A Sketch of Pahari Grammar

Abstract

This study aims to present a short sketch of the basic grammatical features of Pahari, a hitherto undocumented South Asian language. The analysis presented in this study is based on the data collected from Pahari speakers between 2013-2016. The data consists of word lists and recorded texts which were recorded and transcribed from ten Pahari speakers. This work has established that Pahari has distinctive grammatical properties. Pahari has both inflected and uninflected words. Pahari distinguishes two genders and two numbers. It uses suffixes on verbal and nominal categoriesto provide information about tense gender, and number. Pahari personal pronouns do not inflect for gender rather gender is marked on verb. It marks a distinction between personal pronouns in degree
of respect / familiarity in the 2nd person pronoun, and for distance from the speaker in the 3rd person pronoun. The pronouns are marked for the case in the same way as Pahari nouns. When the pronouns are not followed by a postposition and they function as the subject of a verb, they take direct or nominative case, and they are marked with oblique case when they are followed by a postposition.
The study further identified adjectives in Pahari agree with the nouns they modify in gender and number.