A Descriptive Analysis of Inflectional Morphology of Shina Language

Abstract

This paper investigates the functions and patterns of inflectional morphemes of Shina language. The data was collected from native speakers and the Item-and-Process approach was used as the theoretical framework. The qualitative approach was employed for data analysis, utilizing linear tables and theoretical discussions to represent relevant examples of inflectional morphemes of Shina. It has been observed that Shina has strongly suffixing inflectional morphology, affixes are exclusively suffixal. Accent is strongly marked in Shina. Phonetic reduction and addition also marks the cases in it. And Shina is a pitch accented language, which means every word has one syllable that is accented stressed or prominent in comparison to the rest of the syllables. Every word in Shina has only one accented syllable irrespective of whether the word is monosyllabic or polysyllabic.

Keywords: Polysyllabic, Inflectional Morphemes, Item-and-Process Approach, Monosyllabic