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Punjabi grammar wheels
Grammar Wheels
"I gave my three books to her at the market." — Change any wheels to see how Punjabi encodes each shift.
Common questions about Punjabi
What can I toggle on the Punjabi wheel?
Subject (person, number, and gender, since Punjabi marks gender on the verb), tense (past, present, future), aspect (simple, progressive, perfect), mood (declarative, question, command, subjunctive), polarity, and the ਤੂੰ / ਤੁਸੀਂ register dial. Each spin rebuilds the verb in Gurmukhi with a transliteration.
Why does flipping subject gender change the verb?
Punjabi verbs agree with the subject's gender as well as number. Switching the speaker from masculine to feminine takes ਬੋਲਦਾ to ਬੋਲਦੀ — same root, different ending.
What happens in the transitive past?
The wheel surfaces Punjabi's split-ergative pattern: in transitive past, the subject takes ਨੇ and the verb starts agreeing with the object. Intransitive past keeps normal subject agreement, so toggling transitivity exposes the contrast.
How do the register levels work?
ਤੂੰ tūṅ is intimate or used with juniors; ਤੁਸੀਂ tusīṅ is plural and also formal singular. Switching register flips the pronoun and the verb ending; honorific use can also pluralize the verb even with a singular subject.
Can I use the wheel without reading Gurmukhi?
Each generated sentence shows Gurmukhi, a transliteration, a word-by-word gloss, and an English translation. The same characters reappear under each spin, so the script becomes familiar over time.
Sources for Punjabi
The grammatical descriptions on this page are informed by the following published reference and descriptive grammars. Grammatical facts themselves are not subject to copyright; the scholars who documented them deserve attribution.
- Bhatia, Tej K. (1993). Punjabi: A Cognitive-Descriptive Grammar. London: Routledge.
- Gill, Harjeet Singh & Gleason, Henry A. Jr. (1969). A Reference Grammar of Punjabi. Patiala: Panjab University.
- Shackle, Christopher (2003). "Panjabi." In G. Cardona & D. Jain (eds.), The Indo-Aryan Languages, pp. 581–621. London: Routledge.
- Masica, Colin P. (1991). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge University Press.