The present study aims at establishing grammatical constraints on the borrowing of nouns (Ns) and verbs (Vs) in Urdu and English by adopting Noam Chomsky's Methodological Naturalism within the field of generative grammar as the theoretical framework of the study. For this purpose, the corpus of Pure Urdu and Pure English sentences from textbooks and the Oxford Dictionary of English was used in this study. The data were analyzed in the light of Minimalist Program, and the findings of the study reveal that there are certain grammatical constraints on the borrowing of Vs in Urdu from Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, and Hindi as compared with English. It is observed that whenever Urdu borrows Vs from other languages such as Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit, it adds its little v with the fossil form of borrowed verbs in order to retain the grammaticality of the sentence while in English Vs borrowed from Latin, old English is said to be used in their fossil form and can be used with the inflection of the English and has no effect on the grammaticality of the sentence. The reason observed is the drop v phenomenon. Urdu does not drop its little v due to which whenever it borrows Vs it adds its little v along with root form of borrowed Vs otherwise the resulting structure is considered as ungrammatical. If we talk about the borrowed Ns, there are no grammatical constraints on their borrowing because they can inflect with inflectional morphology of Urdu and English language.

This paper investigates pragmatic transfer in Punjabi EFL learners’ realization of the speech act of congratulations. For this purpose, 120 participants were asked to take part in the study, who were divided into four groups having 30 participants in each group: 30 native English (NE) speakers, 30 Punjabi EFL learners of the elite class, 30 Punjabi EFL learners of the middle class and 30 Punjabi EFL learners of the lower class. To elicit the data, a DCT having 12 situations based on social power and distance was used and for perception data, these situations were analyzed on the basis of four contextual variables (degree of familiarity, power, difficulty, and obligation in expressing congratulations) in the form of SRQ. The criteria for the analysis of negative pragmatic was set on the differences found in the responses of the participants and the positive pragmatic transfer was based on the similarities between the responses of the participants. The data was coded and analyzed under the taxonomy of congratulations proposed by Elwood (2004). The results of the study indicated the presence of negative pragmatic transfer in three different strategies of congratulation (IFID, OOGW and Overlapped) and the remaining of the strategies indicated the existence of positive pragmatic transfer. The findings of the study show the cultural influence on the use of congratulation strategies by Punjabi EFL learners. The results of the study might be pedagogical significance and could prove helpful for policymaker and syllabus designer as well within Pakistani context.

People usually express their feelings and emotions positively to others when they have happy occasions. However, the ways of expressing congratulation may vary because the expressive speech act “congratulations” is not the only way to express happiness and share others their happy news. The present study investigates the congratulation strategies of Pakistani English as second language (ESL) learners and British English speakers under the influence of social distance variable. A quantitative approach is applied in the analysis with the frequency of strategies (semantic formulas) being numerically analyzed. The current study recruited 120 participants, and who were further divided into four different groups: 30 British English speakers, 30 Pakistani ESL learners in the elite class, 30 Pakistani ESL learners of the middle class, and 30 Pakistani ESL learners in the lower class. For data collection, a discourse completion test (DCT) was used as a tool. The findings reveal that the most frequently used types of congratulation strategy are illocutionary force indicating device (IFID) followed by overlapped strategies (a combination of two), an offer of a good wish, expression of happiness, request for information, encouragement, expression of surprise, and suggestion of celebration, while other types of strategies are not used by the participants. The study reveals the existence of crosscultural differences in the use of congratulations by Pakistani ESL learners. The findings further show how the middle and lower class of Pakistani ESL learners use a more elaborated form of compliment responses (CRs) as compared to Pakistani ESL learners of elite and British English speakers. The findings may help in understanding the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic aspects of Pakistani ESL learners as compared to British English speakers.

The present study aims at presenting a comparative study of Urdu and English in terms of Wh-movement in the light of the minimalist program (MP) as the theoretical framework of the study. For this purpose, Urdu and English data related to Wh-expressions is used. The empirical evaluation of data reveals that Wh-movement is mandatory in English while, non-mandatory in Urdu. Furthermore, it shows that the movement of tense markers in English is obligatory along with the movement of Wh-phrase as compared to Urdu in which it is optional. The movement of tense markers is covert in Urdu as compared to its overt movement in English. The findings of the study show that the feature of [+WH, EPP] stimulates the movement of Wh-expression in order to check these features. The findings of the study are expected to prove helpful for students and researchers in understanding the nature of syntax in general and Wh-movement particularly.

The current study investigates grammatical and syntactical functions of auxiliaries in Urdu and English to draw certain distinctions regarding the behavior, syntactic representation and semantic content auxiliaries add to the main verbs (Vs) through the X-bar theory as a theoretical framework within the minimalist program (MP). The data of the current research were collected from authentic sources (Urdu and English text books and grammars) to consider a diverse range of possible usage of Urdu and English auxiliaries. 200 sentences extracted from textbooks and grammars were analyzed grammatically in terms of morphology, and syntax (through tree-representation and their movement). The findings indicate sharp differences related to the syntactic position of auxiliaries in Urdu and English. In Urdu, auxiliaries always occupy their position after the main verbs in a sentence and their position is fixed and also have the ability to mark number (singular & plural) and gender (masculine & feminine). In contrast, English auxiliaries can only mark number. Another sharp difference is observed in the question formation process. In Urdu, unlike English, auxiliaries cannot be moved from its latent position towards the specifier position at the beginning of the sentence to construct question structures, because, if it happens, the sentence is considered ungrammatical which may result in the violation of MP. The findings of the study would prove helpful for understanding the semantic, grammatical and syntactical nature and behavior of auxiliaries comparatively in Urdu and English.