Morphological Innovation in Pakistani English: The Emergence of Hybrid Forms

Abstract

This research investigates morphological innovation in Pakistani English in the area of hybrid forms through the mixing of English with Pakistani indigenous languages such as Urdu, Punjabi, Saraiki. Pakistani English has come to be established as a variety of World Englishes that has developed unique characteristics on account of its sociocultural, historical and multilingual nature. In this study researcher would investigate how speakers coin new hybridized lexis and morphology through borrowing, compounding, affixation, blend, code-mixing etc. Such innovative hybridized morphology and lexis can be witnessed in spoken and social media language, advertising, in educational fields and in popular media, meeting to the communicative and identitarian needs of speakers. Through the use of qualitative descriptive method, the current research attempts to identify the hybrid morphological forms, in use in newspapers, oral discourse, and chat rooms, and identify regularities, and strategies behind such creations. To conclude that hybridization is not merely a language process, rather it also manifests as local culture, social marker and the creative ingenuity of English users in Pakistan. Indigenous languages also affect English morphology to the development of the emergent variety of English which is quite distinct from standard British and American English. Hybrid formation has helped to identify processes related to variation and morphological change within multilingual contexts.