A A Morpho-Syntactic Analysis of Pahari Pronouns

Abstract

This study presents the morphosyntactic analysis of pronouns in Pahari Language spoken in the state of Azad Jammu & Kashmir. Seven classes of pronouns have been identified from the data. Pahari marks a distinction between personal pronouns in degree of respect / familiarity in the 2nd person pronoun, and for distance from the speaker in the 3rd person pronoun. The pronouns are marked for the case in the same way as Pahari nouns. When the pronouns are not followed by a postposition and they function as the subject of a verb, they take direct or nominative case, and they are marked with oblique case when they are followed by a postposition. Pahari differs from its sister languages in that the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person singular pronouns do not take ergative postposition while their plural counterparts are marked with ergative postpositions. There are two demonstrative pronouns in Pahari. Each of them is used according to the distance between the addresser and the referent. Three interrogative pronouns have been identified from Pahari data; personal, impersonal and duel. Pahari exhibits only relative one pronoun /dʒʌɽɑː/ that functions with the meaning ‘who, which, that in Pahari. Pahari makes use of reflexive pronouns ʌpʊn and api with the meaning of ‘him/ herself’ and a compound reflexive pronoun /ʌpne ɑːpe/ ‘himself, herself, itself’. The reflexive pronoun ʌpʊn and api has no inflected forms. The study demonstrates that Pahari Personal, demonstrative, reflexive and indefinite pronouns do not inflect for gender and number; these pronouns inflect for case and gender only and number is marked on verb. While relative and possessive pronouns inflect for number, gender and case.

       Keywords: morphosyntax, pahari, pronouns, case, postposition