Comparative Study of Noun Inflections and Their Functions in English and Astori Dialect of Shina Language: A Morphological Analysis

Abstract

This study aims to highlight and explore the similarities and differences of the noun inflections and their functions in English language and in Astori dialect of Shina language. This research contributes significantly to readers' understanding of the morphology of Shina, and it is of interest to linguists, language educators, and policymakers working on the promotion and preservation of endangered languages in Pakistan. The study has carried out a morphological analysis so as to explore the similarities and differences of noun inflections and their functions in both the languages. For the said analysis, inflections of nouns have been taken into considerations as the stand point of the research work. Findings of the study revealed that Shina nouns are highly inflected as compared to English nouns. The noun inflections are not easy to handle in Shina because noun inflections in Shina (Astori dialect) have more than one function in a single context, but on the other hand, English nouns are easy to handle as they are not that much inflected, and nouns are inflected, in English, hardly to show possessive case in a context. Furthermore, the study found that proper nouns in English are inflected neither in subject position nor do they in object position, however, proper nouns are also inflected in Shina whether they are in subjective case or in objective case. This study targeted only the noun inflections and their functions, further research may be conducted on other aspects of Shina language like; inflections of verb, pronoun adjective, syntactic structures, tense and aspect etc in Shina language.