Linguistic Differentiation Sample Clauses

Linguistic Differentiation. Scholars of Hindi and Urdu claim their legitimacy as different languages because their standardized forms “diverge so much from each other at the higher, more learned, levels that they are almost unintelligible for the speakers of the other variety” (Xxxxxx 2011, 4). While the criterion of intelligibility has both critics and supporters in the field of dialectology, the debate over its legitimacy as a judge of linguistic difference is secondary to its past- and therefore possibly future- discursive use in a national linguistic debate (Xxxxxxx 2004, 48; Xxxxxxxx and Xxxxxxxx 1998, 4). Furthermore, it is worth noting that these higher forms became the basis by which Hindi and Urdu were categorized as different languages. Despite an almost identical shared grammar system and basic vocabulary, as well as significantly overlapping phonological inventories, Hindi and Urdu are considered different languages based linguistically on lexical influence and specific grammatical constructions—factors that in other contexts signal nothing more than a shift in dialect (Xxxxxxx and Xxxxx 1990, 23). The low varieties of Urdu and Hindi are practically indistinguishable from Hindustani, as is the lower register of Hinglish: the less English influence appears in a Hinglish sentence, the more it resembles Hindustani with some borrowings. While this may pose a problem in terms of purely linguistic identification, it corresponds with the pattern of categorization set by Hindi and Urdu. In other words, there is nothing linguistically unique about Hindi or Urdu that make them more language-like than Hinglish; simply the social impetus to label them as such. In the same way, it may be impossible to provide uncontroversial evidence that Hinglish is linguistically more than a variation of Hindi. However, following precedents from the Hindi-Urdu debate, one can identify aspects of Hinglish that were historically considered indicative of a separate language. Even such small English influences as sentence structure in a lexically-Hindi sentence may be considered Hinglish using the same historical criteria: this very argument was used by some to label Xxxxx Xxxxx Xxxx’s Rani Xxxxx ki Kahaani a work of Urdu because of a “Persianized word order” (King 1994, 29). It is clear that social and political factors played a much greater role than linguistic criteria in declaring Hindi and Urdu two separate languages. Similarly, the development or legitimacy of Hinglish need not require complete li...