Hindi-Urdu grammar - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Hindi

Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...

is one of the official languages of India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. Urdu

Urdu

Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...

is the national language

National language

A national language is a language which has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a people and perhaps by extension the territory they occupy. The term is used variously. A national language may for instance represent the national identity of a nation or country...

of Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

as well as a scheduled language in India. The two are often held as separate languages for social and political reasons, and in terms of their preferred sources of classically derived vocabulary; however, on a linguistic basis they are two standardized register

In linguistics, a register is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. For example, when speaking in a formal setting an English speaker may be more likely to adhere more closely to prescribed grammar, pronounce words ending in -ing with a velar nasal...

s of a single subdialect, that being the Khari boli dialect

Dialect

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

of Delhi

Delhi

Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...

. Their grammatical differences are minimal, and so, keeping in line with such a linguistic analysis, Hindi and Urdu occupy a single Wikipedia grammar

Grammar

In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

page.

Phonology

In matters of script, Hindi uses Devanagari

Devanagari

Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal...

while Urdu uses an extended form

Urdu alphabet

The Urdu alphabet is the right-to-left alphabet used for the Urdu language. It is a modification of the Persian alphabet, which is itself a derivative of the Arabic alphabet...

of the Persian script

Perso-Arabic script

The Persian or Perso-Arabic alphabet is a writing system based on the Arabic script. Originally used exclusively for the Arabic language, the Arabic alphabet was adapted to the Persian language, adding four letters: , , , and . Many languages which use the Perso-Arabic script add other letters...

, typically in the Nasta`liq style. On this grammar page Hindi-Urdu is written in "standard orientalist

Oriental studies

Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...

" transcription

Transcription (linguistics)

Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of language in written form. The source can either be utterances or preexisting text in another writing system, although some linguists only consider the former as transcription.Transcription should not be confused with...

as outlined in . Being "primarily a system of transliteration

Transliteration

Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...

from the Indian scripts, [and] based in turn upon Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

" (cf. IAST

IAST

The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is a transliteration scheme that allows a lossless romanization of Indic scripts as employed by the Sanskrit language.-Popularity:...

), these are its salient features: subscript dot

Dot (diacritic)

When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot is usually reserved for the Interpunct , or to the glyphs 'combining dot above' and 'combining dot below'...

s for retroflex consonant

Retroflex consonant

A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology...

s; macron

Macron

A macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...

s for etymologically, contrastively long vowels; h denoting aspirated

Aspiration (phonetics)

In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...

stop

Stop consonant

In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...

s. Tilde

Tilde

The tilde is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character comes from Portuguese and Spanish, from the Latin titulus meaning "title" or "superscription", though the term "tilde" has evolved and now has a different meaning in linguistics....

s denote nasalized vowels.

Vowel

Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

s are the following: , , , , , , , , , ; consonant

Consonant

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...

s are outlined in the table below. Hovering the mouse cursor over them will reveal the appropriate IPA symbol, while in the rest of the article hovering the mouse cursor over forms will reveal the appropriate English translation

Translation

Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...

. See Hindi-Urdu phonology

Hindi-Urdu phonology

Modern Standard Hindi is the official language of India, while Urdu is the national language of Pakistan as well as a scheduled language in India...

for further clarification.

{|class="wikitable IPA" border="2"

!
! colspan="2" | Bilabial

Bilabial consonant

In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...

! Labio-
dental

Labiodental consonant

In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...

! colspan="2" | Dental
! colspan="2" | Alveolar

Alveolar consonant

Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...

! colspan="2" | Retroflex

Retroflex consonant

! colspan="2" | Post-alv./
Palatal

Palatal consonant

Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...

! colspan="2" | Velar

Velar consonant

Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....

! Uvular

Uvular consonant

Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be plosives, fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and...

! colspan="2" | Glottal

Glottal consonant

Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...

|- align=center
! Stop

Stop consonant

Affricate consonant

Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...

Nasal consonant

A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...

Flap consonant

In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another.-Contrast with stops and trills:...

| colspan="2" |
|
| colspan="2" |
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| colspan="2" |

| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" |
|
| colspan="2" |
|- align=center
! Approximant
| colspan="2" |
|
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" |
| colspan="2" |
|
| colspan="2" |
|- align=center
! Lateral
approximant
| colspan="2" |
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| colspan="2" |
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|}

Nouns

Hindi-Urdu distinguishes two genders

Grammatical gender

Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...

, two numbers

Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....

, and three case

Grammatical case

In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...

s of direct

Direct case

In Indo-Aryan languages, and Eastern Iranian languages, the direct case is the name given to a grammatical case used with all three core relations: the agent of transitive verbs, the patient of transitive verbs, and the argument of intransitive verbs...

, oblique

Oblique case

An oblique case in linguistics is a noun case of synthetic languages that is used generally when a noun is the object of a verb or a preposition...

, and vocative

Vocative case

The vocative case is the case used for a noun identifying the person being addressed and/or occasionally the determiners of that noun. A vocative expression is an expression of direct address, wherein the identity of the party being spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence...

. Nouns may be further divided into declension

Declension

In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...

al subtypes, type-I and type-II, with the basic difference being that the former has characteristic termination

Suffix

In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...

s in the direct singular while the latter does not. An alternative assessment of this division would be that of respectively "marked and unmarked" nouns.

The below table displays the suffix paradigms. A hyphen

Hyphen

The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen should not be confused with dashes , which are longer and have different uses, or with the minus sign which is also longer...

symbol (for the marked) denotes change amongst terminations, whereas a plus

Plus and minus signs

The plus and minus signs are mathematical symbols used to represent the notions of positive and negative as well as the operations of addition and subtraction. Their use has been extended to many other meanings, more or less analogous...

sign (for the unmarked) denotes termination addition.

õ
		Sg.		Pl.
		Dir.	Obl.	Dir.	Obl.	Voc.
Masc.	I	-ā	-e
Masc.
II
Fem.	I	-ī, -i, -iyā
Fem.
II

The next table of noun declension

Declension

In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...

s, mostly adapted from , shows the above suffix paradigms in action. Words: laṛkā "boy

Boy

A boy is a young male human , as contrasted to its female counterpart, girl, or an adult male, a man.The term "boy" is primarily used to indicate biological sex distinctions, cultural gender role distinctions or both...

", kuā̃ "well

Water well

A water well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, boring or drilling to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The well water is drawn by an electric submersible pump, a trash pump, a vertical turbine pump, a handpump or a mechanical pump...

", seb "apple

Apple

The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family . It is one of the most widely cultivated tree fruits, and the most widely known of the many members of genus Malus that are used by humans. Apple grow on small, deciduous trees that blossom in the spring...

", vālid "father

Father

A father, Pop, Dad, or Papa, is defined as a male parent of any type of offspring. The adjective "paternal" refers to father, parallel to "maternal" for mother...

", chāqū "penknife

Penknife

A penknife, or pen knife, is a small folding pocket knife, originally used for cutting or sharpening a quill to make a pen nib. Originally, penknives did not necessarily have folding blades, but resembled a scalpel or wood knife by having a short, fixed blade at the end of a long handle...

", ādmī "man

Man

The term man is used for an adult human male . However, man is sometimes used to refer to humanity as a whole...

", mitra "friend

Friendship

Friendship is a form of interpersonal relationship generally considered to be closer than association, although there is a range of degrees of intimacy in both friendships and associations. Friendship and association are often thought of as spanning across the same continuum...

", laṛkī "girl

Girl

A girl is any female human from birth through childhood and adolescence to attainment of adulthood. The term may also be used to mean a young woman.-Etymology:...

", kitāb "book

Book

A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...

", aurat "woman

Woman

A woman , pl: women is a female human. The term woman is usually reserved for an adult, with the term girl being the usual term for a female child or adolescent...

		Sg.		Pl.
		Dir.	Obl.	Dir.	Obl.	Voc.
Masc.	I	laṛkā kuā̃	laṛke kuẽ		laṛkõ kuõ	laṛko
Masc.	II	seb vālid chāqū ādmī			sebõ vālidõ cākuõ ādmiyõ	pitāo ādmiyo
Fem.	I	laṛkī ciṛiyā		laṛkiyā̃ ciṛiyā̃	laṛkiyõ ciṛiyõ	laṛkiyo
Fem.	II	kitāb aurat		kitābẽ bhāṣāẽ aurtẽ	kitābõ bhāṣāõ aurtõ	aurto

A lot of urdu pluralizations are exceptions, and are done by arabic plurals if they are of arabic originAlso the voc. sg.A small number of marked masculines display nasalization

Nasalization

In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth...

of all terminations.Some masculines ending in ā don't change in the direct plural and fall in the unmarked category. i.e. vālid "father", cācā "uncle

Uncle

An uncle is a type of familial relationship.Uncle may also refer to:* Uncle , by J. P. Martin* U.N.C.L.E., a fictional organization in the TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E....

", rājā "king

King

- Centers of population :* King, Ontario, CanadaIn USA:* King, Indiana* King, North Carolina* King, Lincoln County, Wisconsin* King, Waupaca County, Wisconsin* King County, Washington- Moving-image works :Television:...

".Unmarked nouns ending in ū and ī generally shorten this to u and i before the oblique (and vocative) plural termination(s), with the latter also inserting the semivowel

Semivowel

In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:...

y.Many feminine Sanskrit

Sanskrit

loanwords end in ā.

Perso
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

-Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

loan
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...

s ending in final unpronounced h are handled as masculine marked nouns. Hence bacca(h) → baccā. The former is the Urdu spelling, the latter the Hindi.
Some Perso-Arabic loans may use their original dual
Dual (grammatical number)
Dual is a grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and plural. When a noun or pronoun appears in dual form, it is interpreted as referring to precisely two of the entities identified by the noun or pronoun...

and plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

markings. i.e. vālid "father" → vālidain "parent
Parent
A parent is a caretaker of the offspring in their own species. In humans, a parent is of a child . Children can have one or more parents, but they must have two biological parents. Biological parents consist of the male who sired the child and the female who gave birth to the child...

s".

Adjectives

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....

s may be divided into declinable and indeclinable categories. Declinables are marked, through termination, for the gender, number, case of the nouns they qualify. The set of declinable adjective terminations is similar but greatly simplified in comparison to that of noun terminations —

		Dir. sg.
Decl.	Masc.	-ā
Decl.
Fem.	-ī
Indecl.

Indeclinable adjectives are completely invariable, and can end in either consonant

Consonant

s or vowel

Vowel

s (including ā and ī ). A number of declinables display nasalization of all terminations. Dir. masc. sg. (-ā) is the citation form.

Examples of declinable adjectives: baṛā "big", choṭā "small", moṭā "fat", acchā "good", burā "bad", kālā "black", ṭhaṇḍā "cold".
Examples of indeclinable adjectives: xarāb "bad", sāf "clean", bhārī "heavy", murdā "dead", sundar "beautiful", pāgal "crazy", lāl "red".

EWLINE

Declinable adjective baṛā "big" in attributive use
		Sg.		Pl.
		Dir.	Obl.	Dir.	Obl.	Voc.
M	I	baṛā laṛkā baṛā kuā̃	baṛe laṛke baṛe kuẽ		baṛe laṛkõ baṛe kuõ	baṛe laṛko
M	II	baṛā seb baṛā pitā baṛā cākū baṛā ādmī baṛā mitra	baṛe seb baṛe pitā baṛe cākū baṛe ādmī baṛe mitra		baṛe sebõ baṛe pitāõ baṛe cākuõ baṛe ādmiyõ baṛe mitrõ	baṛe pitāo baṛe ādmiyo baṛe mitro
F	I	baṛī laṛkī baṛī śakti baṛī ciṛiyā		baṛī laṛkiyā̃ baṛī śaktiyā̃ baṛī ciṛiyā̃	baṛī laṛkiyõ baṛī śaktiyõ baṛī ciṛiyõ	baṛī laṛkiyo
F	II	baṛī kitāb baṛī bhāṣā baṛī aurat		baṛī kitābẽ baṛī bhāṣāẽ baṛī aurtẽ	baṛī kitābõ baṛī bhāṣāõ baṛī aurtõ	baṛī aurto

EWLINE

Indeclinable adjective xarāb "bad" in attributive use
		Sg.		Pl.
		Dir.	Obl.	Dir.	Obl.	Voc.
M	I	xarāb laṛkā xarāb kuā̃	xarāb laṛke xarāb kuẽ		xarāb laṛkõ xarāb kuõ	xarāb laṛko
M	II	xarāb seb xarāb pitā xarāb cākū xarāb ādmī xarāb mitra			xarāb sebõ xarāb pitāõ xarāb cākuõ xarāb ādmiyõ xarāb mitrõ	xarāb pitāo xarāb ādmiyo xarāb mitro
F	I	xarāb laṛkī xarāb śakti xarāb ciṛiyā		xarāb laṛkiyā̃ xarāb śaktiyā̃ xarāb ciṛiyā̃	xarāb laṛkiyõ xarāb śaktiyõ xarāb ciṛiyõ	xarāb laṛkiyo
F	II	xarāb kitāb xarāb bhāṣā xarāb aurat		xarāb kitābẽ xarāb bhāṣāẽ xarāb aurtẽ	xarāb kitābõ xarāb bhāṣāõ xarāb aurtõ	xarāb aurto

All adjectives can be used either attributively, predicatively, or substantively. Substantively they are of course declined as nouns rather than adjectives.

sā (~ se ~ sī) is a suffix for adjectives, modifying or lightening their meaning; giving them an "-ish" or "quite" sense. e.g. nīlā "blue" → nīlā-sā "bluish". Its emphasis is rather ambiguous, sometimes enhancing, sometimes toning down, the sense of the adjective.

Comparatives and Superlatives

Comparison

Comparative

In grammar, the comparative is the form of an adjective or adverb which denotes the degree or grade by which a person, thing, or other entity has a property or quality greater or less in extent than that of another, and is used in this context with a subordinating conjunction, such as than,...

s are made by using "than" (the postposition se; see below), "more" (aur, zyādā), and "less" (kam). The word for "more" is optional, while "less" is required, so that in the absence of either "more" will be inferred.

Hindi-Urdu	Literal	Meaning
Gītā Gautam se lambī hai	Gita is tall than Gautam	Gita is taller than Gautam
Gītā Gautam se aur lambī hai	Gita is more tall than Gautam	Gita is taller than Gautam
Gītā Gautam se kam lambī hai	Gita is less tall than Gautam

In the absence of an object of comparison ("more" of course is now no longer optional):

Hindi-Urdu	Literal	Meaning
zyādā baṛā chokrā	The more big lad	The bigger lad
chokrā zyādā baṛā hai	The lad is more big	The lad is bigger

Superlative

In grammar, the superlative is the form of an adjective that indicates that the person or thing modified has the quality of the adjective to a degree greater than that of anything it is being compared to in a given context. English superlatives are typically formed with the suffix -est In...

s are made through comparisons with "all" (sab).

Hindi-Urdu	Literal	Meaning
sabse sāf kamrā	The clean than all room	The cleanest room
kamrā sabse sāf hai	The room is clean than all	The room is the cleanest

In Sanskritized and Persianized register

s of Hindi-Urdu, comparative and superlative adjectival forms using suffixes derived from those languages can be found.

	Sanskrit	Persian
Comp. ("-er")	-tar
Sup. ("-est")

Numerals

The numeral systems of several of the Indic languages, including Hindustani and Nepali, are typical decimal

Decimal

The decimal numeral system has ten as its base. It is the numerical base most widely used by modern civilizations....

systems, but contracted to the extent that nearly every number 1–99 is irregular.

Postpositions

The aforementioned inflection

Inflection

In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...

al case

Grammatical case

system only goes so far on its own, and rather serves as that upon which is built a system of agglutinative suffix

Suffix

es or particle

Grammatical particle

In grammar, a particle is a function word that does not belong to any of the inflected grammatical word classes . It is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of words and terms that lack a precise lexical definition...

s known as postpositions, which parallel English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

's prepositions. It is their use with a noun or verb that necessitates the noun or verb taking the oblique case (though the bare oblique is also minorly used adverb

Adverb

An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....

ially), and it is with them that the locus of grammatical function or "case-marking" then lies. There are seven such one-word primary postpositions:

kā – genitive
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...

marker; variably declinable in the manner of an adjective. X kā/ke/kī Y has the sense "X's Y", with kā/ke/kī agreeing with Y.
ko – marks the indirect object
Object (grammar)
An object in grammar is part of a sentence, and often part of the predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. Basically, it is what or whom the verb is acting upon...

(hence named "dative marker"), or, if definite
Definiteness
In grammatical theory, definiteness is a feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between entities which are specific and identifiable in a given context and entities which are not ....

, the direct object.
ne – ergative
Ergative case
The ergative case is the grammatical case that identifies the subject of a transitive verb in ergative-absolutive languages.-Characteristics:...

marker; applied to subject
Subject (grammar)
The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...

s of transitive
Transitivity (grammatical category)
In linguistics, transitivity is a property of verbs that relates to whether a verb can take direct objects and how many such objects a verb can take...

perfective
Perfective aspect
The perfective aspect , sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect used to describe a situation viewed as a simple whole, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. The perfective aspect is equivalent to the aspectual component of past perfective forms...

verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...

s.
se – ablative
Ablative case
In linguistics, ablative case is a name given to cases in various languages whose common characteristic is that they mark motion away from something, though the details in each language may differ...

marker; has a very wide range of uses and meanings:
- "from"; dillī se "from Delhi
  Delhi
  Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...
  
  ".
- "from, of"; "to fear of you".
- "since"; itvār se "since Sunday".
- "by, with"; instrumental
  Instrumental case
  The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...
  
  marker.
- "by, with, -ly"; adverb
  Adverb
  An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....
  
  ial marker.
- "than"; for comparative
  Comparative
  In grammar, the comparative is the form of an adjective or adverb which denotes the degree or grade by which a person, thing, or other entity has a property or quality greater or less in extent than that of another, and is used in this context with a subordinating conjunction, such as than,...
  
  s.
- a minority of verbs use se rather than ko to mark their patient
  Patient (grammar)
  In linguistics, a grammatical patient, also called the target or undergoer, is the participant of a situation upon whom an action is carried out. A patient as differentiated from a theme must undergo a change in state. A theme is denoted by a stative verb, where a patient is denoted by a dynamic...
  
  s.
mẽ – "in".
par – "on".
tak – "until, up to".

Beyond these are a large range of compound postpositions, composed of the genitive primary postposition kā in the oblique form (ke, kī) plus an adverb.

kī taraf "towards", ke andar "inside", ke āge "in front of, ahead of", ke ūpar "on top of, above", ke nīche "beneath, below", ke pīche "behind", ke bād "after", ke bāre mẽ "about", ke bāhar "outside", ke liye "for", ke sāmne "facing, opposite", etc.

Personal

Hindi-Urdu has personal pronoun

Personal pronoun

Personal pronouns are pronouns used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. All known languages contain personal pronouns.- English personal pronouns :English in common use today has seven personal pronouns:*first-person singular...

s for the first and second persons, while for the third person demonstrative

Demonstrative

In linguistics, demonstratives are deictic words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others...

s are used, which can be categorized deictically

Deixis

In linguistics, deixis refers to the phenomenon wherein understanding the meaning of certain words and phrases in an utterance requires contextual information. Words are deictic if their semantic meaning is fixed but their denotational meaning varies depending on time and/or place...

as proximate and non-proximate. Pronoun

Pronoun

In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...

s distinguish case

Grammatical case

s of direct

Direct case

, oblique

Oblique case

An oblique case in linguistics is a noun case of synthetic languages that is used generally when a noun is the object of a verb or a preposition...

, and dative. The lattermost, often called a set of "contracted

Contraction (grammar)

A contraction is a shortened version of the written and spoken forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters....

" forms, is in free variation with the oblique case plus dative postposition. Pronouns do not distinguish gender

Grammatical gender

.

Also displayed in the below table are the genitive pronominal forms to show that the 1st and 2nd pronouns have their own distinctive forms of merā, hamārā, terā, tumhārā apart from the regular formula of OBL. + kā; as well as the ergative

Ergative case

The ergative case is the grammatical case that identifies the subject of a transitive verb in ergative-absolutive languages.-Characteristics:...

pronominal forms to show that the postposition ne does not straightforwardly suffix the oblique bases: rather than *mujh ne and *tujh ne, direct bases are used giving mai ne and tū ne, and rather than in ne and un ne, it's inhõ ne and unhõ ne.

tū, tum, and āp are the three second person pronouns ("you"), constituting a threefold scale of sociolinguistic formality: respectively "intimate", "familiar", and "polite". The "intimate" is grammatically singular while the "familiar" and "polite" are grammatically plural. When being referred to in the third person however, only those of the "polite" level of formality are grammatically plural. The following table is adapted from .

Personal					Demonstrative				Relative		Interrogative
1st pn.		2nd pn.			3rd pn.
Sg.	Pl.	Sg.	Pl.		Prox.		Non-prox.
Sg.	Pl.	Int.	Fam.	Pol.	Sg.	Pl./Pol.	Sg.	Pl./Pol.	Sg.	Pl.	Sg.	Pl.
Direct												,
Oblique
Dative
Genitive
Ergative

Postpositions are treated as bound morpheme
Bound morpheme
In morphology, a bound morpheme is a morpheme that only appears as part of a larger word; a free morpheme is one that can stand alone.Affixes are always bound. English language affixes are either prefixes or suffixes. E.g., -ment in "shipment" and pre- in "prefix"...

s after pronouns in Hindi, but as separate words in Urdu. Followed here is the example of Urdu, for easier reference.
The varying forms for the 3rd pn. dir. constitute one of the small number of grammatical differences between Hindi and Urdu. yah "this" / ye "these" / vah "that" / ve "those" is the literary set for Hindi while ye "this, these" / vo "that, those" is the set for Urdu and spoken (and also often written) Hindi.
The above section on postpositions noted that ko (the dative case) marks direct objects if definite
Definiteness
In grammatical theory, definiteness is a feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between entities which are specific and identifiable in a given context and entities which are not ....

. As "the most specific thing of all is an individual", persons (or their pronouns) nearly always take the dative case or postposition.
Some speakers prefer plural ham over singular mãĩ. This is not quite the same as the "royal we
Pluralis majestatis
The majestic plural , is the use of a plural pronoun to refer to a single person holding a high office, such as a monarch, bishop, or pope...

"; it is rather colloquial.
koī and kuch are indefinite pronoun
Indefinite pronoun
An indefinite pronoun is a pronoun that refers to one or more unspecified beings, objects, or places.-List of English indefinite pronouns:Note that many of these words can function as other parts of speech too, depending on context...

s/quantifier
Quantification
Quantification has several distinct senses. In mathematics and empirical science, it is the act of counting and measuring that maps human sense observations and experiences into members of some set of numbers. Quantification in this sense is fundamental to the scientific method.In logic,...

s. As pronouns koī is used for animate
Animacy
Animacy is a grammatical and/or semantic category of nouns based on how sentient or alive the referent of the noun in a given taxonomic scheme is...

s ("someone") and kuch for inanimates ("something"). As quantifiers/adjectives koī is used for singular count noun
Count noun
In linguistics, a count noun is a common noun that can be modified by a numeral and that occurs in both singular and plural form, as well as co-occurring with quantificational determiners like every, each, several, etc. A mass noun has none of these properties...

s and kuch for mass noun
Mass noun
In linguistics, a mass noun is a noun that refers to some entity as an undifferentiated unit rather than as something with discrete subsets. Non-count nouns are best identified by their syntactic properties, and especially in contrast with count nouns. The semantics of mass nouns are highly...

s and plural count nouns. koī takes the form kisī in the oblique. The form kaī "several" is partially a plural equivalent to koī. kuch can also act as an adverb
Adverb
An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....

, qualifying an adjective, meaning "rather". koī preceding a number takes the meaning of "about, approximately". In this usage it does not oblique to kisī.
apnā is a (genitive) reflexive pronoun
Reflexive pronoun
A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that is preceded by the noun, adjective, adverb or pronoun to which it refers within the same clause. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent...

: "my/your/etc. (own)". Using non-reflexive and reflexive together gives emphasis; e.g. merā apnā "my (very) own". xud, āp, and svayam are some (direct; non-genitive) others: "my/your/etc.-self". Bases for oblique usage are usually apne or apne āp. The latter alone can also mean "of one's own accord"; āpas mẽ means "among/between themselves".

Derivates

	\|Relative	Place

Quantity
Quality	kaisā	jaisā	aisā	vaisā
Manner	kaise	jaise	aise	vaise

Adverbs

Hindi-Urdu has few underived forms. Adverb

Adverb

An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....

s may be derived in ways such as the following —

Simply obliquing some nouns and adjectives: nīcā "low" → nīce "down", sīdhā "straight" → sīdhe "straight", dhīrā "slow" → dhīre "slowly", saverā "morning" → savere "in the morning", ye taraf "this direction" → is taraf "in this direction", kalkattā "Calcutta" → kalkatte "to Calcutta".
Nouns using a postposition such as se "by, with, -ly": zor "force" → zor se "forcefully" (lit. "with force"), dhyān "attention" → dhyān se "attentively" (lit. "with attention").
Adjectives using postpositional phrases involving "way, manner": acchā "good" → acchī tarah se "well" (lit. "by/in a good way"), xās "special" → xās taur par "especially" (lit. "on a special way").
Verbs in conjunctive form: hãs- "laugh" → hãs kar "laughingly" (lit. "having laughed"), mehrbānī kar- "do kindness" → mehrbānī kar ke "kindly, please" (lit. "having done kindness").
Formative suffixes from Sanskrit or Perso-Arabic in higher registers of Hindi or Urdu. Skt. sambhava "possible" + → "possibly; Ar. ittifāq "chance" + -an → ittifāqan "by chance".

Overview

The Hindi-Urdu verb

Verb

A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...

al system is largely structured around a combination of aspect

Grammatical aspect

In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...

and tense

Grammatical tense

A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...

/mood

Grammatical mood

In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...

. Like the nominal system, the Hindi-Urdu verb involves successive layers of (inflectional) elements to the right of the lexical base

Root (linguistics)

The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....

.

Hindi-Urdu has 3 aspects: perfective, habitual, and continuous

Continuous and progressive aspects

The continuous and progressive aspects are grammatical aspects that express incomplete action in progress at a specific time: they are non-habitual, imperfective aspects. It is a verb category with two principal meaning components: duration and incompletion...

, each having overt morphological correlates. These are participle

Participle

In linguistics, a participle is a word that shares some characteristics of both verbs and adjectives. It can be used in compound verb tenses or voices , or as a modifier...

forms, inflecting for gender

Grammatical gender

and number

Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....

by way of a vowel termination, like adjectives. The perfective, though displaying a "number of irregularities and morphophonemic adjustments", is the simplest, being just the verb stem

Word stem

In linguistics, a stem is a part of a word. The term is used with slightly different meanings.In one usage, a stem is a form to which affixes can be attached. Thus, in this usage, the English word friendships contains the stem friend, to which the derivational suffix -ship is attached to form a new...

followed by the agreement vowel. The habitual forms from the imperfective participle; verb stem, plus -t-, then vowel. The continuous forms periphrastic

Periphrasis

In linguistics, periphrasis is a device by which a grammatical category or grammatical relationship is expressed by a free morpheme , instead of being shown by inflection or derivation...

ally through compound

Compound verb

In linguistics, a compound verb or complex predicate is a multi-word compound that acts as a single verb. One component of the compound is a light verb or vector, which carries any inflections, indicating tense, mood, or aspect, but provides only fine shades of meaning...

ing (see below) with the perfective of rahnā "to stay".

Derived from honā "to be" are five copula forms: present

Present tense

The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...

, past

Past tense

The past tense is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment , or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future...

, subjunctive, presumptive, contrafactual (aka "past conditional"). Used both in basic predicative/existential sentences and as verbal auxiliaries

Auxiliary verb

In linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,...

to aspectual forms, these constitute the basis of tense and mood.

Non-aspectual forms include the infinitive

Infinitive

In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...

, the imperative

Imperative mood

The imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...

, and the conjunctive. Mentioned morphological conditions such the subjunctive, "presumptive", etc. are applicable to both copula roots for auxiliary usage with aspectual forms and to non-copula roots directly for often unspecified (non-aspectual) finite

Finite verb

A finite verb is a verb that is inflected for person and for tense according to the rules and categories of the languages in which it occurs. Finite verbs can form independent clauses, which can stand on their own as complete sentences....

forms.

Finite verb

Finite verb

al agreement

Agreement (linguistics)

In languages, agreement or concord is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates....

is with the nominative subject

Subject (grammar)

The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...

, except in the transitive

Transitive verb

In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...

perfective, where it is with the direct object, with the erstwhile subject taking the ergative

Ergative case

The ergative case is the grammatical case that identifies the subject of a transitive verb in ergative-absolutive languages.-Characteristics:...

construction -ne (see postpositions above). The perfective aspect thus displays split ergativity

Split ergativity

Split ergativity is shown by languages that have a partly ergative behaviour, but employ another syntax or morphology — usually accusative — in some contexts...

.

Tabled below on the left are the paradigms for adjectival concord

Agreement (linguistics)

(^A), here only slightly different from that introduced previously: the f. pl. can nasalize under certain conditions. To the right are the paradigms for personal

Grammatical person

Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...

concord (^P), used by the subjunctive.

EWLINE

(A)	Sg.	Pl.
Masc.	-ā
Fem.	-ī

EWLINE

(P)	1st.	2nd.	3rd.
Sg.	-ū̃	-e
Pl.	-ẽ	-o/ẽ	-ẽ

Forms

The sample verb is intransitive dauṛnā "to run", and the sample inflection is 3rd. masc. sg. (^P = e, ^A = ā) where applicable.

Non-aspectual Aspectual

Non-finite

Non-finite verb

In linguistics, a non-finite verb is a verb form that is not limited by a subject and, more generally, is not fully inflected by categories that are marked inflectionally in language, such as tense, aspect, mood, number, gender, and person...

EWLINE

Root	`*`
Infinitive/ Gerund/ Obligatory	`*-n-ā`
Obl. Infinitive	`*-n-e`	dauṛne
Conjunctive	`* kar`
Agentive/ Prospective	`*-n-e vāl-^A`

EWLINE

Adjectivals.
Perfective	`*-^A (hu-^A)`
Imperfective	`*-t-^A (hu-^A)`

Adverbial. Obl. of adjectival.
Imperfective	`*-t-e (hu-e)`	dauṛte hue

Finite

EWLINE

Contingent Future	`*-^P`
Definite Future	`*-^P g-^A`

Imperatives.
Intimate	`*`	dauṛ
Familiar	`*-o`	dauṛo
Polite	`*-iye`	dauṛiye
Deferred	`*-nā`	dauṛnā
Deferential	`*-iye gā`	dauṛiye gā

EWLINE

Aspectuals plotted against copulas.
		Perfective	Habitual	Continuous
		`*-^A`	`*-t-^A`	`* rah-^A`
Present	`h-?`
Past
Subjunctive	`ho-^P`
Presumptive
Contrafactual	`ho-t-^A`
Unspecified			dauṛtā

Notes

Much of the above chart information derives from .
The future tense is formed by adding the suffix gā (~ ge ~ gī) to the subjunctive, which is a contraction of gaā (= gayā, perfective participle of jānā "to go"). The future suffix, conjunctive participle, and suffix vālā are treated as bound morphemes in written Hindi, but as separate words in written Urdu. Again followed here is the example of Urdu, for easier reference.The present copula (h-?) seems not to follow along the lines of the regular ^P system of terminations; while the subjunctive copula (ho-^P) is thoroughly irregular. So here are all of their forms.

Sg Pl.
1st. 2nd. 3rd. 1st. 2nd. 3rd.
Pron. mãĩ tū vo ham tum āp vo
Pres.
Subj. hū̃ ho hõ ho hõ
For the 1. subj. sg. copula and list hū̃ while lists hoū̃. lists the polite imperative ending as -iye, while lists it as -ie but -iye after ā, o, ū.
The euphonic glide
Semivowel
In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:...

y is inserted in perfective participles between prohibited vowel clusters. It is historically the remnant of the old perfective marker. The clusters are a + ā, ā + ā, o + ā, and ī + ā, resulting in āyā, ayā, oyā, iyā. e.g. khāyā/khāye/khāī/khāī̃ (khā- "eat").
In addition, the combinations ī + ī and i + ī give ī. e.g. piyā/piye/pī/pī̃ (pī- "drink").
As stated, agreement in the transitive perfective is with the direct object, with the erstwhile subject taking the ergative postposition ne. If however the direct object takes the postposition ko (marking definiteness
Definiteness
In grammatical theory, definiteness is a feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between entities which are specific and identifiable in a given context and entities which are not ....

), or if no direct object is expressed, then agreement neutralizes to default m. sg. -ā.
Is this regard, there are a small number of verbs that while perhaps logically transitive still do not take ne and continue to agree with the subject, in the perfective. e.g. lānā "to bring", bhūlnā "to forget", milnā "to meet", etc.

	Sg	Pl.
1st.	2nd.	3rd.	1st.	2nd.	3rd.
Pron.	mãĩ	tū	vo	ham	tum	āp	vo
Pres.
Subj.	hū̃	ho	hõ	ho	hõ

Besides supplying the copulas, honā "to be" can be used aspectually: huā "happened, became"; hotā "happens, becomes, is"; ho rahā "happening, being".
-ke can be used as a colloquial alternative to -kar for the conjunctive participle of any verb. But for karnā it is the only possible form; karke, not *karkar.
Hindi-Urdu displays a very small number of irregular forms, spelled out in the cells below.

Root Perf.
Stem
Imperative Subj.
Stem

Fam. Pol.
ho- "be" hu-
jā- "go" ga-
kar- "do" ki- kījie
de- "give" di- do dījie d-
le- "take" li- lo lījie l-
pī- "drink" pījie
However, it is jā- that is used as the perfective stem in the rare instance of an intransitive verb like jānā being expressed passively, such as in a passivized imperative/subjunctive construction: ghar jāyā jāe? "Shall [we] go home?" (lit. "Shall home be gone to [by us]?").

Root	Perf. Stem	Imperative	Subj. Stem
Fam.	Pol.
ho- "be"	hu-
jā- "go"	ga-
kar- "do"	ki-		kījie
de- "give"	di-	do	dījie	d-
le- "take"	li-	lo	lījie	l-
pī- "drink"			pījie

Causatives

Transitives or causative

Causative

In linguistics, a causative is a form that indicates that a subject causes someone or something else to do or be something, or causes a change in state of a non-volitional event....

s are morphologically contrastive in Hindi-Urdu, leading to the existence of related verb sets divisible along such lines. While the derivation of such forms shows patterns, they do reach a level of variegation so as to make it somewhat difficult to outline all-encompassing rules. Furthermore, some sets may have as many as four to five distinct members; also, the meaning of certain members of given sets may be idiosyncratic.

Starting from intransitive or transitive verb stems further transitive/causative stems are produced according to these assorted rules —

1a. Root vowel change: a → ā, u/ū → o, i/ī → e. Sometimes accompanied by root final consonant change: k → c, → , l → Ø.

1b. Suffixation of -ā. Often accompanied by:

Root vowel change: ū/o → u, e/ai/ā/ī → i.

Insertion of semivowel

Semivowel

l between such vowel-terminating stems.

2. Suffixation of -vā (in place of -ā if and where it'd occur) for a "causitive".

The following are sets culled from and . The lack of third members displayed for the ghūmnā to dhulnā sets does not imply that they do not exist but that they were simply not listed in the source literature . Intransitive verbs are coloured brown while transitives remain the usual black.

girnā "to fall", girānā "to fell", girvānā "to cause to be felled".
banna "to become", banānā "to make", banvānā "to cause to be made".
khulnā "to open", kholnā "to open", khulvānā "to caused to be opened".
sīkhnā "to learn", sikhānā "to teach", sikhvānā "to cause to be taught".
khānā "to eat", khilānā "to feed", khilvānā "to cause to be fed".
biknā "to sell", becnā "to sell", bikvānā "to cause to be sold".
dikhnā/dīkhnā "to seem", dekhnā "to see", dikhānā "to show", dikhvānā "to cause to be shown".
kahnā "to say", kahlānā "to be called".
ghūmnā "to go round", ghumānā "to make go round".
"to lie down", "to lay down".
"to sit", "to seat".
sonā "to sleep", sulānā "to make sleep".
dhulnā "to wash", dhonā "to wash".
"to break", "to break", "to cause to be broken".

In the causative model of "to cause to be Xed", the agent takes the postposition se. Thus Y se Z banvānā "to cause Z to be made by Y" = "to cause Y to make Z" = "to have Z made by Y" = "to have Y make Z", etc.

Compounds

Compound verb

s, a highly visible feature of Hindi–Urdu grammar, consist of a verbal stem plus an auxiliary verb

Auxiliary verb

. The auxiliary (variously called "subsidiary", "explicator verb", and "vector") loses its own independent meaning and instead "lends a certain shade of meaning" to the main/stem verb, which "comprises the lexical core of the compound". While most any verb can act as a main verb, there is a limited set of productive auxiliaries. Shown below are prominent such auxiliaries, with their independent meaning first outlined, followed by their semantic contribution as auxiliaries.

jānā "to go"; gives a sense of completeness, finality, or change of state. e.g. ānā "to come" → ā jānā "to come, arrive"; khānā "to eat" → khā jānā "to eat up"; pīnā "to drink" → pī jānā "to drink up"; "to sit" → "to sit down"; samajhnā "to understand" → samajh jānā "to realise"; sonā "to sleep" → so jānā "to go to sleep"; honā "to be" → ho jānā "to become".
lenā "to take"; suggests that the benefit of the action flows towards the doer. e.g. "to read (to/for oneself)".
denā "to give"; suggests that the benefit of the action flows away from the doer. e.g. "to read (out)".

The above three are the most common of auxiliaries, and the "least marked", or "lexically nearly colourless". The nuance laden by an auxiliary can often be very subtle and as well is not necessarily grounds for a rendering in different words upon translation to English as the examples here might conveniently show. lenā and denā, transitive verbs, occur with transitives, while intransitive jānā occurs mostly with intransitives; a compound of a transitive and jānā will be grammatically intransitive as jānā is.

"to throw, pour"; indicates an action done vigorously, decisively, violently or recklessly; it is an intensifier, showing intensity, urgency, completeness, or violence. e.g. mārnā "to strike" → "to kill", pīnā "to drink" → "to drink down".
"to sit"; implies an action done foolishly or stubbornly; shows speaker disapproval or an implusive or involuntary action. kahnā "to say" → "to blurt out", karnā "to do" → "to do (as a blunder)", "to fight" → "to quarrel (foolishly)".
"to fall"; connotes involuntary, sudden, or unavoidable occurrence; adds a sense of suddenness or change of state, with its independent/literal meaning sometimes showing through in a sense of downward movement.
"to rise"; functions like an intensifier; suggests inception of action or feeling, with its independent/literal meaning sometimes showing through in a sense of upward movement. e.g. jalnā "to burn" → "to burst into flames", nacnā "to dance" → "to break into dance".
rakhnā "to keep, maintain"; implies a firmness of action, or one with possibly long-lasting results or implications; occurs with lenā and denā, meaning "to give/take (as a loan)", and with other appropriate verbs, showing an action performed beforehand.
The continuous aspect marker rahā apparently originated as a compound verb with rahnā ("remain"): thus mãĩ bol rahā hū̃ = "I have remained speaking" > "I have continued speaking" > "I am speaking". However it has lost the ability to take any form other than the perfective, and is thus considered to have become grammaticalized.

Finally, having to do with the manner of an occurrence, compounds verbs are mostly used with completed actions and imperatives, and much less with negatives, conjunctives, and contexts continuous or speculative. This is because non-occurrences cannot be described to have occurred in a particular manner.

Conjuncts

Another notable aspect of Hindi–Urdu grammar is that of "conjunct verbs", composed of a noun

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

or adjective

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....

paired up with a general verbalizer, most commonly transitive karnā "to do" or intransitive honā "to be(come)", functioning in the place of what in English

English language

would be single unified verb.

In the case of an adjective as the non-verbal element, it is often helps to think of karnā "to do" as supplementally having the senses of "to cause to be", "to make", "to render", etc.

Adjective	Conjunct	Literal	Meaning
sāf clean	sāf karnā	to do clean	to clean
niyukt appointed	niyukt karnā	to do appointed	to appoint
band closed	band honā	to become closed	to close
xatm finished	xatm honā	to become finished	to finish

In the case of a noun as the non-verbal element, it is treated syntactically as the verb's (direct) object (never taking the ko marker; governing agreement in perfective and infinitival constructions), and the semantic patient

Patient (grammar)

In linguistics, a grammatical patient, also called the target or undergoer, is the participant of a situation upon whom an action is carried out. A patient as differentiated from a theme must undergo a change in state. A theme is denoted by a stative verb, where a patient is denoted by a dynamic...

(or agent

Agent (grammar)

In linguistics, a grammatical agent is the cause or initiator of an event. Agent is the name of the thematic role...

: see gālī khānā below) of the conjunct verbal expression is often expressed/marked syntactically as a genitive adjunct (-kā ~ ke ~ kī) of the noun.

Noun	Conjunct	Conjunct + patient	Literal	Meaning
intazār wait	intazār karnā	kisī kā intazār karnā	to do somebody's wait	to wait for somebody
istemāl use	istemāl karnā	fon kā istemāl karnā	to do a phone's use	to use a phone
bāt talk	bāt karnā	Samīr kī bāt karnā	to do Sameer's talk	to talk about Sameer
installation			to do an idol's installation	to install an idol
gālī curse	gālī khānā	sanam kī gālī khānā	to eat a lover's curse	to be cussed out by one's lover

With English

English language

it is the verb stems themselves that are used.

Verb stem	Conjunct	Meaning
caik check	caik karnā	to check
bor bore	bor honā	to be bored

Passive

The passive construction is periphrastic

Periphrasis

In linguistics, periphrasis is a device by which a grammatical category or grammatical relationship is expressed by a free morpheme , instead of being shown by inflection or derivation...

. It is formed from the perfective participle by addition of the auxiliary jānā "to go"; i.e. likhnā "to write" → likhā jānā "to be written". The agent is marked by the postposition se. Furthermore, both intransitive and transitive verbs may be grammatically passivized to show physical/psychological incapacity, usually in negative sentences. Lastly, intransitives often have a passive sense, or convey unintentional action.

Syntax

With regards to word order

Word order

In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...

, Hindi-Urdu is an SOV language. In terms of branching

Branching (linguistics)

In linguistics, branching is the general tendency towards a given order of words within sentences and smaller grammatical units within sentences...

, it is neither purely left- or right-branching, and phenomena of both types can be found. The order of constituents in sentences as a whole lacks governing "hard and fast rules", and frequent deviations can be found from normative word position, describable in terms of a small number of rules, accounting for facts beyond the pale of the label of "SOV".

Indirect objects precede direct objects.
Attributive adjectives precede the noun they qualify.
Adverbs precede the adjectives they qualify.
Negative markers (nahī̃, na, mat) and interrogatives precede the verb.
Interrogatives precede negative markers if both are present.
kyā ("what?") as the yes-no question
Yes-no question
In linguistics, a yes–no question, formally known as a polar question, is a question whose expected answer is either "yes" or "no". Formally, they present an exclusive disjunction, a pair of alternatives of which only one is acceptable. In English, such questions can be formed in both positive...

marker occurs at the beginning of a clause.

Possession

Possession, reflecting what many other languages indicate via the verb to have, is reflected in Hindi-Urdu by the genitive kā (inflected appropriately) or the postposition ke pās and the verb honā. Possible objects of possession (nouns) fall into two main categories in Hindi-Urdu: one for persons such as family members, or body parts, and the other for most inanimate objects, animals, most abstract ideas, and some persons such as servants.

For indicating possession with objects of the first category, kā appears after the subject of the possession, followed by the object. With personal pronouns, this requires the use of the possessive pronoun (inflected appropriately). Examples: Merī mātā he ("I have a mother"), Shiv kī tīn ā̃khẽ hain ("Shiva has three eyes").
For indicating possession with objects of the second category, the compound postposition ke pās is used. For example: Mohan ke pās ek bukkarī he ("Mohan has one goat").

Differences between Hindi and Urdu

At morphological level, the differences between Hindi and Urdu are mostly in the area of vocabulary. But there are few other differences also, which are:

In the indirect constructions employing chaahiye, Urdu also uses plural form chaahiye'n.

Language	Transliterated sentence	Translated meaning (in English)
Hindi	mujhey kitaab chaahiye mujhey kitaabe'n chaahiye	I need the book. I need the books.
Urdu	mujhey kitaab chaahiye mujhey kitaabe'n chaahiye'n	I need the book. I need the books.

In another indirect construction, Hindi usually has the infinitive, functioning as a complement, agreeing with the grammatical subject of the verb; Urdu however has two additional possibilities.

Language	Transliterated sentence	Translated meaning (in English)
Hindi	mujhey kuchh kitaabe'n khariidnii hai'n	I need to buy some books.
Urdu	mujhey kuchh kitaabe'n khariidnii hai'n mujhey kuchh kitaabe'n khariidnaa hai'n mujhey kuchh kitaabe'n khariidnaa hai	I need to buy some books. I need to buy some books. I need to buy some books.

In sentences in which a conjunctive participle is used to refer to the first act in a series of two, if the first act is in some sense a 'cause' for the second act, Hindi prefers the conjunctive suffix -kar be dropped and only the root of the first verb used. In Urdu, on the other hand, the use of conjunctive suffix is always required.

Language	Transliterated sentence	Translated meaning (in English)
Hindi	un-ko dekh ham ro paRey	On seeing him we burst into tears.
Urdu	un-ko dekh-kar ham ro paRey	On seeing him we burst into tears.
The following sentence, however, will be same in both Hindi and Urdu:
Hindi/Urdu	un-sey jaa-kar miliye	Please go and meet him.

Many nouns which are masculine in Urdu are feminine in Hindi, the opposite also being true.

There are any number of derivational suffixes and prefixes in Urdu, as well as numerous adverbial words and phrases, which are not found in Hindi.

Urdu extensively uses Izafat, a morphological device borrowed from Persian, to make nominal compounds. Izafat is not used in Hindi.

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