Exploring Gender-Specific Plural Markers in the Pashto Language

Abstract

This study aims to identify the masculine and feminine plural markers in Pashto. Pashto, an Indo-Iranian language spoken mainly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has a rich and complex noun inflection system in which plural formation depends upon grammatical gender, phonological structure, and noun endings. For this purpose, the researchers (native speakers of Pashto) collected 120 Pashto nouns and analyzed them morphologically, separating root forms from bound morphemes. After a thorough analysis, the findings reveal eight major plural markers, categorised into four masculine markers (ونه Una, ان Aan, ګان Gaan, يان Yaan) and four feminine markers (ي Ye, يانې Yaani, ګاني Gaani, ۍ Yai), along with several exceptional cases and invariant forms.  The findings of this study not only benefit linguists and learners of the Pashto language but also computational linguists who wish to develop software for linguistic analysis. It also contributes to the descriptive grammar of the Pashto language by systematically identifying and classifying Gender-specific plural markers and nouns.

Keywords: Pashto Language, Plural Markers, Masculine Plural Markers, Feminine Plural Markers, Gender-Specific Markers.