Urdu: پھیلاو، پھیلاؤ، پھیلائو

[Gop]

Friends,
I have come across three different ways of writing phaila’o (noun) : پھیلاو، پھیلاؤ، پھیلائو
Of these, I suppose the two forms with hamza are equivalent. پھیلاو is given in Platts dictionary. Which of these forms is most current?
Thanks.

 

[marrish]

Gop SaaHib,

My observations are these, others can share theirs.

This, and other words of this type are spelled with hamza on و (vaa'o/waaw)۔
پھیلاؤ

Some authors recommended differentiating between plural imperatives and deverbal nouns by writing the latter without hamza like پھیلاو 'extent' but پھیلاؤ 'spread!'. Despite I believe Rasheed Hasan Khan's opinion it didn't gain traction. I also associate the latter style with older Urdu and I don't think it's correct at all.

The last one, پھیلائو is not spelled correctly and it can be misread for another form ie future imperative for 2 sg.

 

[Gop]

Gop SaaHib,

My observations are these, others can share theirs.

This, and other words of this type are spelled with hamza on و (vaa'o/waaw)۔
پھیلاؤ

Some authors recommended differentiating between plural imperatives and deverbal nouns by writing the latter without hamza like پھیلاو 'extent' but پھیلاؤ 'spread!'. Despite I believe Rasheed Hasan Khan's opinion it didn't gain traction. I also associate the latter style with older Urdu and I don't think it's correct at all.

The last one, پھیلائو is not spelled correctly and it can be misread for another form ie future imperative for 2 sg.

Thank you, marrish SaaHib, I am only a passive reader, but still when I came across پھیلائو in the text attached here (2nd line from bottom) I was curious.
BTW, what do you mean by ‘deverbal’ nouns?

 

[marrish]

I'm not saying it's not used, it is, especially when one doesn't know how to type it properly. The thing is, و itself is a seat for hamza and doesn't need the preceding prop.
By 'deverbal nouns' I must have meant 'verbal nouns' or 'de-verbal nouns', perhaps. I hope someone can clarify the terminology.

 

[Qureshpor]

Gope SaaHib, there is not much that can be added to marrish SaaHib's response.

Urdu-Hindi: Urdu/Hindi spelling conventions (See posts 14 and 17)

Hindi-Urdu: गाँव-गाओं, झुकाव-झुकाओ

گوپ صاحب اِس وسیع دنیا میں جاؤ اور زبانِ اردو کی شیرینی پھیلاؤ۔

یہاں پھیلاؤ کی حیثیت ایک فعل کی ہے۔

ایک وقت تھا جب ہندوستان میں اردو کا پھیلاؤ دور دور تک تھا لیکن اب کی صورتِ حال بہت مختلف ہے۔

یہاں پھیلاؤ کی حیثیت ایک اسم کی ہے۔

جیسا کہ مرّش صاحب نے فرمایا ہے پرانی اردو میں اسم کے ساتھ ہمزہ کے بغیر واؤ ہوتا تھا اور رشید حسن خان جیسے دانشور اِسی طرز کی تلقین کرتے ہیں لیکن ہمزہ کے ساتھ واؤ کا استعمال جڑ پکڑ گیا ہے کہ اب اِس کو اُکھیڑنا ناممکن لگتا ہے۔

دوست ہوں جس کے ہزاروں وہ کسی کا نہیں دوست
سچ بتا تجھ کو کسی سے بھی ہے دنیا میں لگاؤ ۔ اسم

ایک ہی دوست اور اُس سے ہمیں چھُٹواتے ہو
ناصحو تمھیں دشمن کہیں یا دوست، بتاؤ؟۔ فعل

الطاف حسین حالی​

 

[Gop]

Gope SaaHib, there is not much that can be added to marrish SaaHib's response.

Urdu-Hindi: Urdu/Hindi spelling conventions (See posts 14 and 17)

Hindi-Urdu: गाँव-गाओं, झुकाव-झुकाओ

گوپ صاحب اِس وسیع دنیا میں جاؤ اور زبانِ اردو کی شیرینی پھیلاؤ۔

یہاں پھیلاؤ کی حیثیت ایک فعل کی ہے۔

ایک وقت تھا جب ہندوستان میں اردو کا پھیلاؤ دور دور تک تھا لیکن اب کی صورتِ حال بہت مختلف ہے۔

یہاں پھیلاؤ کی حیثیت ایک اسم کی ہے۔

جیسا کہ مرّش صاحب نے فرمایا ہے پرانی اردو میں اسم کے ساتھ ہمزہ کے بغیر واؤ ہوتا تھا اور رشید حسن خان جیسے دانشور اِسی طرز کی تلقین کرتے ہیں لیکن ہمزہ کے ساتھ واؤ کا استعمال جڑ پکڑ گیا ہے کہ اب اِس کو اُکھیڑنا ناممکن لگتا ہے۔

دوست ہوں جس کے ہزاروں وہ کسی کا نہیں دوست
سچ بتا تجھ کو کسی سے بھی ہے دنیا میں لگاؤ ۔ اسم

ایک ہی دوست اور اُس سے ہمیں چھُٹواتے ہو
ناصحو تمھیں دشمن کہیں یا دوست، بتاؤ؟۔ فعل

الطاف حسین حالی​

Thank you for your delightful reply!

 

[Gop]

I'm not saying it's not used, it is, especially when one doesn't know how to type it properly. The thing is, و itself is a seat for hamza and doesn't need the preceding prop.
By 'deverbal nouns' I must have meant 'verbal nouns' or 'de-verbal nouns', perhaps. I hope someone can clarify the terminology.

I looked up the dictionary which says that deverbal noun is a noun derived from a verb e.g. ‘developer’ is a deverbal noun because it is derived from the verb ‘develop’. But this is English grammar. Would you apply it to Urdu and designate پھیلاؤ as a deverbal noun?

 

[Qureshpor]

^ See post 5

Urdu: Ways of forming verbal nouns

 

[marrish]

But this is English grammar. Would you apply it to Urdu and designate پھیلاؤ as a deverbal noun?

Gop SaaHib, I did just that, but I'm open to corrections. I didn't really give it as much thought as I perhaps should've done. پھیلاؤ (as a noun) derives from the verb, but as QP SaaHib explained in the other thread, there are many different sorts of such formations. The term I impromptu used was not an attempt at categorising them.

 

[Gop]

^ See post 5

Urdu: Ways of forming verbal nouns

Qureshpor SaaHib, it is very instructive to read your post on ways of forming verbal nouns.

 

[aevynn]

Some authors recommended differentiating between plural imperatives and deverbal nouns by writing the latter without hamza like پھیلاو 'extent' but پھیلاؤ 'spread!'. Despite I believe Rasheed Hasan Khan's opinion it didn't gain traction.

Just to flesh out the reference in case anyone (else) gets curious, this opinion occurs in Rasheed Hasan Khan's 1975 book اردو کیسے لکھیں (pages 62-64, with related remarks on page 49).

But this is English grammar. Would you apply it to Urdu and designate پھیلاؤ as a deverbal noun?

To the extent that one wishes to distinguish the terms "verbal noun" and "deverbal noun," it feels to me like marrish jii's use of "deverbal noun" was spot on!

My understanding is that, to the extent that the two terms are distinguished, "verbal noun" is used for a systematic morphological form of a verb that is used to create phrases that behave like nouns, while "deverbal nouns" might derive etymologically from verbs, but they do so in idiosyncratic, non-systematic, and lexicalized ways. For example, in a sentence like is biimaarii kaa phailnaa kab band ho_gaa?, it is the -naa form that is used to create the noun-like phrase is biimaarii kaa phailnaa which then serves as the subject of the sentence. Basically every verb systematically has this -naa form, so this phailnaa can be said to be a "verbal noun." On the other hand, the -aa'o/-aav suffix that appears in phailaa'o/phailaav is not completely systematic verb morphology in the same way as the -naa form: not all verb stems can be appended with this suffix to make something that behaves like a noun. For example, as far as I am aware, one does not typically form a noun ?muskuraa'o/muskuraav from the verb stem muskuraa-, and one normally uses muskuraahaT instead. Linguists seem to speak about "deverbal nouns" in a huge wide variety of genetically unrelated languages (eg, Japanese, Mandarin, Swahili, ...), and other languages also have a variety of idiosyncratic ways of forming deverbal nouns from verb stems, so it feels to me like using the same terminology here is fine.