A Corpus Based Study of Anglicism: Neologism in Urdu Through Phono-Semantic Matching

Abstract

The study finds impact of Anglicism as a result of language contact and technological advancement in the Urdu newspaper ‘The Daily Jang’. Language contact allows speakers to transfer new words from source language to target language. Phono semantic matching words are borrowed neologisms which retain their approximate sound and meaning. The neologism expressions such as words having Phono-Semantic Matching (PSM) do not at once get acceptance in monolingual dictionaries of Urdu. The morphological system of Urdu allows certain types of inflections to PSM words in the target language. This study explores such data in order to create a corpus for bilingual dictionary of Urdu using Zuckerman’s model (2003) for PSM. Data is collected from the Daily Jang newspaper since September 2021 to November 2021. Types of PSM included for analytical categories are PSM through preexistent form, Incestuous PSM by semantic shifting and PSM introducing a new form and partial PSM. The results show that the most productive PSM found in Urdu neologisms is introducing a new form and partial PSM.