A Study of Demonstrative Determiners in Pashto Language

The existence of determiner phrase and its different manifestations in number, gender, and case have been studied and proved in the English language in many research studies. Many languages other than English need this investigation in order to establish a sound hypothesis about the universal language structure. This study was an attempt to find out the structure of the determiner phrase in the Pashto language. It also investigated the equivalents of the English determiner phrase in the Pashto language. It used the spoken corpus of Pashto as primary data. In addition, short stories and novels written by literary writers in the Pashto language have been used as secondary data. Moreover, intensive group discussion with native speakers of the Pashto language has also been utilized as another secondary data source. The minimalist program was used to guide and understand syntactic structure of languages. It was followed by determiner phrase hypothesis. The hypothesis states that a noun is headed by its determiner in a noun phrase. Data were analyzed within the framework of determiner phrase hypothesis. The study shows that noun in the determiner phrase is not determined by definite or indefinite article in the Pashto language. The determiner phrase is inflected for number, gender, and case in Pashto language. Furthermore, the Pashto determiner phrase is different from English in terms of medial demonstrative determiners. The study is significant as it provides an insight into the structure of the Pashto determiner phrase.