Persian borrowings in Kashmiri: A Descriptive and Analytical Study

This paper provides a description and analysis of the Persian lexical and structural borrowings in the Kashmiri language. In doing so it explores the different strategies of nativization of Persian lexical borrowings in Kashmiri at phonological, morphological and semantic level and also analyses the structural borrowings and/or innovations as a result of contact at a morphological and syntactic level. The paper will also assess the constraints that limit Persian borrowings into Kashmiri vis-à-vis linguistic constraints which as Winford (2003:51) writes “often limit one language from borrowing heavily from another”.