Sentence Types in Tharu and English

Abstract

This thesis entitled “Sentence Types in Tharu and English” is an attempt to find out sentence types in the Tharu language and to compare and contrast them with those in English. The researcher utilized both primary and secondary sources of data. The sample population of the study consisted of 60 native speakers of Tharu including educated and uneducated. All the informants for this study were selected from Siraha district as the study was based on Saptaria dialect of the Tharu language which is spoken in Siraha, Saptari and Udaypur districts. Among the 60 informants, 30 were educated and equal number of uneducated informants were there. Out of 30, in both groups 15 were male and 15 were female informants. The researcher used purposive/judgmental non-random sampling procedure to sample the population. The interview questionnaire for uneducated and written questionnaire for educated population were the research tools for data collection. On the basis of the collected data the analysis and interpretation was done descriptively and comparatively with the help of tables, diagrams and illustrations. From the analysis it was found that Saprariya dialect of Tharu has four types of sentences on the basis of formal and functional properties and three types of sentences on the basis of constructional properties as in English and each type of sentence has distinct markers and identification as in English. The thesis contains altogether four chapters viz. introduction, methodology, analysis and interpretation, and finding and recommendations. The first chapter deals with introduction which consists of general background, languages of Nepal, English sentence, review of the related literature, objectives of the study and significance of the study. The second chapter deals with the methodology adopted for the study. It consists of sources of data, population of the study, sampling procedure tools for data collection, process of data collection and limitations of the study. Similarly, the third chapter deals with the analysis and interpretation of the data. It contains sentence types in the Tharu language with illustrations and comparison of sentence types of the Tharu language with those of English. The fourth chapter deals with the findings and recommendations. It consists of recommendations for pedagogical implications.