Mirative Status of the Urdu Discourse Marker to

This study explicates the licensing conditions for the mirative behaviour of the Urdu discourse marker to, that is, how do declaratives become miratives in the presence of the discourse particle to? To explore the semantic contribution of this particle, the study uses Evans’ Lexical Concept and Cognitive Model (2009), since it combines linguistic and cognitive systems to account for a situated meaning. The study employs naturally occurring data, introspection, and Urdu Lughat to mitigate the limitations associated with an individual source when used in isolation. It finds that the discourse particle to contributes a non-propositional mirative meaning when it interacts with other lexical concepts undergoing the semantic compositional processes, namely selection, integration, and interpretation. The use of to and prosodic construction in declaratives remain in complementary distribution. The findings imply that both linguistic and non-linguistic factors account for form-meaning relation in Urdu language.