, the relative position is fixed in order to make it unambiguous which is the direct object and which is the indirect object in the sentence as both the dative case and the accusative case is the same in Hindustani and are marked by the same postposition ''ko''.
* Attributive adjectives precede the noun they qualify by default, but can also be placed after the noun, doing that usually makes the sentence sound either more poetic or gives as stronger emphasises on the attribute that the adjective describes.
* Adverbs usually can appear either before or after the verb they qualify.
* Negative markers (''nahī̃, na, mat'') and interrogatives precede the verb by default but can also appear after it, however the position for negation can be more flexible and the negation can occur before or after the auxiliary verbs too if the sentence has an auxiliary verb. Whenever the negation comes after the verbs instead of before the verb, it always emphasises the negation. The negation can never come before a noun.
* kyā ("what?") as the yes-no question marker occurs at the beginning or the end of a clause as its unmarked positions but it can be put anywhere in the sentence except before a verb, where it is instead interpreted as the its interrogative meaning "what". This is frequently dropped in colloquial conversation, and instead, the last word of the question has a higher pitch.
In the example below, it is shown that all word orders make sense for simple sentences, which do not have adjectives, negations and adverbs. As a general rule, whatever information comes first in the sentence gets emphasised and the information which appears at the end of a sentence gets emphasised the least.
As long as both dative and the accusative case are not used in the sentence, the word order flexibility remains. For example, in the table below the locative and the accusative case is used in the same sentence, the word order is flexible because the markers for the locative and the accusative cases are different but in Hindustani, the marker for the accusative and the dative case are the same, which is ko for nouns and the oblique case pronouns or they have their own unique pronoun forms which are the same for dative and the accusative case. Usage of dative/accusative noun + accusative/dative pronoun
When noun and pronoun are used together in a sentence and one is in accusative case while the other is in the dative case, there is no way to differentiate which one is which just by looking at the sentence. Usually in such cases, owing to the default word order of Hindi (which is SOV) which noun/pronoun comes earlier in the sentence becomes the subject of the sentence and what comes later becomes the object of the sentence.
Usage of dative noun + accusative noun
Nouns in Hindi are put in the dative or accusative case first having the noun in the oblique case and then by adding the postposition ''ko'' after it. However, when two nouns are used in a sentence in which one of them is in the accusative case and the other in the dative case, the sentence becomes ambiguous and stops making sense, so, to make sense of the sentence, one of the noun (which is assumed to be in the accusative case) is put into the nominative case and the other one is left as it is (in the dative case). The noun which is put into the nominative case becomes the direct object of the sentence and the other one (which is now in the Accusative case) becomes the indirect object of the sentence.
When both the nouns use the ''ko'' marker, generally, all permutations in which the nouns with the same case marker are adjacent to one another become ambiguous or convey no sense.
Removing the ''ko'' from the word ''sā̃p'' leaves it in the ''nominative case''. Now, it acts as the ''direct object'' of the sentence and saperā becomes the ''indirect object'' of the sentence. The English translation becomes "''Give the snake-charmer a snake.''" and when the opposite is done, the English translation of the sentence becomes "''Give the snake a snake-charmer.''"
Usage of dative pronoun + accusative pronoun
When two pronouns are used in a sentence, all the sentences remain grammatically valid but the ambiguity of precisely telling the subject and the object of the sentence remains. However, just as we did above, converting one the pronoun into nominative case does not work for all pronouns but only for the 3rd person pronouns and doing that for any other pronoun will leave the sentence ungrammatical and without sense. The reason that this works only for the 3rd person pronoun because these are not really the "regular" 3rd person pronouns but are instead the demonstrative pronouns. Hindustani lacks the regular 3rd person pronouns and hence compensates for them by using the demonstrative pronouns.
So, the ambiguity cannot completely be removed in this case here, unless of course it is interpreted that what comes first becomes the subject of the sentence. The English translation becomes either "Give me to that/him/her/it." or "Give me that/him/her/it." depending on which pronoun appears first in the sentence.
Possession
Unlike English and many other Indo-European languages, Hindustani doesn't have a verb which uniquely translate to "to have" of English. Possession is reflected in Hindustani by the genitive marker kā (inflected appropriately) or the postposition ''ke pās'' ("near") and the verb ''honā''. Possible objects of possession fall into the following four main categories in Hindustani,
# Fundamental possessions: These are possessions that are of permanent nature, which one has not obtained but got naturally and cannot be owned. These include, family relations, body parts, etc.
#*For indicating fundamental possessions, ''kā'' appears after the subject of the possession. With personal pronouns, this requires the use of the possessive pronoun (inflected appropriately).
# Non-Fundamental possessions: These are possessions that one has obtained or can be owned. These include possession of any object, living beings (including humans), etc.
#*For indicating non-fundamental possessions, the compound postposition ''ke pās'' (literally, "of near") is used. However, this postposition cannot ever be translated as "near", showing proximity.
# Proximal possessions: These are possessions that show that someone or something has something near themselves.
#*For indicating proximity of the object to the subject, the double compound postposition ''ke'' ''pās mẽ'' (literally, "of near in") is used. It translates as "nearby".
#Dative/Abstract possessions: These are abstract possessions such as pain, problems, issue, wanting, happiness, etc. but sometimes it can also be used to show number of children one has (gave birth to and not adopted).
#*For indicating dative possessions, the pronouns in their dative case or the dative postposition ''ko'' is used.
Note: The verb ''honā'' can be translated as "to be", "to have/possess", "to exist" or "to happen" depending on the context. The third person singular and plural conjugations depending on the context could also be translated as "there is" and "there are" respectively.
Note: Sometimes when talking about physical objects (including animals) both the fundamental and non-fundamental possessions are used interchangeably when the meaning conveyed in both cases doesn't lead to confusion. For example, ''mere do kutte haĩ'' and ''mere pās do kutte haĩ'' (both translating as, "I have two dogs.") are often used interchangeably when referring to pet dogs, with the sentence with the fundamental possession showing or having more emotional attachment. The reason these both are used interchangeably because it is a priori understood that the dogs in the context must be pet dogs. Same happens with the second example above on both the tables conveying the possession of eyes; it is understood that the eyes in the context are one's own. In the contexts where such a priori information is not immediately understood, these two types of possessions cannot be used interchangeably.
Relativisation
Rather than using relative clauses after nouns, as in English, Hindustani uses correlative clauses. In Hindustani, a correlative clause can go before or after the entire clause, the adjective, the noun, the pronoun or the verb it relativises.
Note: The relative pronoun ''jo'' can be used as both relative "''what''" and relative "''who''".
Case-marking and verb agreement
Hindustani has tripartite case-marking, which means that the subject in intransitive clauses, and the agent and the object in transitive clauses each can be marked by a distinct case form. The full set of case distinctions is however only realized in certain clause types.
In ''intransitive'' clauses, the subject is in nominative case. The verb displays
agreement Agreement may refer to:
Agreements between people and organizations
* Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law
* Trade agreement, between countries
* Consensus, a decision-making process
* Contract, enforceable in a court of law
** Meeting o ...
with the subject: depending on aspect and mood, the verb agrees in gender and number, and/or person and number.
In ''transitive'' clauses, there are three patterns:
;1. Perfective clauses with animate/definite object
Fully distinctive case marking is found in perfective clauses with animate and/or definite objects. Here, the agent takes the ergative case marker ''ne'', while the object takes the accusative case marker ''ko''. The verb does not agree with either of the core arguments (agent and object), but is marked per default as third person masculine singular (''calāyā hai'').
;2. Perfective clauses with inanimate/indefinite object
In perfective clauses with an indefinite object, the agent keeps the ergative case marker, but the object is in nominative case. The verb agrees with the object: the perfective form ''calāyī hai'' is marked for feminine gender, agreeing with the gender of the object ''gāṛī''.
;3. Non-perfective clauses
In all other clause types, the agent is in nominative case and triggers agreement on the verb. The object is either in nominative case or accusative case, depending on animacy/definiteness
The following table summarises the three basic case-marking and agreement types.
Differential argument marking
Hindustani, like other Indo-Aryan languages, displays differential case marking on both subjects (DSM) and
objects
Object may refer to:
General meanings
* Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept
** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place
** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter
* Goal, an ...
(DOM). Diachronically, differential argument marking developed very differently for subjects and objects, but for both became prevalent in the 17th century. For subjects, it is predicate-licensed and dependent on semantics, whereas for objects it is discourse-driven.
For subjects, on top of the previously discussed split ergativity (in which perfective case verbs take the ergative ''ne'' on the subject, while other conjugations have an unmarked subject), certain modal auxiliary verbs take different case markers for their subjects.
The most notable instance of DSM is the experiencer dative subject (a type of quirky subject). Verbs indicating sensations (''lagnā'' "to seem"), emotions (''mahsūs honā'' "to feel"), and cognition (''patā honā'' "to be known"), all license the dative case marker ''ko'' on their subjects. This is a cross-lingual phenomenon.
Passive subjects taking the modal auxiliary ''jānā'' 'to go', usually connoting reduced agentivity, take the instrumental ''se''. This construction can also be used to indicate ability.
The dative ''ko'' indicates obligation or necessity. The modal ''honā'' 'to be' and ''paṛnā'' 'to fall' both take this on their subjects.
The accusative marker ''ko'' is only applied when the object is definite, similar to the distinction between ''the'' and ''a(n)'' in English.
Notes
See also
*
Urdu language
Urdu (;"Urdu" ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ur, , link=no, ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, In ...
*
Hindi language
Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...
*
Hindi verbs
Hindi verbs are highly inflected in comparison to English, but markedly simple in comparison to Sanskrit, from which Hindi has inherited its verbal conjugation system (through Prakrit). Verbs in Hindi conjugate according to mood, tense, person ...
Urdu alphabet
The Urdu alphabet (), is the right-to-left alphabet used for Urdu. It is a modification of the Persian script, which is itself a derivative of the Arabic script. The Urdu alphabet has up to 39 or 40 distinct letters with no distinct letter ...
*
Devanagari
Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental syste ...
*
Devanagari transliteration
Devanagari is an Indian script used for many languages of India and Nepal, including Hindi, Marathi, Nepali and Sanskrit. There are several somewhat similar methods of transliteration from Devanagari to the Roman script (a process sometimes ...
*
Hindustani phonology
Hindustani language, Hindustani is the ''lingua franca'' of northern India and Pakistan, and through its two standardized Register (sociolinguistics), registers, Hindi and Urdu, a co-official language of India and co-official and national langua ...
References
Bibliography
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Further reading
*
* (public domain e-book) Contributed by
University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...
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