Integration of Adjectives to Learn Grammatical Gender for Object Categorization in Urdu for Balti Speakers

This quantitative research is an attempt to explore the possibilities to decrease the level of difficulty for Balti language speakers in object categorization while they learn Urdu language as their L2. Purpose of this research is to know that how chunking technique can help the Balti speakers remember the grammatical gender of different inanimate objects while keeping in mind their adjective-noun pairs. This is an experimental study and population for this research is comprised of all Balti language speakers living in Lahore. Simple random sampling technique is used to select the sample and teaching sessions are conducted by the researcher to teach experimental and controlled groups. Findings of this study show that chunking technique is beneficial to be used for L2 learners of Urdu language especially if their L1 doesn’t have the concept of grammatical gender. In conclusion, it is recommended through this research to apply the same technique of linking adjectives with nouns in pedagogical approach for the Balti speakers who intend learn Urdu as their L2 with the help of their curriculum.


object categorization grammatical gender chunking technique Balti Urdu
This quantitative research is an attempt to explore the possibilities to decrease the level of difficulty for Balti language speakers in object categorization while they learn Urdu language as their L2. Purpose of this research is to know that how chunking technique can help the Balti speakers remember the grammatical gender of different inanimate objects while keeping in mind their adjective-noun pairs. This is an experimental study and population for this research is comprised of all Balti language speakers living in Lahore. Simple random sampling technique is used to select the sample and teaching sessions are conducted by the researcher to teach experimental and controlled groups. Findings of this study show that chunking technique is beneficial to be used for L2 learners of Urdu language especially if their L1 doesn't have the concept of grammatical gender. In conclusion, it is recommended through this research to apply the same technique of linking adjectives with nouns in pedagogical approach for the Balti speakers who intend learn Urdu as their L2 with the help of their curriculum.

I. INTRODUCTION
Hartmann & Stork [1] demonstrated that grammatical gender is a noun class system which is comprised of 2 or 3 classes, whose nouns that have human male and female referents and have tendency to fall in separate classes. Other nouns which can be classified in the same way may not be classified by any particular correlation with regular sex distinctions. Without any doubt, human language is a dynamic verbal behavior of human beings and this research study has tried to explore the issues experienced by Balti language speakers (when they encounter grammatical gender in Urdu). There can be variety of patterns of verbal behaviors in a community which leads to the formation of specific set of rules for grammar.
Grammar cannot be the only source to explain verbal behavior whereas social nature is an important aspect which determines the use of language. Since without grammar no language can exist, hence grammar plays the most imperative role to establish the form and structure of the language while it also helps in determining the meaning as well. For example, "a hunter killed a fox" has a different meaning as compared to "a fox killed a hunter". Similarly, 'case markers' in Urdu language are equally important because the use of these markers can also change the meaning of sentence. For instance, Ammi, mujhaypanikaek glass den (Mom, give me a glass of water) has a meaning which is different as compared to Ammikoek glass pani den (Give a glass of water to mom). Here (ko) is a necessary indirect object (accusative case marker) that indicates the goal (recipient) of the action. Some grammatical rules lose or grain the importance based on their level of structure. At lexical level of Urdu, it is not critical in meaning making especially when considering grammatical gender in object categorization. For instance, Kalwala/walimuamla (Yesterday's issue), here it is important to determine whether muamla is masculine or feminine so that language user can use the appropriate possessive case marker where wali is used for feminine and wala for masculine. Though use of incorrect grammatical gender does not cause major hindrance in meaning making yet it may change the sense of the sentence at some instances.
This research is an attempt to create awareness about object categorization for Balti language speakers that can help them to understand why they face difficulty while categorizing different inanimate objects in Urdu language. When the participants of this research study were asked initially why Balti speakers experience issues in determining the gender of the inanimate objects, there was a mix kind of response. Just one out of thirty participants could guess that Balti language is free of grammatical gender although none of them knew that when they speak Urdu they don't have implicit knowledge of objects' grammatical gender as Urdu speakers do have. This research also could find that when speakers of language, which is grammatical gender free, learn a language with grammatical gender for object categorization, they try to build their concepts about gender of objects. However, their confusion still remains there about the masculinity and femininity of inanimate objects.
Through this research, Balti speakers are taught that Urdu native speakers' decision about the grammaticality or ungrammaticality as well as acceptability or unacceptability of sentences, clauses or phrases is always based on their implicit knowledge of the language. "Native speakers of languages with grammatical gender may tend to think of objects in the world as more male-or female-like on the basis of the words' grammatical gender" [2]. This knowledge keeps on developing gradually based on language input from the community, maturation and the interface between semantics and the outside world. Therefore, when Balti language speakers are exposed to Urdu language, grammatical gender happens to be a nightmare for them. They have to learn it but they find it very challenging because of the absence of implicit knowledge that an Urdu speaker is blessed with. This study has tried to decrease this level of difficulty for Balti language speakers who want to learn Urdu language and wish to speak better. This research used chunking technique of psycholinguistics while combining an adjective with a noun as a grammatical gender marker. Since there are chances for non-native Urdu speakers to figure out the grammatical gender of an object while looking at its ending of the words. For examples names of objects ending in /aa/ sound such as gaanaa, pankhaa, etc. are most of the time masculine and names of the objects ending in /ee/ sound such as kursee, roshnee, etc. are feminine. However, there can be exceptions that lead a non-native speaker to confusion. For instance, there are words that end in /ee/ sound but are masculine such as hathee (elephant) and at the same time there are words which end in /aa/ sound but are considered as feminine and one of the examples can be hawaa (air). Also there are a number of words that don't have any of these grammatical gender markers. Neither they end in /ee/ sound nor in /aa/ sound yet do they fall in category of their respective grammatical gender. For example, deevar (wall) is feminine and kaaghaz (paper) is considered as masculine. Hence these are all confusions that make it really hard for any non-native Urdu speaker to learn Urdu and especially to those who speak any of the languages which are grammatical gender free such as Balti language.
Balti language speakers have difficulty in determining the grammatical gender for the inanimate objects while speaking Urdu due to which they are more likely to make mistakes while categorizing the gender of such objects. Balti language speakers don't have implicit knowledge of grammatical gender in their L2 (Urdu) and also it is not that easy for them to develop such implicit knowledge in adulthood so they have to practice a lot to learn about this phenomenon. The researcher could not find any previously conducted research that would have addressed this issue for Balti language speakers. This research aims to help Balti speakers in realizing and developing the concept of grammatical gender.
Followings are the research questions that will help to explore the solutions for the difficulties faced by Balti language speakers while learning Urdu: Q 1: Why do Balti language speakers experience difficulty in object categorization based on grammatical gender in L2 (Urdu)? Q 2: How adjective-noun pairs can facilitate Balti speakers to learn grammatical gender?
Balti language speakers live in many parts of Pakistan. They come from Gilgit Baltistan to continue their studies and avail better job opportunities. While they try hard to mingle up with Urdu speakers yet people catch them easily that they are not the native Urdu speakers because of their errors they make while speaking Urdu. There can be variety of reasons for them for not being able to speak Urdu well. Difficulty for the Balti speakers arises because of the difference between Urdu and Balti in terms of grammatical gender for object categorization. Secondly, people living and being brought up in Gilgit Baltistan are not in connection with Urdu speaking communities because of their geographical location.
Hence this study has focused on bringing solutions to the issues experienced by Balti speakers who are learning or wish to master Urdu language. This research suggests Balti speakers how to overcome the difficulty they experience in object categorization in terms of grammatical gender. Balti and Urdu, being two dissimilar languages become less intelligible for each other's speakers. This research presents how to be fluent and an efficient speaker of Urdu language despite of all the differences of two languages. By acting upon the recommendations of this research, Balti speakers become the active part of main stream Pakistani population whether they be the students of any university or they work in any profession anywhere in Pakistan. Recommendations of this research should be equally beneficial for students, teachers as well as Balti speakers from all professions of life. They can take advantage of nounadjective chunking technique to master the phenomenon of object categorization in Urdu language.
Foremost issue to deal with regarding this research is object categorization in Urdu based on grammatical gender where Balti speakers experience the real issue while learning Urdu as their L2. "Bilingualism research has explored many areas of second language

Basit, Abdul & Shah, Farrukh
Integration of Adjectives to Learn Grammatical Gender for Object Categorization in Urdu for Balti Speakers acquisition and speaking, in both similar and dissimilar languages, however one area that is lacking a large body of literature is that of grammatical gender" [3]. Especially when it comes to Balti and Pashto bilingual speakers in Pakistan who experience this issue while learning Urdu, these two languages are dissimilar to Urdu in terms of grammatical gender. It is believed that there is always a strong association between natural gender and grammatical gender. Bohme [4] argues that L2 learners may take benefit of semantically-based system of their target language while they learn the grammatical gender. However, problem arises for learners of Urdu language especially because of no existence of semanticallybased system for the assignation of grammatical gender to the nouns. "Limitation of this approach is reflected in German, where 'girl' is semantically female, but grammatically of neuter gender" [4].
As discussed in first section of this article that L2 learners (Balti speakers) encounter issues while dealing with grammatical gender related issues and that is mainly because Urdu is not being taught in an appropriate manner to them not because they are not willing or lazy to learn this concept. As stated by Ranjan [5], Urdu language has grammatical gender for inanimate objects as well as natural gender for animate objects. Understanding natural gender is not a rocket science for Balti speakers because it is more or less same in their L1. The real issue for Balti speakers is to deal with grammatical gender. Further, in this section of the paper, various other researchers have been quoted who have worked on the issue of grammatical gender for L2 learners.
"Does language modulate perception and categorization of everyday objects? Here, we approach this question from the perspective of grammatical gender in bilinguals" [6]. When it was asked to the participants of this very research that how they perceive the gender of an inanimate object while speaking Urdu, most of the responses were very confusing. Only one of the participants could answer in the right manner and even that can be considered a wild guess. Basically Urdu language has a system of assigning grammatical gender to the everyday objects. Things or objects which are bigger in size or higher in position are considered masculine such as sooraj (sun) and pankha (fan) have a higher place and darya (river) is bigger in size. At the same time, things or objects which are lower or smaller in size are considered feminine such as zameen (earth) is at lower place as compared to sooraj (sun) and naher (canal) is small in size. However, confusion arises when L2 learners of Urdu encounter the exceptions in this rule of assigning gender to everyday objects. For instance, hawaa (air) is up and above in the atmosphere yet, it is considered as feminine. On the other hand, dana/zara (grain) is small in size yet it is considered as masculine.
"French uncountable substantives have a grammatical gender" [7]. Many researchers argue that a variety of themes emerge when it comes to the relationship of thinking and grammatical gender for the bilinguals. Valuable arguments of Bassetti and Nicoladis [8] must be quoted here to understand this phenomenon. They are of the view that learning more than one language may decrease the effect of grammatical gender on the thinking process. Secondly this very effect may vary in accordance with the combination of the languages one has to learn. Also researchers are working to find out other possible variables affecting influence of grammatical gender on thinking process that also includes proficiency as well as the choice of tasks. Significant numbers of researches have been conducted in the past to reveal the relationship between perception of femininity and masculinity of referents and grammatical gender system. "Native speakers of languages that have a grammatical gender system tend to think of objects, animals and abstract concepts as more masculine or more feminine in line with the referent's grammatical gender assignment" [8].
Diessel & Hilpert [9] state that it has been revealed through some latest researches in cognitive linguistic frameworks that a huge portion of any particular human language such as its structure and its use is very much stranded in processes of cultural cognition especially which are involved in use of language. Further a research regarding grammatical gender and its perception revealed through a sex attribution task that the association between attributed sex and grammatical gender is strongest for the humans whereas it is weaker for animals comparatively. This is even less strong for the inanimate objects. Bassetti [10] acknowledged a hierarchy that was found very similar while examining views of different speakers concerning grammatical gender in Italian and German. It was established that semantic motivation is certainly stronger for the entities which can be personified and are animate (such as moon and the sun) in comparison to the artifacts.
Another question is that how gender affects other linguistic items of the sentence? As explained by Voeikova and Savickiene [11] that in Urdu language gender occurs in association of binary opposition such as masculine and feminine so there is no other gender besides these two. If we take examples of laRka (boy) for masculine and laRki (girl) for feminine, it means that one noun can only take single value of gender and then this assigned gender further affects other items within the same sentence. This phenomenon is equally applicable to various other languages such as Russian, Lithuanian, etc.
Grammatical gender affects the verbs, adjectives, possessive pronouns and other linguistic items in the sentence. For example, ye pankhasahichaltahai (this fan works well), verb chalta reveals the masculinity of the object, pankha. Similarly, Ye ekcHotadarwazahai (This is a small door), here cHota, as an objective, reveals the masculinity of the darwaza (door). While considering all these aspects, we must not forget that "L2 not only depends on the presence of a grammatical gender system in the L1 but also requires overlapping of lexical gender" [12].
Alkohlani [13] discussed that languages do vary while considering the elements which are used for gender agreement in each language. There are a number of linguistic elements that can be used as gender markers such as pronouns, possessive pronouns, adjectives, verbs and determiners are just few to count on. Similar approach has been used by this research for Balti speakers (L2 learners of Urdu language) while chunking and combining adjectives with nouns.
Ramscar & Arnon [14] conducted two different experiments while using an artificial language where they had two groups to gather their required data. First group was presented with articles at the first place denoting the genders and then they presented nouns. Second group was provided with nouns at the first place and then was given gender marked articles. And the results demonstrated that level of accuracy for first group in learning L2 was five times better as compared to second group. On the basis of results from these two experiments, researchers ended up concluding that natives of a language consider article-noun combination as one unit but it works differently for the L2 learners as they don't assume it as one unit. L2 learners, at first place learn nouns and then find appropriate articles. This causes a big hindrance for them and this phenomenon is known as 'blocking'.
Another recent research by Hopp [21] regarding the acquisition of grammatical gender in German language which was similar to this particular research as they paired nouns with adjectives as well as with articles. Data was collected from tasks based comprehension and production. There were two groups, one group was comprised of twenty native German speakers and another group was of twenty German language learners. Conclusion of the research showed that L2 learners of German performed better when nouns were paired with articles and adjectives. However, this research raises some questions about the forms of nouns in which they should be presented.
Cubelli & Paolieri [15] have argued that in different grammatical gender based languages the association between word meaning and grammatical gender of the object seems very unpredictable. For instance, the term used for 'the sun' in Spanish is 'el sol' which is considered masculine. German language names it as sonne and it is feminine whereas Czech word slunce is used to refer to 'the sun' which is considered as neuter. This phenomenon causes a lot of confusion for the language learners however this doesn't apply to the scenario of Balti speakers while learning Urdu language.
There are instances of languages' varieties where regional differences may lead the learners to acquire grammatical gender differently. The best examples for this scenario are two varieties of Dutch where one variety is spoken in Belgium and the other one is

Basit, Abdul & Shah, Farrukh
Integration of Adjectives to Learn Grammatical Gender for Object Categorization in Urdu for Balti Speakers spoken in Netherlands. "There is significant variation in the way grammatical gender is used by adults" in both of these countries [16]. Though there are different varieties of Urdu language spoken in different parts of India and Pakistan, however, no variation has been recorded yet in terms of grammatical gender is used or acquired by the natives of such varieties.
"Mastery of grammatical gender is difficult to achieve in a second language" [17]. Montanari [18] describes that acquisition of the concept of gender refers to reach the agreement. Those who have achieved the high level of agreement are more likely to show extraordinary type of accuracy in gender marking. Same is the case which has been experienced through this research on Balti speakers. Those L2 learners of Urdu language who have been in contact with Urdu speakers for a significant amount of time, they are likely to make fewer mistakes in categorizing the objects because they have reached a certain level of gender agreement.

II. METHODOLOGY a. Research Paradigm and Method
Paradigm of this research is quantitative in nature. This is an experimental study where the selected population is divided into two groups. Teaching sessions have been conducted to teach both groups and the required data is collected from pre-tests and post-tests taken from both groups.

b. Sample
Sample of thirty students is selected from Balti language speakers studying in Jamia-tulMuntazir Lahore.

c. Delimitation
According to the records, there were 290,000 native Balti speakers in Pakistan by 2001 and many of them migrated to several other parts of the country for higher education and work in different professions. However, this research only focuses on the issue of object categorization for Balti speakers living in Lahore and they are around 20,000 in number.

d. Data Collection
The only sources to collect the data for this research are pre-tests and post-tests of controlled group as well as experimental group.

e. Procedure
Thirty students are selected through simple random sampling process from all Balti language speakers studying in Jamia-tulMuntazir Lahore to accomplish this research. The selected sample is divided into experimental and controlled groups. Lesson plans have been developed to teach both experimental and controlled groups separately where experimental group is given treatment of "integrated adjective-noun pairing".
 There are two lists of different things/objects in Urdu. One list (provided to controlled group) contains only names of things and different objects with their grammatical gender whereas second list (provided to experimental group) has the names of same things and objects in the form of adjective-noun pairs.
 Both groups' performance is evaluated with the help of pre-tests and post-tests

III. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
Data collected from pre-tests and post-tests shows that Balti speakers face lots of difficulties in object categorization while they encounter Urdu language. Lesson plans were specifically designed for the learners while keeping in mind about the issues Balti speakers experience. Experimental group performed slightly better as they had learnt about grammatical gender in the classes.
A variety of nouns were taught to the Balti speakers and they were already familiar with all these nouns. Only the issue for them was to categorize these nouns appropriately in accordance with the grammatical gender. This collection of nouns was a mixture of inanimate and animate nouns. All thirty students were divided into two groups and pseudo names were used for all students to keep their identity anonymous. One group was named as "controlled group" and it was provided with a list of nouns (Appendix 1) with their corresponding gender label such as masculine and feminine. The other group was named as "experimental group" and it was provided with the same list of nouns but chunked with appropriate adjectives (Appendix 2) to reveal the grammatical gender of each noun so that learners could remember these nouns easily. Example sentences for each noun (Appendix 3) were also provided to the learners to help them memorize.
The list of nouns contained blend of nouns ending in /__aa/ sound (masculine) and nouns ending in /__ee/ sound (feminine). However, there were masculine and feminine nouns without their regular gender markers such as /__aa/ and /__ee/ at the end. So these irregular nouns were added as distractions for the learners. Also animate nouns were added in the list that could also work as distractors for the learners. However, this list was aimed to just give an idea of grammatical gender for different inanimate nouns and final tests included nouns which were not even mentioned in the list.
Each group of students attended ten classes and each class was of one-hour duration. For both groups, there was a "Pre-test" (Appendix 4) before the classes were conducted. At the end of classes for each group there was a "Post-test" (Appendix 5) to evaluate what they could learn from these lessons.

a. Procedure of Research
Although, learners were already provided with the list of masculine and feminine nouns, yet they were taught how gender of an object may be revealed through various other markers. They were taught how prepositions like ka, ki, etc. may expose the gender of inanimate objects. Similarly, they learned how verbs, possessive pronouns and adjectives may reveal the gender of the objects. Each day, students were given homework to practice what they had learnt. After the classes ended, both groups were asked to attempt post-tests for evaluation and they were given 15 minutes to attempt this test.

b. Analysis of Collected Data
In pre-test, each question carried equal marks whereas total marks were 15 for the complete test. Post-test had four questions and all of these questions were quantified in 15 points. Within each question, points were further divided in accordance with the given blanks or responses.    Average score of Controlled Group in pretest was 11.20 whereas unexpectedly the same group scored 8.60 in post-test. On the other hand, comparatively Experimental Group performed better. This group obtained average score 9.00 in pretest and slightly improved while obtaining 9.87 as an average score in post-test.

c. Results
As compared in accordance with the above given graphs, experimental group has shown increased accurateness to recognize the grammatical gender of the inanimate objects revealed through variety of gender markers. Controlled group was even expected to show some improvement but surprisingly the average score of the group was decreased from 11.20 (pre-test) to 8.60 (post-test). On the other hand, experimental group performed well comparatively and average score was improved from 9.00 (pre-test) to 9.87 (post-test). It can be inferred that adjectivenoun pairs helped for sure the Balti speakers to recognize the grammatical gender of the objects.
As discussed by Ranjan[5] that in Urdu language nouns for animate as well as inanimate objects don't follow any morphological pattern which should be grammatical gender-specific. Also there are plenty of nouns, both animate and inanimate, that don't end in regular grammatical gender markers such as __aa and __ee. Here adjectives, possessive pronouns and preposition come into play as they work as grammatical gender markers when associated with nouns. Some researchers suggest that semantic based system must be applied for the L2 learners specially to make them learn grammatical gender of the objects. However, this technique doesn't work well because it is near to impossible to explain explicitly the semantic features of every noun in any target language.
Neumann [19] claimed that nouns when paired with any other item may cause extraordinary load on human memory while memorizing the concept. This load on memory results as facilitator in learning process. As claimed by Corder [20], descriptions of grammatical rules given in explicit manner cannot be sufficient. This research attempted to overcome such difficulty by associating specifically adjectives with nouns and generally the same attempt was made to associate nouns with possessive pronouns, prepositions and verbs. Results of the study depict that the plan really worked for Balti speakers. Hence it is suggested to apply this technique of associating adjectives and nouns in pedagogical approach for the Balti speakers who learn Urdu as their L2 with the help of their curriculum. This is a vital fact that Balti speakers don't have implicit knowledge of grammatical gender of inanimate objects. However, they are exposed to Urdu language through their curriculum and media.   It is also found that those who have a bit of realization of object categorization in Urdu language, even for them it's very hard to remember this phenomenon  Fluency in Urdu language is the biggest issue for Balti speakers and they are easily caught for being Urdu non-native speakers

d. Recommendations
This research aimed to find some solutions that may assist Balti speakers to overcome their difficulty of categorizing objects based on grammatical gender in Urdu language. Hence researcher offers the following recommendations based on the derived findings and results:  School teachers must be trained by native Urdu trainers to make them better teachers of Urdu language  Phenomenon of object categorization in terms of grammatical gender should be focused to teach from very early classes in schools  Noun-adjective chunking technique can be really helpful for Urdu language learners to remember the phenomenon of object categorization Frequent use of language can help improve the fluency of learners who wish to learn any language and certainly it must work in case of Balti speakers as well who wish to be fluent in Urdu language.

IV. CONCLUSION
Findings of this research lead the researcher to conclude that chunking technique can help Balti speakers while pairing names of irregular inanimate objects with the relevant adjectives which can be gender marked. This should help learners to identify the morphological cues that can simplify the learning process of grammatical gender by inducing extreme memory load and excluding the grammatical complexities. This methodology will not only help the learners learn the grammatical gender of Urdu language but will definitely facilitate them to develop implicit knowledge as well. This research also concludes that teaching techniques should include approaches of psycholinguistics like chunking while teaching inherent features of any language such as grammatical gender.
There are some limitations of this study as well. First of all, this research has been conducted on a limited number of representatives of Balti community. Secondly, they have been exposed at some extent to the Urdu speaking community in Lahore. It could bring better results if this research would have been conducted in Baltistan. Also grammatical gender and other inherent concepts of any language are very complex and take a long time for learners to learn so in couple of weeks, these concepts cannot be mastered. Hence researcher of this study feels that results could be truly better if the learners are taught these concepts for a longer period of time. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that there may be a variety of other teaching methodologies to teach grammatical gender which not have been considered in this research.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to those who, directly or indirectly, contributed for the completion of this research article. Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor, Ms. Farrukh Shah, for her trust, support, and valuable advices during all the research procedures. Her name is mention as coauthor for this paper. Through her teaching, I could discover how enthralling linguistics is and her contributions made the entire process easier and interesting enough and I will always be grateful for this. I really take pride in saying that the concepts taught by Mr. Zaheer Hussain helped me a lot to accomplish this research successfully.
Bundle of thanks to Mr. Syed Mehdi Musvi (Coordinator of Balti Community at Jamia-tulMuntazir, Lahore), who could be a big help to organize the teaching sessions to conduct this research. I also wish to express my appreciation to my friend and class fellow, Mr. Fida Hussain, who is a native Balti speaker and helped me a lot to conceive various concepts of Balti language that I could use to produce this research article. Finally, I must acknowledge that I could get the inspiration of using "Chunking Technique" to teach grammatical gender from the research conducted by Rajiv Ranjan (University of Iowa).