LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 12 : 12 December 2012
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Who is the M/Other of the Two? A Comparison of the Syntactic Systems of Punjabi and Siraiki

Junaid Hafeez, B.A. (Hons.), M.Phil. Scholar

Introduction

Siraiki and Punjabi are two languages of Indo-Aryan family spoken in Pakistan (Shackle, 1976). According to 2008 Census of Pakistan, 44.15% of the total population speaks Punjabi. Likewise, Siraiki is the language of at least 15 million people (Shackle, 1976). The history of the origins of these two languages is debatable. Supporters of each language are of the view that their language is ancient than the other. Those who support Punjabi do not even consider Siraiki a separate language: they take Siraiki as one of the dialects of Punjabi spoken in southern regions of Punjab. The given paper is an attempt at studying syntactic systems of Siraki and Punjabi by analyzing grammatical categories. It is hoped that this syntactic comparison between these two languages will give a better idea about their origin.

Literature Review/Background

Beames (1867) argue that Punjabi is the language of the area lying between the river Ravi and the river Bias. According to him, Punjabi is mere a dialect of Hindi that digressed from the standard Hindi language. He further proposes that Punjabi had been considered as a separate/autonomous language only because of its Gurmukhi script that has been invented to document sayings and lessons of Guru Nanak 1469-1538), the first Punjabi reformist. This theory is reinforced by the fact that one does not find any mention of Punjabi in Ain-I Akbari (Blochmann, H. (tr.). 1927), a sixteenth century document that discusses Akbar’s administrative affairs in detail. Abu’l Fazl, Akbar’s vizier has documented thirteen languages spoken in India, but he does not include Punjabi. On the other hand, it is stated by the Punjabi language supporters that Siraiki language did not have a script before the partition of sub-continent. It is only after 1947 that Siraiki developed a script for itself, and hence, its birth is recent and that too has been fuelled by the politics. However, Rasoolpuri (1980) argues that Siraiki has been written in Dev Nagri script in the past times. To support his claim, he quotes a saying that has been inscribed on the main gate of the ancient fort of Amrot in Bahawalpur district. The inscription translates into English as: ‘This fort has been occupied by Jam Somro, and Jam Somro arranged repairs of this fort in 1491 A.D.’ Abdul-Haq (1977) contemplates that Siraiki was lingua franca in the sub-continent. He supports his claim by consulting Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India (1967). Smirnov (1975) proposes that though Siraiki is kindred to Punjabi, it has many distinctions: Punjabi is an analytical language whereas Siraiki contains many synthetic forms. It has also been argued by Grierson (1967) that he collected language samples from Sindh, which share resemblances with the language spoken in the neighborhoods of Dera Ghazi Khan. Abdul-Haq (1977) interprets this finding to argue that Siraiki linguistics is different from Hindi or Punjabi because its origin lies in Dravidian languages, not in Indo-Aryan languages.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

JUNAID HAFEEZ, B.A. (Hons.), M.Phil. Scholar
Department of English
Bahauddin Zakariya University
Multan 60000
Pakistan
proem86@hotmail.com
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