THE MORPHOLOGY OF PUNJABI INFIXES: AN OT ANALYSIS
Mubashir Iqbal , Humaira Yaqoob  and Riaz Ahmed Mangrio 
ABSTRACT
The present study investigates the Punjabi infixes which inflect the nouns for gender, number and case marking. The patterns of genders are formed by three infixes (-əɽ̃-, -ɑɽ̃-, -ij-), those of numbers by three infixes (-ɑ-, -vɑ-, -e-) and the ones of vocative case by two infixes (-ej-, -ij-). Punjabi dictionaries have been consulted to collect the respective data. After the insertion of infixes, the scheme is to scrutinize the mechanism of the insertion in Punjabi word-formation. For this purpose, the eighteen constraints of all the infixation patterns are observed. The suitability of the fabrication of patterns is determined through the constraint-based analysis. Such analysis checks the well-formedness of all the descriptive data in line with Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 1993). Conforming to Optimality Theory, the observed constraints assist the data to be inspected for optimal structures. The analysis has been presented in tableaux. The data analysis shows the universality of constraints due to an active role of markedness constraints and faithfulness constraints. The devised markedness and alignment constraints are seen as language-particular constraints. Alignment constraints are devised in terms of six potential pivots (Yu, 2007). The study has further discussed some examples regarding infixation of other languages in relation to Punjabi inflection. In fact, this study provides the researchers an insight to probe the structure of Punjabi language.
KEYWORDS: Inflectional Process, Infixation, Optimality Theory, Potential Pivots, Punjabi