Personal

Punjabi has personal pronouns for the first and second persons, while for the third person demonstratives are used, which can be categorized deictically as near and remote. Pronouns do not distinguish gender.

The language has a T-V distinction in tū̃ and tusī̃. This latter "polite" form is also grammatically plural.

The dative & ablative personal pronouns are analyzed as the oblique forms merging with suffixes, e.g. tusā̃ + nū̃ > tuhānū̃.^{[citation needed]}

Unlike other pronouns, genitive pronouns essentially function in a manner similar to regular adjectives, declining in agreement with their direct objects. Moreover, koṇ and jō are colloquially replaced by kḗṛā "which?" jḗṛā "which". Indefinites include kōī (obl. kisē) "some(one)" and kújj "some(thing)". The reflexive pronoun is āp, with a genitive of āpṇā. The pronominal obl. -nā̃ also occurs in ik, iknā̃ "some", hōr, hōrnā̃ "others", sáb, sábnā̃ "all".^[9]

Derivates

Based on table in Shackle (2003:604). Indefinites are extended forms of the interrogative set; e.g. kitē "somewhere", kadē "sometimes". The multiple versions under "Manner" are dialectal variations.

The second row in Manner are often still spelt in their archaic forms (kiññ, jiññ, eññ, and oññ) in Gurmukhi.

The demonstrative prefixes e and o vary from [ɪ~e~ɛ] and [ʊ~o~ɔ] respectively (resulting in varied spellings) depending on dialect.^{[citation needed]}

Pronominal suffixes

Some varieties of the Majhi dialect of Punjabi (documented thus far in Lahore,^[10] and the Gujrat district) have pronominal suffixes that are appended to verbs, and which replace dropped pronominal arguments.

Overview

The Punjabi verbal system is can be described largely in terms of aspect and mood. Most Punjabi verbs do not inflect for tense—the only verb which does is the copular verb ਹੈ / ہے. Some linguists have described aspectual forms of Punjabi verbs as being inflections for tense; however, this assessment is flawed as these verb forms can be used the same way in sentences which refer to any time with respect to the situation of the speaker or writer.^[11]

The copular verb has two tense forms which can be described as "remote" and "non-remote," as they indicate a metaphorical distance or closeness to the situation. "Past" and "present" can be understood as default assumptions for the times which the remote and non-remote tenses refer to respectively, however, these temporal references are not required of these tenses. Rather, time can largely be understood to exist extralinguistically in Punjabi. The remote forms of the copula, ਸੀ / سی, do not resemble the non-remote forms ਹੈ / ہے phonetically.^[12] The copula does not behave like a full lexical verb in Punjabi and does not form part of serial verb constructions; rather than taking on the meaning of the existential verb 'to be' or 'to become' ਹੋਣਾ / ہوݨا, it means 'being' without any aspectual component. The copula is also not obligatory in a Punjabi clause. A full lexical verb in Punjabi on the other hand, does exhibit grammatical aspect. Due the close meaning of ਹੋਣਾ / ہوݨا and the copula, they are sometimes described as forms of the same lexeme; however, because they are directly derived from two distinct Sanskrit words and do not function alike grammatically, they are better described as two different but complementary words.^[13]

Finite verbal agreement is with the nominative subject, except in the transitive perfective, where it can be with the direct object, with the erstwhile subject taking the ergative construction -ne (see postpositions above). The perfective aspect thus displays split ergativity.

Tabled below on the left are the paradigms for the major Gender and Number termination (GN), along the line of that introduced in the adjectives section. To the right are the paradigms for the Person and Number termination (PN), used by the subjunctive (which has 1st pl. -īe) and future (which has 1st pl. -ā̃).

Copula

The Punjabi copula functions as a class of its own and does not share the properties of full lexical verbs in the language, nor does it take on the role of an auxiliary verb. Unlike these other word classes, the copula does not form a part of verb phrases, and where it is present alongside a full verb construction it generally makes a semantic distinction related to the notion of existence, rather than predicating for the act of being. For this reason, it can be said that the Punjabi copula is not wholly verbal in function.^[13]

• Two infrequent inflected forms of the present-tense copula he are haō (plural second person),^[14] distinguishing the standard hō for T-V distinction usage, and heṇ (plural third person). In addition, two past tense copulas, hesī and hesaṇ are used respectively with singular and plural forms of third persons.^[14] These forms, like the uninflected forms he and sī, can be used with both the genders.^[14]
• In the spoken language, the past tense copula sī can remain completely uninflected, and remain applicable for all three persons and both numbers.^[14] Some less frequently used forms of sī are saō, sāō, and sau, used as 2nd-person plural copulas,^[14] distinguishing the standard sō for T-V distinction usage.

Some non-standard major dialects decline the past-tense and present-tense copulas more along number and gender^[14] than for number and person:

Forms

The sample verb is intransitive naccṇā "to dance", and the sample inflection is 3rd. masc. sing. (PN = e, GN = ā) where applicable.