PRONOUN SYSTEMS OF PAKISTANI LANGUAGES: A TYPOLOGICAL STUDY

Abstract

This study is a linguistic typological study, i.e. study that is concerned with devising different types of languages. The first part of the study is about investigating the pronouns of twenty languages. These twenty languages are selected on the basis of their status (major or minor) and the availability of their speaker for the researcher. The pronouns of the twenty languages are investigated and listed categorically in this study. Hence it gives a comprehensive overview of the pronoun systems of Pakistani languages. The second part of the study is concerned about devising the types of languages on the basis of the pronoun systems investigated through the study. So these types of languages are representative of twenty languages and display the similarities and differences across the pronouns of the twenty languages. These types of languages also give an overview of the common and uncommon patterns of pronominal features across the languages. These common and uncommon features are also shown in feature hierarchies of each corresponding language type. Then implicational chains of the features are drawn in order to show that which feature implicates the other. In the end part of the study, the universal statements are devised after a thorough observation of the language types. These statements are universal and applicable on these twenty languages. So these statements are the universal rules for twenty languages. This typological study is done under the geographic location of Pakistan and is only concerned to twenty languages that are geographically distributed within the country. So the whole study is about pronouns of languages and their typology