A comparative study of english and urdu reduplication
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Date
2019
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UMT Lahore
Abstract
Reduplication is a microcosm of both morphology and phonology. It has emerged as an area of heightened linguistic interest recently. Reduplication is a morphological process in which words are repeated, also known as the doubling, copying or repetition process. This thesis is a study of reduplication in Urdu in general, and a description of the types of reduplicative processes in Urdu and English. The present study purports to explain and discuss Urdu reduplicatives in the first place, in so doing, it aims to describe the very nature of Urdu reduplicatives, their social and pragmatic significance, their structure in the Urdu language and how are they different or similar to English reduplicatives. The study also exhibits some crosslinguistic features of reduplicatives with a special reference to English reduplication. The research design for this dissertation is based on qualitative framework of research. The study is both descriptive and exploratory in its scope; it encompasses analytical discussions as well. For the purpose of the analysis of Urdu reduplicative constructions, the theoretical framework of Morphological Doubling Theory (MDT) by Inkelas and Zoll (2009) is chosen. The researcher employed collection of words from Urdu and English dictionaries as the main tool for data collection. The findings revealed that Urdu and English both have two major reduplicative processes: total or complete or full-base reduplication and partial reduplication. The results showed that in the category of partial reduplication English and Urdu languages demonstrated variations. Echo reduplication is more prominent in Urdu language, whereas ablaut reduplication is prevalent in English language.