Abstract

The present research work intends to analyze and compare the sentence structures in English and Pashto Language. The researcher has focused mainly on the passivization process in this regard. The primary reason for the research is to highlight the similarities and differences between the passivization processes in both languages. Moreover, the researcher has delimited the study to tenses used in both the languages. The study follows qualitative method of research where the researcher has collected the data for the English passivization from the various grammar books while for the collection of data in the form of Pashto passive structures, the researcher has used test as research tools. The researcher has compared the passivization process in each tense between English and Pashto in the data analysis chapter. The study highlighted some similarities but many differences in the passivization process in English and Pashto languages.

Key Words

Passivization, Passive in Pashto, Pashto Language

Introduction

Many scholars like Baugh (1993) and Crystal (2003) have authenticated the importance of language in human affairs. In addition to this, these scholars have also stated the importance of the English language in international communication. Any language, English or any other, has a definite structure through which the message is conveyed. In general there are two structures used in the languages of the world .e.g., Active and passive structures. The current study focuses the comparison in the passive structures of English and Pashto languages. Although passivization in English language has been explained by many grammarians and researchers the passivization in Pashto has not been compared with the various passive structures presented in English syntax. The study is thus a new attempt in the sense that it presents the comparison of, not only written Pashto passive structures, but also the spoken passive structures used by Yousafzai dialect with that of English passive structures. According to Rahman (2012) “Pashto has five major dialects and those are:(1) North-Eastern (Yousafzai) Dialect, (2) North-Western (Central) Dialect, (3) South-Eastern (Quetta) Dialect, (4) South-Western (Kandahar) Dialect, (5) Middle Tribal Dialect”. The researcher has selected Yousafzai dialect for the present educational study. In the various English dialects, the researcher has selected British dialect for the comparison with that of Pashto passivization. In this connection, the researcher will try to present the similarities and differences between the passive structures in English and Pashto. Language. Furthermore, the researcher will not only analyze the passivization rules of Pashto given in grammar books and other written texts but also of the real language used by L1 Pashto speakers in their day to day communication.




Research Questions

What are the similarities and differences in passive structures in English and Pashto?

What changes are implied for converting active into passive in the Pashto language?

Literature Review

Passivization

Passive in English is usually formed with the help of the auxiliary ‘be’ and the past participle form of the verb. The structure is mostly the following;

Object + be + verb (past participle) + by + subject

Cricket    is       played         by     me 

But the usual condition in the formation of passive voice is that of the animate agent. The agent according to Yule (1996) is the performer of action mostly animate in nature as in the sentence ‘the boy plays football’ ‘the boy’ is agent. In addition to this, the ‘get passive’ according to Biber et al (1999) is quite a new addition in English language and very rarely used in formal occasions and writings. 

The major difference in the transitive and intransitive is that intransitive takes an only indirect object and transitive verb takes direct as well as indirect objects. One formal rule of passivization is that the object associated with verb comes to the subject place in the passive voice and this direct association of a verb with the object is only found intransitivity.  For instance;

Smith writes a letter.

A letter is written by Smith.

Smith goes to school.

*School is gone by Smith.

Apart from intransitive verbs, passive structures cannot be formed for certain construction in the English language. These certain conditions or constructions are given below.

1. When the subject and object of a sentence are identical or in other words are reflexive pronoun is used as an object of a sentence, passive voice cannot be formed. For example the passive structure ‘john was known by himself’ is not recommendable. Haliday (1971) stated in his connection that we do not have passive in the case of reflexive object, it is only possible in the case of stressing on the reflexive agent.

2. The same rule is followed if a passive determiner precedes the object in the active structure. For example 

Sally lost her bag.

Sally’s bag was lost by her.

This kind of passive is allowed in a very strict circumstance that is when the passive determiner ‘Her’ is stressed.

3. There are many stative verbs like loved, preferred, wanted, expected, etc that do not allow passivation in English language. For instance Smith wanted/expected Sally to play guitar (Huddleston, 1971).

4. The verb ‘have’ although it means to possess an inactive sentence cannot be changed into passive even if ‘do’ is used as an auxiliary verb. For example ‘Dinner is had by me’ or ‘how much money is had by John’ are not possible structures in English language. 

5. Prepositional verbs are mostly used in active structures rather than passive structures. According to Quirk et al (1974) the constraints can be of two types. The first is the abstract use of the preposition followed by verb as ‘arrived at the decision’. The second type is that the use of preposition in concrete context as ‘went into the hall’. These types of constructions with prepositional verbs are known as Pseudo passive as well. The examples are;

The decision has not been arrived at abstract

Went into the hall, concrete

Duskova (1999) adds in this connection that if the use of the preposition is not adverbial or in another case the prepositional verb is transitive like ‘laughed at’, ‘look into’ etc. with such verbs passivation is possible. 

Huddleston (1971) presents another view of adverbial preposition and he further states that if the object of the prepositional verb is time, duration or manner then passive is not formed as;

*Enthusiasm was sung with.

*The first day of the term was eloped on.

He makes one distinction in this regard by saying that instrumental prepositional verbs can be changed into the passive voice as;

That bed has not been slept in.

This blade has already been shaved twice.

Apart from the discussion presented above, there are many other discussions related to passive constructions like the use of direct versus indirect objects in the passive, the use of active agents and the bare passive but the researcher has restricted the review to the discussion presented above. The reason is that the passive in English has been compared with that of the passivation in Pashto and Pashto passive has not been discussed and explained into so much detail. In addition to this the scope of the study is to compare the passivation in Pashto and English in the various tenses and aspects of Pashto and English, thus the researcher has delimited the study to the similarities and differences in Pashto and English passivization in the tense systems of these two languages.

Research Methodology

The study is qualitative in nature that focuses on the passivization in Pashto and English language. Qualitative research stands for the description, analysis, explanation of the descriptive data. The data in the qualitative researches are usually in the descriptive form while the data in the quantitative studies is in numerical form. In the current study, the data is in descriptive form .i.e. sentences and utterances of Pashto and English languages and it is analyzed in descriptive way in the data analysis, thus the research is purely qualitative. 




Population and Sample of the Study

The L1 Pashto speakers who use the Yousafzai dialect in Peshawar and Mardan regions serve as the target population of the study. The current population consists of various categories in connection to their ages, education, and gender, therefore the researcher has followed purposive sampling technique in the selection of the representative participants from the population.

The age of the participants selected as samples is between 23 to 24 years. Only male speakers are selected as a sample for the study. Their educational level is Master in English and they are L1 Pashto speakers of district Peshawar. Thus, the researcher has selected 50 participants using the Yousafzai dialect of Pashto.




Data Collection Tools

The researcher has used tests for data collection. 




Test

The researcher has used another tool test for data collection. This time the whole focus was the collection of the passive structure for the tenses and aspects of Pashto language. The test contained four to five sentences of Pashto in each tense and aspects. The respondents were asked to provide the passive for the given active structures in the test. 

Analysis

Passivization Present Simple and Imperfective tenses

In English passives are formed in the present indefinite, present progressive and present perfect tenses where the transitive verbs are used whereas in Pashto there are two tenses in relation to present tense as present imperfective and present perfective tenses. (Tagey and Rboson 1996) (Mackenzie 1987) (Shafeev 1964).

Mung cricket kao we play cricket and we are playing cricket.

We cricket play

The structure in this tense contains the subject in the start followed by an object and then verb is used. The verb agrees to the subject in number and person as the following table shows;

Mung kao we do

Ze kom I do

Agha kae he/she does 

Aghe kawe/kae they do

Te kai you (sing) do

Taso kawai you (plural) do

Alak/alakan kae the boy/ boys does/do

Negative is formed with the help of ‘na’ before the verb and interrogative is usually formed with stress on subject or verb.

The English passive contains the object in the start then is/am/are according to the Subject and past participle and then the agent in the end. There are certain rules applied almost in the passivization in almost every tense. At first the subject goes to the object place and the object of the sentence goes to the subject place. The other rule is after the “be” form of verb which is ‘is, am, and are’ in this tense is used, “is” with singular subject, “am” with “I” and “are” with plural subject. Then the next rule is the past participle verb that is used in every tense passivation in English and the last rule is the verb is either followed by ‘by’ or ‘to’ if the agent is used. The example is given below.

Active Subject verb object

He plays cricket

Passive object be verb past participle by/to Agent cricket is played by him

The Pashto passive in present imperfective tense follows the same rule of subject and object substitution just like the English language and thus the Pashto passive in this tense starts with the object that is followed by the subject of the sentence. In Pashto language ‘na’ is used as instrumental element before the verb where in English ‘by’ is used after the verb. In contrast to past participle of English passive, in Pashto an inflection ‘e’ is added to the verb that ends with ‘kege’. But mostly the Pashto passive in this tense is used without the agent. The Pashto passive in present imperfective tense is given below.

Object Subject by/to verb

Rotai mung na khwrarle kege

Alakn aghe na wahale kege

TV                                                 katale kege (agentless)




Passivization Present Perfect Tense and Present Perfective Tense

The passive in English presents perfect tense contains the past participle verb with “has been” and “have been” according to the singular and plural subjects respectively. The rest of the rules of object and subject replacement, as well as the insertion of “by” in passive, is applied in the same way as the following structure shows.

Active He has played cricket

Passive Cricket has been played by him or cricket has been played.

Active They have eaten the meal

Passive The meal has been eaten by them

Active The teacher has beaten the boys

Passive The boys have been beaten by the teacher.

On the other hand the passivization in Pashto present perfective tense also follows the same rules of passivization followed in the Pashto present imperfective in connection to the object-subject replacement and the insertion of the “by” word “na” after the subject. But the verb endings are different according to the use of the object. Moreover, the usual case is, in Pashto language the passive in this tense is formed without the agent as;

Active Active

The meal has been eaten. The meal has been eaten by him.

Passive Passive

Rotai okhware shwa instead rotai aghe na okhware shwa

The inflections “shwa”, “shwe” and “sho” after the verb are the indicators of the Pashto present perfective passive indicators. The structures with singular and plural masculine objects contain “sho” after the verb while the singular feminine object structure contains “shwa” and the plural feminine object structure contains “shwe” after the verbs in passive structure. For instance;

Boy/boys have been punished 

Alak/alakan owakhale sho

The girl has been punished.

Jinai owakhale shwa

The girls have been punished

Jinakai owakhale shwe




Passivization in Past Indefinite and Imperfective tenses

The English passive in past indefinite is formed by the use of “was” and “were” with singular and plural subjects respectively with past participle form. The other rules of subject-object replacement and the use of “by” are applied the same may as in the other tenses. The following sentences show how active structure is changed into passive in past indefinite tense. 

Active We play cricket.

Passive Cricket was played by us.

Active He ate the meal.

Passive The meal was eaten by him.

The Pashto passive in past indefinite follows the same rules as that of English in the case of subject and object movement. But the native speakers of Pashto language especially the Yousafzai dialect prefer to use agentless passive. The other difference in the comparison of English and Pashto is that there are some sentences of which passive is not formed and used in Pashto language. The following instances will show the comparison between English and Pashto passive in past indefinite and imperfective tenses. 

Active He played cricket 

Passive Cricket was played by him. 

Active Aghe   cricket kare de 

Passive *Cricket aghe na shawe de

This type of passive is not used by L1 Pashto speakers. In comparison to this the following passive structures are used.

Active We ate the meal.  

Passive The meal was eaten by us. 

Active Mung rotai khwarale da.

Passive Rotai mung na khwarale shawe da.

The usual case in Pashto is that the passive subject is not used as “rotai khwarale shawe da”. 




Passivization in Past Progressive Tenses

The passive of past continuous in English is formed through “was/were”, being and participle forms.

Cricket was being played by us.

The boys were beaten by him.

The participant produced the following structure of past progressive or imperfective. 

Cricket Kedo / Cricket aghe na Kedo

Rotai khwarale keda / Rotai mung na khwaral keda

Largi matawle kedal / jinakai wahale kede.

The masculine singular object goes with “kedo” in the end while the other hand the plural objects goes with “kedal” in Masculine case with “kedo” in feminine case. 




Passivization in Past Perfect and Past Perfective Tense

The English passive is formed through the use of had been and past participle form of the verb after the subject goes to the object place and vice versa as:

Cricket had been played by us.

The meal had been eaten by him. 

On the other hand the Pashto passive of past perfective is the following. 

 Cricket mung na shawe o 

Rotai aghe na khawarale shawe wa

Cricket shawe o           (without subject)

Rotai khawarale shawe wa                  (do)In the case of Pashto the additional auxiliary “shawe” is added before the perfective auxiliary “o” or “wa” and the subject is followed by the object but as the last example showed that usually passive structures are being used by Pashto speakers in their day to day communication with the agent. 




Passivization in Future Indefinite and Future Imperfective Tenses

The English future indefinite is formed through the use of will and past form of verb. For negative “not” is used after the auxiliary while for interrogative the auxiliary comes before the subject as:

We will play cricket 

We will not play cricket 

Will we play cricket?

The Pashto imperfective aspect, in this case, is formed with the help of “ba” auxiliary before the object while the inflections are according to the following table. 

I “m” we “o” he/ she /it/ the “e”

You (singular) “ai” you/plural “ai”

Mung ba cricket kao

Aghe ba rotai khwree

Taso ba Alakan Wahay.

The passive of English future indefinite is formed with the help of will be and Participle form as. 

The meal will be eaten by him.

In Pashto the “ba” future auxiliary comes after the object while the verb is followed by “kege”as;

Rotai ba aghe na khwarale kege.

Cricket ba mung na kege.

Alakan ba wahale kege.




Future Perfect and Future Perfective Tense

Usually passive of future perfect tense in English and Pashto is not commonly used but the structure is given below. 

The meal will have been eaten by us.

The Pashto passive for future perfective contain the “ba” auxiliary after the subject followed and then “shawe” is inserted between the verb and “wee/ee”

Rotai ba khwarale shawe wee 

Cricket ba shawe wee 

But the subject is not used in this structure as the use of the subject changes the sense of the passive, in some case as;

Aghe na ba kursai mata shawe wee 

And

Aghe na ba rotai khwarale shawe wee 

The first instance shows the passive voice where the subject is not responsible for the action while the second case presents the sense that the meal was finished before he reached. 




Imperative Passive in Pashto and English.

Imperative sentences are those sentences that express a command, a wish or a request. The researcher has taken into account the imperative that expresses a command. The structure of English imperative structure in the active voice starts with the base form of verb followed by the noun phrase as;

Open the door.

Do it.

Shut the window.

On the contrary, the passive structure of imperative in English possesses “let” followed by the object and then past participle verb as:

Let the door be opened. 

Let it be done. 

Let the window be shut.

Imperative structures are also used extensively by L1 Pashto speakers in their language using mostly the active voice. This kind of structure in Pashto usually contains a noun followed by a verb with “ka” or without “ka” morpheme. For instance;

Darwaza kolao ka

Kar oka

Kerkai band aka

The Pashto imperative passive, on the other hand, contains the object in the start of the structure followed by auxiliary “de” and then the verb having “e” inflection plus”shee” as suffix.

Darwaza de banda kare shee

Kar de okre shee

Kerkai de banda kre shee

But the L1 Pashto speakers very rarely use the imperative passive in their day to day communication. They mostly use active voice for expressing orders in the Pashto language. In addition to this, Pashto imperative passive is sometimes used sarcastically by the Pashto language users as the participants in the interviews reported. 

Research Findings

The analysis has shown how far the passivation process is similar; and how much this process is different in English and Pashto languages. After the detailed analysis the researcher has come to the following conclusion:

1. The researcher has found out differences in the tenses and aspects between English and Pashto language and as a result of the difference in tense and aspect formation, there are differences in the passivation process of English and Pashto languages. The following list shows the differences in the tense and aspects of English and Pashto language.

Present indefinite tense present imperfective tense 

Present continuous tense

Present perfect tense present perfective tense

Past indefinite tense past imperfective tense

Past continuous tense past progressive tense 

Past perfect tense past perfective tense

Future indefinite tense future imperfective tense

Future continuous tense

Future perfect tense future perfective tense

Tegey and Roboson (1996), as well as Penzell (1995), have presented these tense and aspects of Pashto language but the only difference is that of the Yousafzai dialect speakers who produced past progressive aspect that is totally different from the past imperfective aspect in Pashto language as;

Ma rotai khwarale da past simple

Ma rotai khwara past progressive

Ma rotai khwarale wa past perfective

2. In English language passive structures are used with or without passive agents normally as ‘the snake was killed’ and ‘the snake was killed by the boy’. On the other hand the researcher has noticed that in Pashto language passive structures are usually used without the agents in the end as ‘rotai okheare shwa’ sabaq yadsho’ etc and very rarely agents are used in the passive constructions.

3. The structure of passive voice like the active structures is different in Pashto and English. Object is followed by verb and then the subject is used in the English passive while object is followed by the subject and then the verb is used in Pashto passive.

The chair is broken by him

Object verb subject

Kursai aghena             matashwa

Object subject verb

Thus the rule in English passive is that the subject goes to the place of the object and vice versa in English language but in Pashto the rule is different from that of English. In Pashto although the subject and object change their places but again the subject is directly used after the object in the passive as the subject is used just before the object in active structure.

4. In English passive another rule is that the verb is followed by ‘by’ or ‘to’ before the passive agent as ‘played by Smith’ or ‘married to him’. On the other hand an additional word just like ‘by’ in English passive is used in Pashto passive and that is “na”. But the difference is that “na” is used before the verb and not after the verb like English as ‘aghe na khwarle shawe da’. In both English and Pashto “by” or “na” are not used in agentless passives. 

5. English passive structure contains a past participle verb in all the tenses and aspects. On the other hand in Pashto the form of the verb is changed in the passive structure according to tenses and aspects as the following table shows.

Present rotai khwarale kege

Past rotai khwarale shawe da

Future rotai ba khwarale kege

6. One of the important findings of the study is the imperative passive is not only formed in English language but also in Pashto language and in both languages such as passives are used by the speakers in various contexts.

7. The structure of imperative passive in English starts with “let” followed by the subject and then past participle verb is used with be a form of verb. In comparison to this the structure of the Pashto passive contains the subject as the first word followed by verb that ends with ‘she’, for instance; 

English Let the door be opened 

Pashto Dwrawaza de bandakre she

Conclusions

The study intended to compare the passivization process in Pashto language with that of the English language where the primary reason of the research was to find out the differences and similarities in the passivization process between these two languages. The main focus was given to the tenses and aspects used in these two languages and the imperative structures. The data was collected from the native speakers of Pashto language for the analysis of Pashto passivization while the data for the analysis of passive structures were collected from secondary sources .i.e. grammar books. The researcher has not only explained the passivization process in each tense of Pashto but also has compared the process of passivization of Pashto with English. Thus the study has highlighted that there are some similarities but many differences in the passivization process of Pashto and English.

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