Noun Phrase Structure in the English and Maithili Languages

Abstract

The present study is entitled Noun Phrase Structure in The English and Maithili Languages. The researcher has taken noun phrase structure in English and Maithili. Noun phrases are language universals and this study is basically concerned with how this universal property of language is realized in English and Maithili. The main objectives of this study are to identify the noun phrase structure in the Maithili language and to find out the similarities and differences between the structure of noun phrase in the Maithili and English languages. There were 40 students from the graduate level and 40 scholars were taken from Maithili speaking community. The campus was selected systematically by using simple random sampling procedure. And the campus from which sample population was taken was selected non-randomly using judgemental sampling procedure. The main finding of this study is that the roles and relations of the constituents in a sentence are expressed through word order and prepositions in English but in Maithili, they are expressed by postpositions. Pre-positions occur before the noun and postpositions occur after the nouns and distinctions of gender making system in Maithili are determined solely by the sex of animate noun and nouns get inflected by the addition suffix '-ain', 'ni, 'in' and vowel modification and suppletion whereas English does not have such system. The present thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter deals with general background, theoretical background of noun phrase in Maithili and English, literature review, objectives of the study and significance of the study. The second chapter deals with methodology of the study. It also accounts for the sources of data, sampling procedure, tools and process for data and limitations of the study. The third chapter entails analysis and interpretation of the data. It deals with the description and classification of the noun phrase available in both the English and Maithili languages. Noun phrase in both languages has been classified in terms of their head, nominalization, pronominal, gerundive, infinitival and adjectival. The fourth chapter deals with the findings in terms of similarities and differences and recommendations based on the analysis and interpretation. It also includes recommendations from the perspective of pedagogical significance.