Aslam, Maryam2016-04-082016-04-082015https://escholar.umt.edu.pk/handle/123456789/1688Supervisor: Dr Muhammad ShabanThe purpose of this study is to know the present status of Haryanvi language in Pakistan. Haryanvi speech community migrated from the current state of Haryana, India and settled across various parts of Pakistan in 1947. After the migration, Haryanvi speech community eventually came in contact with various dialects and languages spoken across Pakistan. It seems as Haryanvi has been depleting ever since. There are striking differences in the speed of change across the various linguistic levels, such as phonology, lexis, syntax and semantics. The present study explores intergenerational lexical shift in the Haryanvi language. Labov (1963, 1966) argues that language change can be observed through different age groups. Thus, the Apparent Time Hypothesis was considered for studying intergenerational lexical shift in the Haryanvi language. The data was collected from 60 participants belonging to three different age groups. The three age groups were composed of participants whose ages were between 20-30 years, 40-50 years, and 60-80 years, respectively. All the participants were residents of the province Punjab, which is in a way representative of the target population. A list of items of daily use along with their images was administered to elicit their responses. The study shows that there is more likely a significant lexical shift between 20-30 years old Haryanvi speakers. The second age group (40-50 years) was quite successful to retain some words e.g., Janda, Khat, Chora, Choriand so on. However, those who were between 60-80 years seem true representatives of the Haryanvi language because their responses were correct in all instances presented to them. There is reason to believe that the Haryanvi language would suffer badly after the death of last person in this age group. Nevertheless, with these findings we can safely speculate that the Haryanvi language is endangered.MS ThesisHaryanvi languagePakistanHaryanvi speechThesis