Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Punjabi Grammar

  Tags: Punjabi | Grammar
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
ihaveacomputer
Triglot
Newbie
Canada
Joined 6834 days ago

21 posts - 52 votes 
Speaks: English*, Hindi, Punjabi
Studies: Urdu, Italian

 
 Message 1 of 6
08 September 2006 at 9:23pm | IP Logged 
Is Punjabi in fact an agglutinative language? The Wikipedia article claims that it is, saying that it is unusual for a Indo-European language, yet true none-the-less. What makes Punjabi agglutinative, exactly? People have said that Hindi and Punjabi are extremely similar grammatically wise, but how can this be true if Punjabi is agglutinative?
1 person has voted this message useful



Heinrich S.
Groupie
Germany
Joined 6937 days ago

63 posts - 85 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 2 of 6
16 June 2011 at 7:46am | IP Logged 
Sorry, this is very interesting, so can anyone provide information on this?
1 person has voted this message useful



ScottScheule
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
scheule.blogspot.com
Joined 5229 days ago

645 posts - 1176 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French

 
 Message 3 of 6
16 June 2011 at 6:01pm | IP Logged 
Which Wikipedia article is this that says Punjabi is agglutinative? I can't find it.
1 person has voted this message useful



unzum
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
soyouwanttolearnalan
Joined 6915 days ago

371 posts - 478 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 4 of 6
16 June 2011 at 6:04pm | IP Logged 
Well, just going from my basic linguistic knowledge and Wikipedia searching skills...

It seems that both Hindi and Punjabi are Subject-Object-Verb languages and both use postpositions instead of prepositions (which English uses).

I couldn't find a quote in the Wikipedia article that said Punjabi was an agglutinative language, however they do state this in the UCLA Punjabi Profile.

Perhaps it's the case that Punjabi has some agglutinative features but isn't a fully agglutinative language (I didn't find it listed in the Wikipedia Agglutinative Language article) . And seeing as Hindi and Punjabi both come from the same language family (Indo-Aryan from the Indo-European family) it makes sense as to why they would be similar grammatically.

No idea why agglutinative languages are rare in Indo-European languages or why Punjabi is agglutinative.

I'll bow out and let someone else who knows more about these particular languages chime in.

Edited by unzum on 16 June 2011 at 6:05pm

2 persons have voted this message useful



Afgjasmine16
Triglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 6007 days ago

29 posts - 55 votes 
Speaks: Pashto*, English, Hindi
Studies: Bengali, Tamil, Indonesian, Turkish

 
 Message 5 of 6
19 June 2011 at 7:58am | IP Logged 
Im almost 80 percent sure Punjabi isn't agglutinative. I'm pretty profecient in Hindi and I cna understand quite a bit of Punjabi. Punjabi has tones and postpostions. But I've never heard of Punjabi being agglutinative.
1 person has voted this message useful



ihaveacomputer
Triglot
Newbie
Canada
Joined 6834 days ago

21 posts - 52 votes 
Speaks: English*, Hindi, Punjabi
Studies: Urdu, Italian

 
 Message 6 of 6
20 June 2011 at 7:44pm | IP Logged 
You're all unable to find the mention of Punjabi being agglutinative on Wikipedia
because I originally posted this thread five years ago! Many thanks to Heinrich for its
revival, however; I have since taken up study of Punjabi, including a year spent
studying the language in Punjab, itself. Perhaps I can now answer my own question.

Punjabi is not agglutinative. Were one to label it as such, many other Indo-European
languages would fall under the same category. Comparing Punjabi to Hindi, the structure
of both languages differ in a few very minor ways. Some Punjabi-specific noun
constructions maintain old case structures from Sanskrit: the locative, instrumental
and the ablative. These are not exactly widespread in the language, however, and tend
to be restricted to certain contexts. That which is most widespread, the ablative,
seems to actually be the tacking on of the postposition "toM" to the end of the word as
an affix, "-oM", as opposed to a maintained Sanskrit case, though I'm not clear on
this. I suppose this feature could be termed agglutinative. It's the only one I
can really think of which possibly fits the bill.

Edited by ihaveacomputer on 20 June 2011 at 7:46pm



5 persons have voted this message useful



If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.3281 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.