ENGLISH-PASHTO CONTACT: LINGUISTIC ADAPTATION OF ENGLISH CALQUES IN PASHTO

Abstract

The current study focuses on those borrowed words which come under the category of calques. Calques are those words which come from one language into another and are modified up to such great extent that there seems no apparent resemblance with the original word. The main purpose of this study is to throw light on English-Pashto contact and to explore some calques. The researchers collected primary data from the informants who were the inhabitants of Lower Dir Khyber Pakhtunkhwa through recording their natural conversation. The respondents were selected through samples based on convenience and ease of access. The normal speech of the informants was scanned and those tokens were extracted from it, which were used as calques. Analysis of the study shows that the loan words are different from the source words in pronunciation. Mostly, the loan words are short as compared to the original words as a result of the elision of some sound from the original words. The loan and source words are analyzed from the morphological and phonological perspective. Therefore, the present study highlights some of the calques that came from English into Pashto as a result of close contact between these two languages. 

Keywords: Calques, loan words, elision, source words, English-Pashto contact, pronunciation.