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Hindi grammar () is the grammar of Hindi Language . Hindi is a direct descendent of Sanskrit . It is the '''national language''' and the '''official language''' of the Indian Union. It is an Indo-European Language , and belongs to the Indo-Aryan group. Hindi looks up to Sanskrit for its formal and technical vocabulary, and ''Apabhramsha'' for its grammar. As Hindi and Urdu are variants of each other (i.e., the same language in the linguistic sense), the discussion here applies to both Standard Hindi as well as Urdu. For reading about Hindi phonology, see Hindi#Sounds . Hindi uses the Devanagari script for writing. In this article, both devanagari script and IPA pronunciation are given for discussing the grammar. MORPHOLOGY There are two principal categories of words in Standard Hindi:
Similarly, Urdu treats its own vocabulary, borrowed directly from Persian and Arabic, as a separate category for morphological purposes. In the tables below, the tilde (~) indicates the nasalization of the vowel immediately preceding it. All / t / and / d / must be taken to be Dental Consonant s unless their retroflex IPA symbols are specified otherwise (in which case, these stops would be Retroflex Consonant s). Nouns In Hindi (and of course in Urdu too), there are only two genders. All male human beings and male animals (or those animals and plants which are perceived to be "masculine") are '''masculine'''. All female human beings and female animals (or those animals and plants which are perceived to be "feminine") are '''feminine'''. Things, inanimate articles and abstract nouns are also either masculine or feminine according to convention, which must be ''learnt by heart'' by non-Hindi speakers if they wish to learn correct Hindi. The ending of a word, if a vowel, usually helps in this gender classification. Among ''tatsam'' words, the masculine words of Sanskrit remain masculine in Hindi, and same is the case for the feminine. Sanskrit neuter nouns usually become masculine in Hindi. Among the ''tadbhav'' words, if a word end in long / α: /, it is normally masculine. If a word ends in / i: / or / in/, it is normally feminine. Similarly, the gender is also tried to be preserved for words borrowed from Arabic and Persian. The categorization of Hindi words directly borrowed from English (which are numerous) is very arbitrary—but could be influenced by the ending. Hindi is a poorly inflected language; the relationship of a noun in a sentence is usually shown by postpositions (i.e., prepositions that ''follow'' the noun). Hindi has three cases for nouns. The '''Direct case''' is used for nouns not followed by any postpositions, typically for the subject case. The ''' Oblique Case ''' is used for any nouns that is followed by a postposition. Some nouns have a separate '''Vocative case'''. Hindi has two numbers: singular and plural—but they may not be shown distinctly in all declinations. Nouns ending in / α: / Nouns ending in / i: / Nouns ending in short / i / also follow the same pattern; only the long / i: / is to be replaced by short / i /. Nouns ending in / u: / Nouns ending in short / u / also follow the same pattern; only the long / u: / is to be replaced by short / u /. Nouns ending in a consonant Nouns ending in short / ə / ( Schwa ) also follow the same pattern—in fact, Hindi ignores any schwa at the end of a word unless this exclusion makes the word too difficult to pronounce. Nouns from Persian An example of a Hindi/Urdu masculine word of Persian origin is given below. By the Hindi speakers, it is usually declined like any other consonant ending masculine noun. Adjectives There are two kinds of adjectives in Hindi for morphological purposes—one, which end in consonant (and hence do not undergo any inflection) and the other, whose masculine form end in / α: / (sing.). The latter category of adjectives undergoes inflection to agree with the gender and the number of the noun they qualify. Such adjectives must be inflected whether they come before the noun (note that the adjectives precede the nouns) or as a compliment in the sentence. This inflection is shown below. There is no definite article (''the'') in Hindi. The numeral ''ek'' (one) may be used for the singular indefinite article if it needs to be stressed. Pronouns Hindi has pronouns in the first, second and third person, all for one gender only. Thus, unlike English, there is no difference between '''he''' or '''she'''. More strictly speaking, the third person of the pronoun is actually the same as the demonstrative pronoun (this / that). The verb, upon conjugation, usually indicates the difference in the gender. The pronouns have additional cases of Accusative and Genitive . There may also be multiple ways of inflecting the pronoun, which are given in parentheses. Note that for the second person of the pronoun (''you''), Hindi has three levels of honorifics:
In the columns for the Third Person, the first word indicates the usual form used in ''literary written Hindi'', while the second form (after the slash) indicates the form used inthe normal spoken Hindi. The hyphen indicates that while writing, the postposition (if any) may be included within the word as a case marker. It suffices to say that the genitive case behaves like an adjective and has to be declined as such to match with the possessed noun. The Accusative can also be formed by adding the postposition ''ko'' after the oblique case. For those persons for whom one would normally use / α:p / if referred to as the second person, it is popular by convention to use the plural form (both pronoun and the verb) of the third person demonstrative. In north India, the / həm / form is popularly used for the first person singular too. Verbs Hindi has a peculiarity that not only the number, but also the gender of the noun or the pronoun may be shown by the verb. The infinitive form of any verb ends with / -nα: /. As in any other language, this form can be used as a noun (masculine gender, and declined likewise). There are three main tenses: present, past and future. Hindi uses both end-inflections in the verb-stem and auxiliary verbs for conjugation. It is interesting to note that like English, but unlike Sanskrit, Latin, French, German, Russian, etc., Hindi possesses the continuous tense for all—present, past and future. Similarly, the perfect tense can be formed using a number of auxiliaries. The present and the past participles can be used as adjectives (they undergo declination). The imperative mood and equivalents for English '''can / should / must / have to''' can also be found. Verbs can be transitive or intransitive. Hindi demonstrates very regular verb conjugation, with the only major irregular verb being होना / honα: / "to be." Three other verbs, करना / kərnα: / "to do," लेना / lenα: / "to take," देना / denα: / "to give," break from the pattern only in the perfect aspect. Aside from these, however, conjugation is very regular, with rules even governing conversion of a verb into its causative and double causative. But on the whole, the verbal conjugation can be very, very complicated for English speakers. The following table gives the conjugation for the verb करना / kərnα: / (to do)— Indicative Mood . The root Morpheme of करना is कर. The second column gives the conjugation in the second person with / tum /. To conjugate the verb with / tu: /, use the Third Person singular form. To conjugate the verb with / α:p /, use the Third Person plural form. The present participle here is करता / kərtα: / and the past participle is करा / kərα: / (with variant in this case as किया / kijα: /)—both must be declined like adjectives when needed. The Imperative Mood is an exception for all verbs because it has entirely different conjugal forms for / tu: / and / α:p /. For the former, it is कर / kər /, and for the latter, it is करिये / kərije: / (with variations in this case as कीजिये / ki:dʒije: / and करें / kəre:~ /). Hindi has two voices— Active and Passive . A stem change in the penultimate syllable of the infinitive form can lead to a semantic change in many verbs. e.g., बनना / bənnα: / (to be made, to become) → बनाना / bənα:nα: / (to make) → / बनवाना / bənvα:nα: / (to cause to be made). In much of Punjabi-influeneced region of north west India and in Rajasthan, the pronoun / α:p / is used with verbs conjugated for the / tum / form. e.g, आप .... करोगे । आप करो । There is another class of perfectives unique to Hindi. These are used if the noun or pronoun is followed by the subject-case postposition ने / ne: / (and rarely in the absence of ने too). For करना, these would be :
Other equivalents with English are:
Postpositions/Indeclinables Hindi uses postpositions that follow the noun (rather than prepositions of English that precede the word). Some postpositions are compound ones. Some of them can be incorporated within the noun (usually, the pronoun) while writing, where they then act as a case marker. Some of them are listed below; those using the genitive case of the pronoun are indicated with "gen". In addition, certain indeclinables can be used to denote specific location with / ke: /, equivalent to ''under, above, against, below'' etc. Urdu uses many prepositions directly borrowed from Persian , and also some from Arabic; e.g., '''-e-''' (of), as in ''sadaa-e-sarhad'' (lit., voice of the border—the name of the Bus service from Amritsar to Lahore and back). SYNTAX The neutral order of the words is SOV (i.e., Subject Object Verb). However, if the postpositions are properly attached with the nouns, the word order in Hindi becomes freer than in English, but not as free as in Latin or Sanskrit. Altering the word order serves (in conjunction with tone of speaking) to shift the emphasis of the sentence elsewhere. Hindi demonstrates Split Ergativity through its use of the postposition / ne: / which acts as a case marker for the subject only if the verb is in the perfect aspect. If it comes after a pronoun (1st and 2nd persons), the direct case would be used. If it comes after a noun or a 3rd person pronoun, the oblique case would be used. The adverbs are not declined. Adverbial phrases are more common, and can be formed by adding the postposition / se: / to the corresponding noun. |
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