PRONOMINAL AFFIXATION IN HINDKO LANGUAGE: OPTIMALITY THEORETICAL ANALYSIS

الملخص

This study presents an Optimality Theoretical (OT) analysis of pronominal affixation in the Hindko language, focusing on how pronominal markers attach to verbs and other hosts in natural speech. Hindko, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in northern Pakistan, exhibits a rich system of pronominal affixes that encode person, number, and sometimes gender. The research investigates the phonological and morphological constraints governing the placement and realization of these pronominal affixes within the framework of Optimality Theory. Data were collected from 10 native speakers of Hindko and analyzed through OT tableaux to determine the ranking of constraints responsible for the preferred surface forms. The study demonstrates that constraints such as ALIGN, MAX-IO, DEP-IO, and ONSET play a significant role in determining the optimal output forms during pronominal attachment. The analysis shows that pronominal affixation in Hindko is not arbitrary but systematically regulated by ranked universal constraints that balance faithfulness to the input with phonological well-formedness. The findings contribute to the understanding of morphophonological processes in Hindko and provide further evidence for the applicability of Optimality Theory in explaining pronominal affixation patterns in Indo-Aryan languages. The study also highlights the importance of documenting and analyzing regional languages through modern linguistic frameworks.