IDENTIFICATION, DESCRIPTION AND CLASSIFICATION OF BALTI INFLECTIONAL MARKERS: A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY

Abstract

The current study aims to identify and categorize inflectional markers of Balti Language spoken in Baltistan region of Gilgit-Baltistan Pakistan as well as some cities of India. Balti belongs to west Tibetan language of the Tibeto-Burman family which is entrenched to Seno Tibetan. In order to conduct this study 200 Balti root words (nouns, verbs and pronouns) were collected from the corpus data using both the naturalistic and documented sources. The selected 200 words were critically analyzed within the paradigm of inflectional morphemes descriptively using the qualitative research design. The study shows that there are 24 inflectional morphemes including 3 plural markers i.e., “-kun”, “-ong” and “-ng”, 6 case markers, i.e., “-si”, “-i”, “-la”, “-ing”, “-kha”,  and “-na”, 1 gender marker, i.e., “-mo”, 11 tense markers, i.e., “-ed”, “-en”, “-set”, “-s”, “-uk”, “- nuk”, “-tuk”, “-ik”, “-in”, “-se” and “-e” and 3 mood markers, i.e. “-s”, “-i”, and “-a”. This study will hopefully encourage and provide a base for future researchers to explore other morphological aspects of Balti language.