SHINA ASTORI DIALECT (ASTORIJA) VERB INFLECTIONS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS IN PRESENT INDEFINITE TENSE: A MORPHOSYNTACTIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

The study has carried out a morphological analysis so as to investigate the verb inflections and their functions in Astori dialect (locally known as Astorija) of Shina language specifically focusing on the inflections and their functions in the present indefinite tense. It is a descriptive research which involves describing the morphological structure of verb inflections in Shina (Astorija) in the present indefinite tense. The study examines the verb inflection systems in Astorija so as to identify their functions in sentences. Ten Shina verbs, targeting all the possible situations of verb inflections with different subjects, were sent through WhatsApp to fifteen educated native speakers of Astorija, and they were asked to use the verbs in sentences. The sentences sent by the participants, targeting the focused verb inflections, were selected for the analysis. The sentences have been analyzed in the framework "Inflectional Morphology" which deals with the study of inflectional morphemes.The study reveals that Astorija verbs are inflected with all the subjects, whether the subject is first person singular male or female, second person singular male or female, third person singular male or female, first person plural, or second person plural, the verb has to be inflected accordingly.  The analysis also indicates that Astorija verb inflections (a single inflection) most of the time show several functions at a time. From the analysis of the study, it is concluded that morphology plays significantly a vital role in Astorija. Thus, Astorija can be considered polysynthetic as Haspelmath and Sims opine that when a language has an extraordinary amount of morphology and perhaps many compound words, it is called polysynthetic (Haspelmath & Sims 2010: 4, 5).