Morphosyntactic Analysis of Suffixation in Lasi and Sindhi

Abstract

Lasi is one of the minor languages of Pakistan, although widely spoken in Lasbela, Balochisan. It is a dialect of Sindhi (Zahid, A., 2016; Ali, et al., 2021; Veesar & Mustafa, 2021). The current research aims to describe and analyse the properties of suffixation in Lasi nouns, verbs, and adjectives, in comparison with standard Sindhi. The research is qualitative and uses descriptive and analytical research designs. Data were collected through informal conversation (unstructured interviews) with the native speakers of Lasi, further reproduced and translated into Sindhi via Sindhi speakers for the purpose of comparison with standard Sindhi. The analysis showed differences between the two varieties. It was found that Lasi and Sindhi differ from each other in the use of postpositional suffixes: Sindhi uses a separate postpositional word to show the position, while Lasi uses them with nouns, such as ‘m’, ‘k’, ‘t’. These varieties also differ in the use of suffixation for the formation of the oblique forms of nouns. The research also explored the similarities between the two languages, such that no difference was found in the use of suffixes in Lasi and Sindhi in making the plural form of both masculine and feminine nouns. It was also found that both languages use ‘yun’ suffix to pluralize feminine nouns and ‘aa’ sound for making masculine nouns.
 Keywords: inflectional morphemes, Lasi, morphemes, suffixation, Sindhi