A COMPARATIVE SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF SUBJECT MOVEMENT IN URDU AND ENGLISH: SENTENCE STRUCTURE IN SYNTAX
Keywords:
Comparative Analysis, English, Minimalist Theory, Sentence Structure, Subject Movement, Syntax, Urdu, Word OrderAbstract
The present research work is a comparative study of subject movement in two languages Urdu and English which are structurally different. This study's background is that comparative syntax has become an important field for the analysis of cross-linguistic variation, sentence formation and second language acquisition. The aim of the study was to highlight the differences between the movement of subjects in Urdu and English, analyze word order, case marking and agreement and draw pedagogical and theoretical implications. The research was based on the theory of Generative Grammar, especially the theory of Minimalist Framework that accounts for movement in terms of feature checking, case assignment and phrase structure operations. Qualitative research paradigm and comparative descriptive method was used. Document analysis was used to collect the data from British National Corpus (BNC), Urdu newspapers, Urdu Lughat Corpus, Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and from standard grammar books. In total, 80 sentences (40 English and 40 Urdu) were selected by purposive sampling with four types of sentences (declarative, interrogative, passive and ergative). Contrastive syntactic analysis and thematic structural comparison were used to analyze the data. Results showed that the language of English has a strict SVO word order with obligatory preverbal subjects, whereas Urdu has a fairly free SOV word order with case marking and extensive agreement morphology. The final conclusion of the study is that the Urdu language is morphology centred and English is position centred language. The results of the present study can make a contribution to the syntactic theory and enhance the teaching of English to Urdu speakers.
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