# Urdu: Proper word order in terms of grammar



## Darraptor

Hey guys I was wondering what is the proper word order in urdu. I think its subject adjective object verb adverb but I'm not entirely sure.


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## Qureshpor

Hi Darraptor, welcome to the Forum.

Please add language in which your query is based in the thread title.

daa'uud ne jaaluut ko patthar se maaraa

subject + object + (adverb etc) + verb

David   + Goliath + (with a stone) + slew


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## Darraptor

So would the adjective be after the subject?


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## tonyspeed

Darraptor said:


> Hey guys I was wondering what is the proper word order in urdu. I think its subject adjective object verb adverb but I'm not entirely sure.



Proper is not the correct word here. Unlike many other languages, the order of words in Urdu can be rearranged, especially in colloquial speech, without harm to the correctness of the sentence.
In this way, Urdu is quite different from English.

The order you are asking for is the "regular" or "standard" word order.

In the case of adjectives, they are before the noun in standard order.


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## MonsieurGonzalito

I noticed that, when there are several kinds of complements (direct and indirect) affecting a noun,  they all tend to go before the main word. 
And the direct complement (the one not mediated by a postposition)  tends to go last, right before the noun:

_1. ghar kaa sundar dvaar _= "The beautiful door of the house".

However, if there is a demonstrative pronoun, to my surprise, Google Translate doesn't give me for  "This beautiful door of the house":

_2. ye ghar kaa sundar dvaar _

but

_3. ghar kaa ye sundar dvaar _

Does #3 reflect the order native speakers prefer?
If true, any idea why is that, since _ye _unequivocally belongs to _dvaar_, not to _ghar _anyways?


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## MonsieurGonzalito

Actually, there doesn't seem to be any precedence rule between the  postpositional complement and a demonstrative pronoun.
(Or, if there is one, I can't figure it out)
There are lots of:

4. _vo do saal kii bachchii_

with the demonstrative before the postpositional complement as well ...


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## amiramir

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> 3. ghar kaa ye sundar dvaar


This is exactly how I'd say it, except I'd use darvaazaa. 

Nr 2 doesn't sound right at all.

Nr 4 seems completely correct to me as well. Whereas do saal kii vo bachchii doesn't do much for me.

I don't really have an explanation other than my ear parses the sentences as:

vo (do saal kii bachchii), and

ghar kaa (yeh sundar darvaazaa). I realize you are saying it could be yeh (ghar kaa sundar darvaazaa), but that doesn't sound right to me at all. 

Hopefully more grammatically knowledgeable people will respond, and those with proper native ears. I wouldn't ordinarily respond with such an unhelpful response, but I thought people might be out for the holidays.


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## Pokeflute

You will hear #2 in songs and poems at least. One classic example:



> do pal ki thi, *ye dilloN ki daastaaN*
> aur phir chal diye, tum kahaaN ham kahaaN



(will defer the comment on whether it's grammatical or not to the natives)


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## MonsieurGonzalito

I found out that some languages (HU among them) have this feature called "recency preference"
https://d-nb.info/1129599124/34  (Page 99)
a.k.a. "righ association" 
http://www.colinphillips.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/phillips1995_right_association.pdf


It applies to those ambiguous situations where a noun is modified by a genitive construction, and an adjective can apply to either. 
For example, in:

_chhoTii laRkii kii kitaab_

most native speakers (apparently)  would prefer to interpret this as "the book of the little girl", and not "the little book of the girl" on account of the girl being the closest  noun to the adjective.

If this is true, then my assumption is that most speakers would say _laRkii kii chhoTii kitaab_ to disambiguate towards "the little book".
And, (going out on a limb here) probably speakers find this [GENITIVE CONSTRUCTION first] + [ADJECTIVE second] + pattern useful, and apply it always as some sort of boilerplate construction, even in cases where there is no possible ambiguity (like the examples in the preceding posts).

To @Pokeflute's point, however, I know the song, and, to my untrained ears at least, there is no metric or rhyme reason why it couldn't have been "_diloN ke ye daastaan_". Probably just a poetic preference?


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## Qureshpor

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> _1. ghar kaa sundar dvaar _= "The beautiful door of the house".


بزبانِ اُردو

گھر کا خوبصورت دروازہ



MonsieurGonzalito said:


> "This beautiful door of the house":
> 
> _2. ye ghar kaa sundar dvaar_۔


*یہ* گھر کا *خوبصورت دروازہ*  لاہور میں بنا ہے۔ *This beautiful door* of the house is made in Lahore

گھر کا *یہ خوبصورت دروازہ* لاہور میں بنا ہے۔ *This beautiful door* of the house is made in Lahore 

دونوں درست ہیں لیکن دوسری صورت زیادہ فصیح ہے۔

*اِس گھر کا* خوبصورت دروازہ لاہور میں بنا ہے۔ The beautiful door *of this house* is made in Lahore

اِس گھر کا یہ خوبصورت دروزہ لاہور میں بنا ہے۔ This beautiful door of this house is made in Lahore


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## Qureshpor

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> 4. _vo do saal kii bachchii_
> 
> with the demonstrative before the postpositional complement as well ...


وُہ دو سال کی بچّی دو سال کی لگتی نہیں۔ That two year old girl doesn't look a two year old.


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## Qureshpor

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> chhoTii laRkii kii kitaab


بغیر سیاق و سباق ۔۔۔۔۔۔ چھوٹی لڑکی کی کتاب کے صرف ایک ہی معنی ہیں۔

The little girl's book...



MonsieurGonzalito said:


> To @Pokeflute's point, however, I know the song, and, to my untrained ears at least, there is no metric or rhyme reason why it couldn't have been "_diloN *ke* ye daastaan_". Probably just a poetic preference?


دلوں کی* یہ داستان* *This story* of hearts

*یہ *دلوں کی* داستان This story* of hearts

*اِن دلوں کی* داستان The story *of these hearts*


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## MonsieurGonzalito

What is the difference between these two


Qureshpor said:


> *یہ* گھر کا *خوبصورت دروازہ* لاہور میں بنا ہے۔ *This beautiful door* of the house is made in Lahore
> 
> گھر کا *یہ خوبصورت دروازہ* لاہور میں بنا ہے۔ *This beautiful door* of the house is made in Lahore



and betwen these two?



Qureshpor said:


> دلوں کی* یہ داستان* *This story* of hearts
> 
> *یہ *دلوں کی* داستان This story* of hearts


 
(I think you meant to highlight something differently for emphasis, but it isn't clear what)


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## littlepond

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> However, if there is a demonstrative pronoun, to my surprise, Google Translate doesn't give me for  "This beautiful door of the house":
> 
> _2. ye ghar kaa sundar dvaar _
> 
> but
> 
> _3. ghar kaa ye sundar dvaar _
> 
> Does #3 reflect the order native speakers prefer?
> If true, any idea why is that, since _ye _unequivocally belongs to _dvaar_, not to _ghar _anyways?



(a) "ghar kaa yeh/yah sundar dvaar": this beautiful door of the house
(b) "is ghar kaa sundar dvaar": the door of this beautiful house

One would prefer "is" rather than "yeh" in (b).


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## Qureshpor

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> What is the difference between these two



*یہ* گھر کا *خوبصورت دروازہ* لاہور میں بنا ہے۔ *This beautiful door* of the house is made in Lahore

گھر کا *یہ خوبصورت دروازہ* لاہور میں بنا ہے۔ *This beautiful door* of the house is made in Lahore

کچھ فرق نہیں سوائے اِس کے کہ دوسری شکل زیادہ واضح ہے۔



MonsieurGonzalito said:


> and betwen these two?
> 
> دلوں کی* یہ داستان* *This story* of hearts
> 
> *یہ *دلوں کی* داستان This story* of hearts


کچھ فرق نہیں سوائے اِس کے کہ دوسری شکل زیادہ واضح ہے۔


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## aevynn

I agree with @Qureshpor jii in #10 and #12 that both placements of the demonstrative are _possible_ in general, but I have a slight disagreement with the "کچھ فرق نہیں" assessment in #15 -- or rather, maybe better to say that what I have is a proposal which might say something about why one placement might be more felicitous or "زیادہ واضح" than the other 

Going back to the two-year old girl, I think both of the following are possible:

(4a) vo(h) do saal kii bachchii
(4b) do saal kii vo(h) bachchii

There will be many contexts in which both of these are interchangeable just because the semantics are so similar, but think that there will be some situations where only one of the two works -- and I think the reason is that the "do saal kii" in (4b) feels more like it's adding incidental information ("that girl, who is two-years old, ..."). So, for example, consider a context where there are many girls around, including several two-year-olds, and you're wanting to single out one of those two-year-olds from this group of girls. In such a context, (4b) doesn't feel right to me and only (4a) seems appropriate.

I think what I'm proposing here is really nothing more than that the syntactic parse trees for (4a) and (4b) would result in groupings as follows:

(4a) vo(h) [do saal kii bachchii]
(4b) do saal kii [vo(h) bachchii]

To the extent that "semantics follows syntax" (as syntacticians seem fond of saying), this syntactic difference results in a semantic difference.

With this in mind, let's go back to the door (and drop the "beautiful" since it's extraneous to the current discussion):

(5a) ye(h) ghar kaa darvaazA
(5b) ghar kaa ye(h) darvaazA

As several others have already expressed, I also find (5a) awkward -- or at least, more awkward than (5b). I agree that @MonsieurGonzalito jii's observation in #9 that recency preference explains this awkwardness in part, but given that (4a) is entirely possible (and given the demonstrative placement in the Veer-Zaara song lyrics quoted by @Pokeflute jii in #8), this can't be a complete explanation. But maybe, in light of what I suggested above, there could be a semantic aspect to the awkwardness of (5a) -- namely, that most doors that one encounters belong in houses anyway, so it's difficult to imagine a context where the "ghar kaa" is adding non-incidental information, ie, where it's necessary for determining the door that's being spoken about. (I guess a context could be forced, if you're really trying. For example, maybe you're using "ghar kaa darvaazA" to talk about front doors of houses in contrast with "kamroN ke darvaaze," or doors to rooms inside a house, and you have a large set of doors, several of which are front doors, and you want to single out one of those front doors from this big set of doors...? I don't know lol. It feels *quite* contrived, but if I really try to put myself in this context anyway, (5a) doesn't sound so bad to me anymore.)

Finally...


MonsieurGonzalito said:


> To my untrained ears at least, there is no metric or rhyme reason why it couldn't have been "_diloN ke ye daastaan_"


I think the context of the song lyrics are ambiguous enough that both placements of the demonstrative seem semantically possible to me, but I strongly disagree with the "no metric or rhyme reason" assessment. There's a nice rhyme and meter parallel between

do pal rukaa     kh(w)aaboN kaa kaarvaaN
do pal kii thii ye(h) diloN kii daastaaN

and moving the demonstrative in the second line destroys this parallel and renders the line "unmusical" to my ears.


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## MonsieurGonzalito

I was wondering if

_ye(h) ghar kaa darvaaza(h)  _
is something you could find in a catalogue where several kinds of entrances are listed, "this (beautiful) home door"

_whereas 

ghar kaa ye(h) darvaaza(h)_

could be used when pointing out a specific door among many, in the already established context of your house.


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## littlepond

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> I was wondering if
> 
> _ye(h) ghar kaa darvaaza(h)  _
> is something you could find in a catalogue where several kinds of entrances are listed, "this (beautiful) home door"



which is what @aevynn ji is saying here:



aevynn said:


> (I guess a context could be forced, if you're really trying. For example, maybe you're using "ghar kaa darvaazA" to talk about front doors of houses in contrast with "kamroN ke darvaaze," or doors to rooms inside a house, and you have a large set of doors, several of which are front doors, and you want to single out one of those front doors from this big set of doors...? I don't know lol. It feels *quite* contrived, but if I really try to put myself in this context anyway, (5a) doesn't sound so bad to me anymore.)


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