Inflectional Morpheme and Frequency Patterns in Urdu-English Code switching: A Corpus-Based Study

The study aims to investigate the inflected morphemes and their frequency patterns in Urdu- English code-switching (CS), particularly focusing on how these morphemes operate different functions within bilingual discourse under the theoretical framework of Riksem et al., (2019). The study, furthermore, examines grammatical features of inflected morphemes including number, gender, case, person, aspect, and tense agreement encoded across languages during code-switching (CS). Employing a mixed-methodology, this study gathered data from Urdu-English bilinguals and for corpus analysis, the study utilizes AntConc software to identify significant frequencies of inflected morphemes patterns and their functions. The bilingual corpus of the study exhibited nine distinct inflectional morphemes prevalently used in Urdu-English code-switching (CS). These morphemes performed particularized grammatical functions, with notable patterns in tense agreement. Two types of tense agreement were observed: short-distance agreement (SDA) and long- distance agreement (LDA). The LDA phenomenon was particularly influenced by the presence of the ergative marker -ne, which blocked nominative agreement and triggered cross-clausal agreement. Additionally, the empathetic marker -di emerged as a salient feature, underscoring its pragmatic and syntactic relevance in bilingual competence. Overall, the findings contribute to a deeper understanding of inflectional morphology in code-switching and cater the nuanced role of inflectional morphemes in shaping syntactic alignment across language.