FUNCTIONS OF URDU SUFFIX IN ENGLISH NOUN

Abstract

This study investigates the compounding of Urdu suffixation with English roots in plural noun formation. The formation of compounding is based on joining two or more constituents from different languages. Urdu is the language of 9.8 million people throughout the world (Jadoon, 2022) and a flexible language to adopt words from different languages. The phenomenon of compound formation in Urdu is not new, it already has adopted different suffixes from Persian and Arabic. English root words with Urdu suffixation are an existent fact that is being observed regularly. This study investigates the phenomenon at the morphological level. For this purpose, Generative morphology theory was adopted and Aronoff’s 1976 model was applied. This research is descriptive and qualitative in nature and in terms of investigation at the morpheme level. A list of thirty words comprised of English roots with Urdu suffixes in six semantical categories of clothing, office items, households, professional titles transportation, and places. Further, a four-step model of data analysis was adopted. The result revealed that two major Urdu suffixes -یں (-even) -وں (-oon) (-were used commonly with English in the compound words formation process.