A Comparative Study Of Hindko And English Passive Syntactic Constructions

Abstract

This study investigates the syntactic differences between passive constructions in English and Hindko by applying the framework of Revised Extended Standard Transformational (REST) Grammar, and explores how these structural disparities affect Hindko-speaking learners’ acquisition of English passives. Although English passive constructions have been extensively examined, South Asian languages such as Hindko remain underexplored in this domain. This gap in research constrains both the descriptive documentation of Hindko grammar and the understanding of typological contrasts and their influence on English language learning. Using a qualitative descriptive–exploratory design, data were collected through structured translation tasks administered to 20 bilingual participants (8 teachers and 12 students) who speak the Abbottabad dialect of Hindko. Participants were purposively selected to ensure age and educational diversity. They orally translated a set of passive constructions from Hindko into English, and their responses were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. The analysis placed particular emphasis on syntactic operations central to passive formation, including NP movement, auxiliary insertion, agent demotion, and morphological transformations in both languages. The findings indicate that while both languages share universal principles underlying passive constructions, notable surface-level differences exist. English relies heavily on auxiliary chains and the prepositional by-phrase, whereas Hindko primarily employs verb morphology and postpositional agent markers. These typological mismatches contributed to systematic learner errors, including tense–aspect inconsistencies, auxiliary omission or misuse, and word-order interference. The study concludes that such typological differences drive interlingual interference in the acquisition of English passives by Hindko speakers. It is recommended that English language instruction for Hindko speakers place particular emphasis on auxiliary selection, tense–aspect formation, and by-phrase construction to mitigate mother-tongue interference. Future research may extend this inquiry to other Hindko dialects to draw broader syntactic comparisons and identify both shared and divergent patterns across the language.