A Comparative Study of Punjabi and English Open-Ended Syntactic Constructions Through the Revised Extended Standard Transformational Generative Theory

Abstract

Punjabi is one of the major languages spoken in Pakistan, India, and many other parts of the world. Despite its popularity, Punjabi has not been studied and explored extensively, especially with respect to its syntax. In this study, the open-ended syntactic constructions of Punjabi were looked at using the revised extended standard transformational (REST) generative theory. This was done to find out how the surface structures of open-ended interrogative syntactic constructions in Punjabi are made from their deep structures. Subsequently, the Punjabi constructions are compared to their English counterparts with respect to REST to figure out syntactic similarities and dissimilarities between the open-ended syntactic constructions of both languages. The data for this qualitative study has been taken from a ‘Punjabi book, Descriptive Grammars by Bhatia (2013). The selected data has been analyzed through X-bar tree diagrams. The exploratory research design has been used to conduct this study. The findings of this study reveal that Punjabi and English are syntactically distinct languages. Punjabi is an in-situ language since the question words do not move to generate surface structures, while English is an ex-situ language as the question words move to form surface structures through the transformational rules of ‘Wh’ movement and operator movement. Also, English uses dummy auxiliaries, whereas no such dummies are used in Punjabi. Finally, Punjabi interrogative constructions have reduplication features, unlike English open-ended constructions. The syntactic disparities between these two languages have implications for SOV language learners who aspire to learn English and for those enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programs.