Linguistics Learner

We organised a kind of low-cost online conference

2021-01-18T22:56:00.003+05:00

I was supposed to start writing something serious this evening (which I have been postponing for last couple of weeks, but who’s counting). So as you can imagine, I am not going to write that today, too. Anyways, this is one of the ways that I trick my mind to work on topics that are not really “work” but very close to it.

So, I wanted to write briefly on organising an online conference from a developing country in the covid 19 pandemic (hence the title). Obviously, we did not have a lot of money and resources to buy expensive private hosting or hosting on university learning management system, as it has been the case with many conferences in the Western countries. That’s why we tried to keep the budget as low as possible and looked for cheaper or free alternatives.

But this was not the only issue. We did not have much technical expertise, too (both in terms of organising and presenting in an online manner). The conference was supposed to be hosted at a university in Pakistan. But from the year start it was clear that it won’t happen the usual way.

The technical expertise on the organising side were procured by asking colleagues to volunteer (who happened to be computational linguists, and me, a corpus linguist). The computational expertise of the organising committee helped in finding resources and devise methods for the online conference:

We used email for communication (as is the case with every online or offline conference).

We decided to set up a separate Gmail account for the conference and used 15 GB space in Google Drive to host videos before they were published.

We used Google Firebase platform, which has a free quota, to host videos for streaming.

We bought (for about $ 235) two meeting slots and one webinar slot from Zoom for one month. There were two parallel conference sessions and the plenary sessions were organised through the webinar slot.

We asked the presenters to record their presentations using the record presentation option in Microsoft PowerPoint (Slideshow > Record Slide Show). The use of audio format by a vast majority of the presenters made sure that they could upload their presentations hassle-free without worrying about large-size videos and slow internet speeds.

These presentations were converted into videos by yours truly and then uploaded by another colleague (and their student helpers) to Google Firebase platform.

The videos were then embedded on an HTML page on the conference website, for which the link was sent to the participants through email. (Not a very intuitive solution but it worked.)

The conference parallel sessions would just have 10 to 15 minutes per (already uploaded) presentation for questions and answers.

This online edition of the conference (ICLAP2020) gave us ideas for the future editions:

It was easier and cost virtually nothing to invite international speakers for plenaries and workshops in an online format. Future editions will also include international speakers in the same format.

Similarly, it was easier for presenters from abroad to present in the conference without flying to Pakistan.

As you might have guessed, it was not as smooth as it appeared. We also faced many problems, and realised later on that many things could be done differently.

Normally, a conference (when it is organised at a university) is run by many more colleagues so the work is divided. For this online version, we did not have that luxury which sometimes created bottlenecks.

We could not make sure that the videos arrive well before the conference start date so that they could be checked and uploaded, and hence be available for the conference participants to watch.

We did not add any virtual social events (Zoom breakout rooms?) which made the whole experience kind of dry and un-interesting.

We could not communicate the conference format in an effective way (videos will be hosted, watched beforehand and the presenters will make themselves available in the respective session for question answers). These discussions were mostly led by the session chairs.

We organised this conference, we found many new and useful ways for the future and also learned lessons to improve the upcoming editions.

Resources for Forensic Linguistics

2020-08-14T18:42:00.006+05:00

Forensic linguistics is a branch of linguistics that is concerned with (mostly) criminal investigations and the use of linguistic analysis in this process. For example, a very simple task of a forensic linguist could be to analyse the linguistic content of a threat message and try to find out the writer of this text. A linguist who is trained in text analysis and stylistics will find themselves equipped with such tools that would be helpful in this analysis. Today, corpus linguistics is heavily used in text analysis for forensic linguistics. Moreover, forensic linguistics is not just about investigating threat messages or suicide notes, there are many more opportunities with the new mediums of communication on the internet, e.g. the analysis of social media texts for deception, fake news, disinformation, and trolling.

I have come to know some people and resources in last few years in this area. Following them on social media (Twitter) will be helpful for the reader to widen their horizons and/or get more information about forensic linguistic methods.

Dr Claire Hardaker (she also runs a podcast on forensic linguistics which is very informative, and she is the director of FORGE: Forensic Linguistics RG, University of Lancaster).
William Dance is doing PhD in online fake news.
Isobelle Clarke is a corpus linguist who has worked on Trump's tweets.
Maciej Eder is a stylistician and digital humanist. He has written an R package called Stylo which is helpful in text analysis, e.g. authorship attribution.

As far as books related to forensic linguistics are concerned, a simple Google search with 'forensic linguistics' can return many titles including introductory books and handbooks about forensic linguistics. PDFs for many books can be found on Library Genesis (search on Google or use DuckDuckGo Search Engine that is a bit more merciful in searching such websites).

A Comparative Stylistic Analysis of English and Urdu Newspaper Headlines

2020-07-01T14:50:00.001+05:00

Presented at: the 2nd Kashmir International Conference on Linguistics 2015, AJK University
By: Muhammad Shakir (Associate Lecturer, University of Gujrat) & Dr. Muhammad Asim Mahmood (Associate Professor, Govt. College University Faisalabad)

Summary: Newspaper headlines are a distinct sub-genre of newspaper language. They perform a number of functions, the most important of which is to provide an overview of the news story. A number of newspapers in Urdu as well as English are published in Pakistan. Four national level newspapers of each language are selected in this research study. These newspapers differ in the conventions of headline setting, at the same time they also adopt features from each other. The first page of Urdu newspapers shows maximum number of headlines, while English newspapers have more modular nature. Space saving techniques at graphological and lexical level are present in both languages. Considerable differences are observed at grammatical level. Urdu newspaper headlines are more detailed; tend to use complete sentences and complex sentence types. English newspaper headlines are less lengthy, tend to use simple sentences and non-finite clauses, and are less likely to use complex sentence types. On the whole, Urdu newspapers tend to provide maximum information in headlines while English newspapers are less likely to do so.

Surprise meal

2019-03-08T21:47:00.001+05:00

Every week I divide myself in roughly two halfs and we have this conversation:
I: So what are we eating tonight?
I too: I don't know.
I: What do you mean by you don't know? You cooked it!
I too: I know I cooked it. But that was last week.
I: So you know?!
I too: I don't remember, that was LAST WEEK.
I: Ohh k, that's understandable.
I too: Yes, it is. So, what are we eating then?
I: I can't say anything before I see. Let's open the freezer and find out.
I too: It is a surprise meal by our past self to us. Isn't it?
I: Well, it certainly is. But that happens every week. Isn't it?
I too: I don't remember, because it was last week.
And then we merge back together to eat this week's surprise dish prepared by my one week younger self.
PS: today's surprise was chicken and some vegetables.

Understanding Multidimensional Analysis

2018-08-30T23:48:00.001+05:00

Multidimensional Analysis is a quantitative framework to study register variation developed by Douglas Biber. These slides present a very basic introduction of this methodology and its assumptions.

In the hospital

2017-08-20T13:22:00.001+05:00

When we were in High School, we had to memorize English essays and paragraphs that would be later reproduced in the examination. A little capable student would probably be able to add a couple of sentences in the already memorized content or he or she might be able to rewrite the sentences in their own words but mostly it was already cooked recipes that we were supposed to rewrite in the examination to produce grammatically and spelling-ly correct English. I remember that from year 4 or 5 in the school until year 14 in the college / University we kept on memorizing lengthier and more complex sentence structures under almost the same titles. One of those titles was "a visit to the hospital."

I am suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome, a mild condition I would say, still I had to visit a Neurologist to get myself diagnosed correctly and to see what could be done medically to prevent the problem in my hands. That means I went to hospital, a private one, in my local city Faisalabad as I am visiting my country for a couple of weeks this year. As I was waiting for the doctor to arrive, I had to wait here and there sit somewhere or stand outside to spend time and to ponder about my English education and essays I memorized to reproduce in dozens of examinations. Naturally "a visit to the hospital" was first title that came to my mind and ironically a few bits and pieces that I remember from those different versions of the same essay, I could still remember the bad condition of the hospitals that we used to describe in our essays: the shortage of sitting places, overcrowded wards and corridors and miserable condition of cleanliness. This private hospital was not that bad like public sector hospitals still it was over crowded.

When you live in a country like Pakistan where the population is more than 200 million people and the services and other facilities scarce or simply not enough to accommodate each and everyone, you find ways to fool the system, to get around or to simply make it easier for yourself to get through and grab the service by the use of money or the reference system (here by reference system I mean asking some acquaintance who is working in the field or in the same industry to call favours from his colleagues, batchmates or seniors / juniors to get a little better or early access to the service). So I was also such a sifarshi (recommended one) who stood nearby waiting for the signal from the officials standing outside to bypass the queue, get himself checked and leave the building as soon as possible, and at the same time thinking about the miserable condition of the hospitals, how it was like that since forever and how nothing was being done to improve it.

Learning German

2016-03-25T00:39:00.000+05:00

Fortunately or unfortunately I am in Germany these days. Why? Because I got a scholarship to do my PhD at a German university. Bravo! That was a great achievement. But it also included four months of German language learning. I will not write my PhD dissertation in German, nonetheless it was kind of compulsory to avail the offer from German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). So I spent last four months in a language school here in my university city Münster at a very good German language school Kapito. It was a great experience to learn a foreign language (a little hard at first because I used to be an English language teacher in Pakistan and it was difficult for me to accept myself as a student of a foreign language). For about four months, I and my class fellows did our best to enjoy and have fun in our class and our teachers tried their best to teach us German. So after all these months How do I feel? What is German like? Is it easy to learn? Is it like English? A lot of questions can be asked. Let me try to answer and share my observations about German.

At the beginning I wanted to learn German Phonology because I am trained in English Phonology using Phonetic charts and tables. I was wrong, you cannot learn to pronounce the sounds of a new language simply by knowing place and manner of articulation. It needs a lot of practice which I still lack to be frank. But it is good to know that German is a lot more phonetic language as compared to English.
I thought German is like English. I tried to understand German grammar w.r.t. English grammar. Resultantly I failed badly. German grammar is awfully more complex as compared to English grammar. The inflection system, the articles and grammatical gender, the case system, pronouns (and their case specific forms) and the word order (a lot more fluent due to rich inflection system) is a nightmare at the start. All of these things are bombarded on the beginner on A1 level, and one has to cope with it, because it is the base. I still only know about half of it by heart.
German has a lot of similarity with English and Latin (and other European languages). But these similarities can only be traced in etymology of words and some general grammatical concepts (prepositional phrases for instance as opposed to post positional phrases in my mother tongue Punjabi and Urdu). German gives a lot of importance to Verb at second position in main clause. Conversely verb(s) in a dependent clause are put at the end (in reverse order if an auxiliary is involved as well). Having been trained in English Linguistics, I find it (after 4 months) easy to learn German syntax.
German verbs have a lot more forms (inflections) because of more complex pronoun system (distinction in singular/plural and formal you). German does not have a progressive tense (but there are adverbs to fill in the gap). I am not sure how many tenses, but I just know Present, Perfect, Past, Past Perfect and a kind of future tense using verb 'werden'. German modal verbs are more or less like English but they are confusing as well (Subjunctive mode has different verb forms, 'will' in German is 'want to').
German loves to make compound nouns with just putting various words together (no dash or indication of sub parts). One has to be familiar with the sub parts (sub words) to pronounce and understand the noun. These nouns can be quite long sometimes.
Germans love their language. They encourage foreigners to talk in German and they become very happy when you do that. So I am also trying these days to do the same, as being a linguistics student I know that language cannot be learned without using it properly.
Lastly, German is easy if you give it some time, hear FM in German and watch German TV, read German newspapers and websites and try to use it (even if it is wrong). My biggest flaw being a student is I like to listen or read (and write with the help of dictionary) German but does not speak. Perhaps it is because I learnt English the same way i.e. a lot of years without speaking. My teachers also asked me to break the barrier and speak even with mistakes, in simpler words and not to look for sophisticated vocabulary and (after failing to do so) switch to English. I hope to be able to do that in coming days.

So if you want to learn German, it just needs some dedication, motivation and usage to learn a language. You provide these ingredients and just within six months you will see the positive results.

Dictionary of Linguistic Terms (English Urdu)

2015-03-22T13:00:00.000+05:00

I am a translator. Yes, I am not a 'scholarly' translator. Even being a freelance translator, I feel helpless when there are no resources. Well, for me, resources are dictionaries, terminologies and word banks which help me translate quickly and efficiently. It is very hard to re-invent the wheel every time, when I do not find a standard translation of an English word. I must also admit that I am very lazy and try my best not to open any manual dictionary. So I am left online searching non-standard sources to find an equivalent of a given English term. The situation is not very promising. We need to digitize English Urdu dictionaries and terminology banks. While we are working on that, I have scanned an English Urdu terminology for linguistic terms for myself and the other translators out there. This is a searchable PDF (only for English text) and it can be very useful for someone who is as lazy as I am. A quick search by Ctrl+F will certainly give you a clue of the Urdu word you are looking for.

So after all this bragging, let us go to the link and download the PDF.

Book Name: Dictionary of Linguistic Terms (English to Urdu)

Editor: Professor Amir Ali Khan

Publisher: National Language Authority, Islamabad, Pakistan.

How to use Punctuation

2014-11-30T18:32:00.002+05:00

These slides are prepared with the help of "The Penguin Guide to Punctuation". They cover following basic topics related to punctuation use in English:

Period
Question Mark
Exclamation Mark
Comma
Colon
Semi Colon
Abbreviations
Capital Letters
Quotation Marks

How to Paraphrase/ Summarize

2014-03-02T09:25:00.000+05:00

Following topics are covered in these slides:

What is paraphrasing
How to paraphrase
What is summary
Steps to write a summary
Connotative and Denotative Meaning

Reference: Academic writing: A handbook for international students By Bailey S. 2011

How to Write a Paragraph/ Essay

2014-02-23T17:34:00.001+05:00

These slides were prepared as a lecture for MA English Literature (Distance Learning), Govt. College University, Faisalabad. The topics included are as follows:

The process of writing
Pre-writing (Mapping, Listing, Free writing)
Paragraph and its structure (Topic sentence, concluding sentence, supporting details, examples and explanation)
Types of paragraph: compare and contrast, opinion (argumentative), narrative, descriptive, problem solution
Essay and its structure (Thesis statement, introduction, conclusion, body paragraphs)
Types of essay: narrative, descriptive, argumentative, comparison contrast, problem solution.

Following books were mainly consulted though some internet sources were also tapped.

Academic writing: A handbook for international students By Bailey S. 2011
College writing from paragraph to essay By Dorothy E. Zemach, Lisa A. Rumisek
Real Writing with Readings Paragraphs and Essays for College, Work and Everyday Life By Susan Anker

Metalingual Function in Translation

2013-11-05T01:11:00.004+05:00

Metalingual function of language is the ability of language to talk about its own features. Thus talking about phrasal verbs in English will be an instance of metalingual function. Metalingual function of language becomes relevant in translation when a particular word is used in a special sense, deliberately a word play is done or linguistic ambiguity is created.

The translator has to assume that second reader needs more information about that ‘grammatical peculiarity’ as compared to the first reader. So he has to decide whether the target (second) reader is a specialist of some SL knowledge or he does not know anything at all. Such decision will determine how to deal with the particular case, whether it be: (a) transcribed, (b) loan translated, (c) neologised, (d) defined in footnotes, (e) exemplified, (f) interlinearly translated to show the syntax, or (f) functionally translated.

If a word is used in SL in a special sense, the translator has several choices. He can translate the term in its obscure sense as translating ‘libertinage’ to ‘guilty of libertinage’. Or he can chose to use a more expressive term e.g. ‘freethinking in religious matters’. The choice will be dependent on his assessment of reader’s knowledge and interest. Thus he can choose to delete a special sense of a word, if it is of no interest to the reader. Alternative terms for same referent in the text can be deleted. Similarly, if TL synonyms are less frequent as compared to SL one, they can be dropped.

Translation of word play in literary and non-literary texts can be done in two ways. The reader will need all available and possible information in non-literary texts. Thus as Newmark (2001, p.105) notes, in translating a joke from German to English, the translator adds original German text in brackets. e.g.

‘Mr. and Mrs. X live in fairly grand style. Some people think that the husband has earned a lot and so has been able to lay by a bit (sich etwas zuruckgelegt ); others again think that the wife has lain back a bit (sich etwas zuruckgelegt ) and so has been able to earn a lot' (p.106)

As he notes that punning element is retained by reproducing German text to illustrate the rearrangement of ‘precisely same verbal material’. Thus the same punning effect, with slight changes of course, can be created in English. But this is not always possible as neatly as the example shows.

The second method to translate word play is to drop them altogether or replacing them with translator’s own examples. This method ‘substitutes translator’s insights for the authors’. Thus for the above example the translator could create a wholly new joke and replace with another one. Newmark (2001, p.107) notes that the first method is most important and correct one in cases where “words are as important as thought, and ‘dramatic illusion’ is less important”.

Proverbs in non-literary texts can be translated to their known equivalents in TL. Alternatively, the translator can translate the proverb from SL to TL and give its relevance to current text as an explanation; or he can simply absorb the proverb during the translation.

Word play in literary texts (i.e. plays and poems etc.) where ‘dramatic illusion’ is a must can be translated in different ways. Widely used method is that translator captures one of two senses of the word. As Newmark (2001, p.108) exemplifies the translation of Shakespeare’s play Helmet in Germen, where source has three puns and two sets of alliterations, but translator preserves only two puns and one set of alliteration.

If a literary text has double meaning within a lexical unit, firstly the translator tries to reproduce it with a word having same double meaning. At second attempt he will try to use a synonym with same double meaning. At a third attempt, he might decide to distribute two senses of words to two or more lexical units; or he can sacrifice one of two meanings.

While translating imaginative literature ‘loss of meaning comes from metaphorical properties rather than sound effects’. As Newmark is of the view that metaphors are rooted in particular environments. Thus literal and metaphorical meaning, at the same time, are difficult to transfer from SL to TL.

Imaginative literature develops events and people in symbolical character, which is done through more general words that denote them. As Newmark (p.109) describes, “connotation, metonymy, metaphor, word-play merge into each other”. A new ‘separate sense’ is developed for the words which becomes a pun on the primary sense of the word. It is upto the translator to select more general concrete sense or more culturally influenced sense, or combine them both.

Concluding his paper, Newmark (p.109) says that for translating metalanguage, there are alternative solutions. His view is that nothing is untranslatable, only a ‘supplementary gloss’ is often required. Metalanuage is often signalled by expressions like ‘so called’, ‘by definition’, ‘so to speak’ … (p.109). It is usually imaginative literature where force or the meaning may have to be sacrificed, otherwise metalangauge can be handled neatly.

Translation of Metaphor

2013-11-05T01:10:00.000+05:00

1. THE METAPHOR AND ITS PURPOSE

Metaphor can be defined as an indirect comparison between two or more apparently unrelated things or subjects. The point of similarity ‘may be physical but often it is chosen for its connotations’ (Newmark, 1988, p.85).

Newmark (1988) discusses a number of functions of metaphor: to define something more closely; a decoration to show resemblances; to create emotive effect; as an object of interest for media; and lastly as a ‘basic element of language where it later becomes dead or literal language’. For him, translation theory is mainly concerned with the serious purpose of metaphor which is, “to describe an entity, event or quality more comprehensively and concisely and in a more complex way than is possible by using literal language” (p.84).

There are five terms related to metaphor, which define its various related concepts. Firstly, ‘object’ is ‘the item described by the metaphor’. Secondly, ‘image’ is the item ‘in terms of which the object is described’. Thirdly, ‘sense’ is ‘the point of similarity’ between object and image. Fourthly, ‘metaphor’ is the actual word taken up. Lastly, the ‘metonym’ is a one word image which is used in place of whole, and has potential to become ‘dead metaphor’ (literal language) e.g. ‘fin’ of a motor bike. (p.85)

2. TYPES OF METAPHOR

Newmark (1988b) provides a classification consisting of six types, which are discussed below with appropriate examples and sub-types.

2.1 Dead Metaphors: They are “metaphors which often relate to universal terms of time and space, general ecological features and main human activities” (p.106). Dead metaphors have become literal language because users do not recognize them as metaphors, so their images are lost. Idioms, metonyms, synecdoche, and words accepted as technical terms also become dead metaphors. They add to the number of words in a language.

Dead metaphors can be of three types: firstly where image and sense is retained in a second language; secondly thousands of words denoting objects e.g. metonyms; and lastly non-technical words which appear to have concrete and figurative meaning at the same time e.g. ‘foot of a hill’.

2.2 Cliché: They lie between dead and stock metaphors. These metaphors are “used as a substitute for clear thought, often emotively, but without corresponding to the facts of the matter” (1988b, p.107). They “usually consist of two types of collocations: figurative adjective and literal noun e.g. ‘filthy lucre’; or figurative verb and figurative noun e.g. ‘explore all avenues’” (1988, p.87).

2.3 Stock Metaphors: Newmark (1988b, p.108) defines this type as “an established metaphor, which in an informal context is an efficient and concise method of covering a physical and/or mental situation both referentially and pragmatically”. They may have cultural distance or overlap; may be used universally or at least in a wide spread sense, and may have subjective aspects. He notes that there might be no universal metaphors, but hopes if ‘societies reach certain stage of physical health and well-being, there will be some basic universal metaphors’ (1988, p.87).

2.4 Adapted Metaphors: They are actually stock metaphors but are adapted by the writer or speaker into a new context.

2.5 Recent Metaphors: Newmark (1988b, p.111) defines these metaphors as “a metaphorical neologism, often 'anonymously' coined, which has spread rapidly in the SL”. They are often categorised as a slang.

2.6 Original Metaphors: These metaphors are “created or quoted by the SL writer” (1988b, p.112). They “contain the core of an important writer's message, his personality, his comment on life” (ibid). These metaphors are not only complex but have double meanings. They might also contain “personal or dialectal … irrational element peculiar to the imagination” (1988, p.93).

3. PROCEDURES OF METAPHOR TRANSLATION

Newmark (1988, p.88) notes following seven procedure of metaphor translation:

3.1 The same image is reproduced in TL ‘provided that it is comparable in frequency and use in the appropriate register’. One word metaphors are more commonly translated by this method, while translation of complex metaphors or idioms depends on cultural overlap. Reproducing one-word metaphors representing sense of an event or quality instead of an entity is more difficult e.g. ‘elbow one’s way’. Similes are more cautious than metaphors, and must normally be translated in any type of text. Lastly, animal abuse can have cultural or subjective connotations but can be quite universal as well (‘swine’ is symbol of filth and dirt everywhere).

3.2 SL image can be replaced with a standard TL image provided that it is culturally compatible in TL, and ‘presumably coined by one person and diffused through popular speech’. Stereotyped metaphors should be converted to sense whether they exist in TL or not. Euphemisms are also metaphors and often have to be replaced by cultural equivalent, unless reader has to be informed in similar way as SL reader.

3.3 The metaphor can be translated as a simile while retaining the image. This modifies the shock of metaphor, ‘particularly if TL text is not emotive in character’. This procedure can be used for any type of word, and original metaphor.

3.4 The metaphor can be translated as simile along with its sense (or metaphor plus sense). This is a compromise procedure and combines communicative and semantic translations together which address both layman and expert reader. The main focus here is on the ‘gloss’ rather than equivalent effect. It is noteworthy that some metaphors may be incomplete in TL without the addition of a sense component.

3.5 The metaphor can be converted into sense. This procedure can be applied in any type of text, and preferred when SL to TL image replacement is extra broad in terms of sense or register. To perform this procedure, the sense of metaphor should be analysed componentially because image is ‘pludri-dimensional’.

3.6 A rather radical approach is to delete the metaphor along with sense component if it is redundant. A caution is that SL text should not be ‘authoritative’ or ‘expression of writer’s personality’. The translator should make decision after weighing what is more important and less important in the text. An empirical justification of such deletion comes if ‘metaphor’s function is being fulfilled elsewhere in the text’.

3.7 Sometimes translator wants to make sure that image will be understood properly so he adds a gloss as well. Thus he transfers same metaphor along with its sense. E.g “The tongue is a fire” can be translated as follows “A fire ruins things; what we say also ruins things”. This may suggest lack of confidence in metaphor’s power and clarity, but it can be useful if metaphor is repeated.

REFERENCES

Newmark, P. (1988). Approaches to Translation. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Newmark, P. (1988b). A Text book of Translation. London: Prentice Hall.

Translator as a Co-Creator

2013-09-11T11:08:00.001+05:00

Translation is a process by which meaning in one sign system is transferred to another sign system. Here the term ‘sign system’ is limited to linguistic signs only. The person who does this act is called a translator, and bears the responsibility to transfer meaning from source sign system or source language (SL) to target sign system or target language (TL) in an as accurate as possible way. The dilemma of translation, and hence for the translator, starts from within the system of language and its nature. No two words in a language can have same meaning, they might be similar in some aspects but one hundred percent equality or synonymy is not possible. This dilemma widens when words belong to two different languages which have different cultural roots and are distant from each other on the basis of time and space.

It is said that translation is like planting and meaning is the plant which is taken from one soil and planted in a new soil. Meaning exists in a language system but it also has deep roots in culture because language is like a heart and culture is like a body to it. Both language and culture cannot live apart from each other, and upto some extent they do reflect in each other. So the translator is like a person standing on the boundary of one language and culture and importing something to another language and culture. This process needs to be done faithfully, creatively and carefully. During the process of meaning transfer, a translator has to carefully decide what to retain and what to loose. He has to carefully decide how much he has liberty to be creative while giving meaning a new dress of words. At the same time he needs to be careful and faithful to the original meaning of source language. This process can be seen on a continuum or scale of which one end is occupied by ‘creativity’ and the other end is occupied by ‘faithfulness to source’. The translator has to decide what to loose and what to gain on this scale, and according to subject matter, context, and personal taste and experience, he moves back and forth on this continuum or scale.

Subject matter or area of translation is the most powerful factor which affects the translator’s decision to be more creative or less creative. There are some subject areas which require little creativity and are simple to translate. The technology and science related areas, news reports and journalism, websites and software localization, manuals and tutorials etc. are some of the areas which have certain kind of universality. The concepts are usually universally shared and translator just has to change label for specific meaning or concept. Thus the process of translation becomes pretty straight forward with translator being faithful with the source as much as possible. On the contrary, translating a literary piece demands totally opposite skills from the translator. It is generally recommended that translator is also a writer in his mother tongue, or the language in which he is going to translate. He needs to be very careful with meaning but at the same time beauty and creativity are very important as well. He has to be innovative and creative in translation to target language, so that meaning – along with mood, connotations and denotations, formality and cultural ties – is transformed to target language. Juggling on all these fronts requires that translator takes the ‘sense’ of the source and creates something new in the target language. Though generally he may choose a different genre, but ultimately translation will be considered a piece of literature.

The matter of context and personal choice is of less importance as compared to subject matter of translation. The context decides whether translator needs to be creative or needs to retain original meaning of the source. Highly culturally rooted words, e.g. local dishes’ names, are examples which cannot be translated from one language to another. So the translator has to choose faithfulness with the source instead of creating something new. Translations of great literary works like “War and Peace” have made translators to choose original labels instead of using locally available synonyms because of the deep cultural roots of the source, which makes them untranslatable. The matter of understandability for the audience may also be a reason to choose source terms instead of target terms or creation of new ones. This is specially true in localization of modern day software and application programs, where a balance has to be maintained between innovation and/or creation and faithfulness with the source.

Concluding the essay, following opinion can be drawn. Translation is a creative process. A translator has to decide between creativity and faithfulness to source. Sometimes he will be creating new terms, labels and genres; he will be writing the original source in a new tone suitable for the target language. Other times he will be sticking with the source, and trying to imitate words, labels, structures and genres of the source into the target language. So a translator is at the same time a creator of something new as well as a retainer of the old. He is a ‘co-creator’ as well as a ‘translator’; and there are factors which influence the choice of these roles.

Critical Discourse Analysis Using Van Dijk’s Model

2013-04-14T21:24:00.000+05:00

Line#	Text	Para#
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39	Dr Qadri’s petition: loyalty debate 1st March, 2013 DR Tahirul Qadri’s petition was turned down by the Supreme Court. Whatever the reasons given in the court’s decision, the louder message was delivered home and abroad that the Pakistani dual nationals’ loyalties are suspect because they took the oath on other’s loyalty. In other words, they are disloyal. This message caused utter disgrace to all Pakistanis living abroad with dual nationality. The oath alone cannot determine loyalty. The Supreme Court and any other court of this world cannot pass verdict on emotions and feelings like love, hate, like, dislike, loyalty and disloyalty. If we accept the verdict on loyalty issue, the government then should change the name of the ministry of overseas Pakistanis. It should now rename it ministry of overseas disloyal Pakistanis. One more thing, we must not forget that overseas Pakistanis are born citizens of Pakistan like us who do not take the oath of loyalty to Pakistan but they remain loyal. How many Pakistani politicians having only Pakistani nationalities are loyal to Pakistan? Who knows? I humbly request the Supreme Court to identify who are loyal to Pakistan: those who sent money to Pakistan and enriched foreign exchange, or those who exploited Pakistan’s exchequer and sent money to foreign banks. Irrespective of Dr Qadri’s personality, we should focus on what he is saying. Facts about the Election Commission’s formation are public and the media also reported that constitutional process was not adopted in the appointment of some members. I think this is the constitutional responsibility of the Supreme Court to look into the matter so that the institution which is responsible for holding free and fair elections should get out of this ambiguity. Failing to do that may lead to another crisis that may happen after the election results. In the present state of judicial activism, personal conservations of judges with petitioners and the attorney-general overshadow the court decisions and unleash a new debate in the media. Although the role of the judiciary is no doubt remarkable in the prevention of corruption, prolongation of hearings on sensitive issues wasted time and generated uncertainty in the country. The NRO case, memo commission, Haj corruption case, Arsalan Iftikhar case are a few examples which ended in vain. Courts should not be selective in picking up the cases. On trivial emotional expressions of some politicians, the Supreme Court took notice and invoked contempt law while, on the other hand, on Senator Faisal Raza Abdi’s open allegations against judges and the Supreme Court in the media and in public, the judges showed restraint. Exclusive selection of cases by courts would undermine the judicial neutrality. M. TAHA Karachi	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

1. Van Dijk’s CDA Model

Teun van Dijk is a prominent name in critical discourse studies, and his model of CD analysis is one of the influential approaches in the field. Van Dijk (1993) has described in detail how to inter-relate power and dominance relations to text and discourse structures, thus relating macro level and social cognitive understandings to micro level text and talk, and to find out how power and dominance is manifested, produced and reproduced through discourse. The present analysis is an attempt to apply his model of CD analysis to a Letter to Editor taken from Pakistani English newspaper Dawn.

2. Background

The letter is written in the broader national debate about Dr. Qadri’s intentions and in the aftermath of Pakistani Supreme Court’s rejection of his petition to review the establishment procedure of Election Commission of Pakistan. Dr. Qadri arrived in Pakistan in December, 2012 and he orchestrated an impressive sit down strike in front of Parliament, and several demonstrations in different cities including one in Lahore. His arrival created quite a stir among politicians and generally media campaign was against him. After several demonstrations, he went to Supreme Court and petitioned to review the establishment procedure of Election Commission of Pakistan, which was rejected by Supreme Court of Pakistan as he was a dual national. At the same time, majority of media outlets criticized him for his dual nationality, raised doubts on his intentions and accused him of derailing the democratic process. The letter is written in this context, while it counters the majority negative discourse against Dr. Qadri, it also highlights another issue i.e. the loyalty of overseas Pakistanis. The critical analysis of this piece of discourse is as follows:

3. Analysis

3.1 Access: The letter writer appears to be a common Pakistani citizen with interest in politics so he has no exclusive access to any media related genres; and he is dependent on the selection processes of newspaper to get a place in letters to editor column. This fact makes his contribution a resistive and counter discourse. As the background also suggests, general media campaign was against Dr. Qadri and this letter favours his opinion.

The letter is written in English language, to an English newspaper which is considered one of the oldest newspapers of country, and has a reputation among ruling elite, political and bureaucratic class of the country. Thus the writer gets access to voice his opinion directly to the dominant group, though he appear not to be from that class.

3.2 Genre: The genre is ‘Letters to Editor’ section of newspapers, which in different writers’ opinion is “among the few outlets available to the public for voicing opinion” (Kapoor and Botan, 1992, p. 5). Although there are ‘rules of selection’ (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2002) for Letters to Editor, still they provide a window for the reader community to voice their opinion. The text type is argumentative in nature, and usually are written in response to already printed editorials, opinion articles, other letters or broader social and/or political debate going on in society. This letter is also an example of response to such a political debate going on in national press, electronic and social media.

3.3 Communicative acts and social meanings: The letter is a counter discourse which tries to counter dominant discourse of defamation of a political figure. It shows the heterogeneity of the society, and disagreement among the masses about the legitimacy of Dr. Qadri’s quest to reform election process including the Election Commission of Pakistan. The letter also voices concern about the impartiality of highest court in the country, and thus again highlights the scars of disagreement among the society about the role of courts or judiciary.

3.4 Participant positions and roles: As already mentioned the letter writer appears to be a member of civil society, with apparently no or less significant authority in terms of political or social influence.

3.5 Speech act: The speech acts performed by the letter writer are assertive in nature. Taking the text as a whole, the writer accuses higher courts of impartiality, casts doubt on their ability to be just, tries to prove Dr. Qadri’s cause to be just, accuses politicians of the problems in the country. As well as, he asserts that courts should be just and fair in case selection.

3.6 Macrosemantics: topics As the heading in line 1 shows the topic is “Dr Qadri’s petition: loyalty debate”. The topic can be rephrased as “If Dr. Qadri is disloyal then all overseas Pakistanis are”, “Courts should not rule on loyalty”, “Supreme Court is being partial regarding Dr. Qadri”….. Although the topic given, most probably, by the ‘Letters to Editor’ section’s editor is less catchy, less emotional and looks more reasonable, the content of the letter shows that above exemplified topics can also fit as a heading. The topic thus is not just about Dr. Qadri being right or wrong, the writer overgeneralizes the available facts and draws on the emotions of the readers to prove his point. In that emotional state, he accuses the highest court in the country of being partial and unjust.

3.7 Superstructures: Text Schemata and Argumentation ‘Letter to Editor’ are mainly known as their argumentative structure. Richardson (2007) provides a detailed review of argumentation strategies, which was helpful in argumentation analysis of this piece of text as well. The writer uses two fold strategy in argumentation: drawing on emotions of the readers as well as logical argumentation. The argumentation seems to have two divisions which are mentioned here:

1) The Supreme Court’s decision regarding Dr. Qadri is wrong because:

a. Court cannot rule on loyalty or disloyalty (the writer compares a legitimate jurisdictional area of court with other emotions.)

b. This way all overseas Pakistanis will become disloyal.

c. Taking oath doesn’t mean one is loyal to another.

d. Politicians are more disloyal then common overseas Pakistanis.

e. It has caused disgrace for Pakistanis.

2) Courts are biased because:

a. They are selective in cases.

b. They have personal grudges with petitioners.

c. They prolong hearings of legitimate cases while illegitimate ones are given undue importance.

d. The Election Commission does have constitutional problems in its establishment procedure.

3) Therefore:

a. Courts should not do this.

b. EC formation process should be reviewed.

The first argument of the writer mostly invokes reader’s emotions by using noun phrases like “ministry of overseas disloyal Pakistanis” (line 12-13), “utter disgrace” and rhetorical questions (para 5). The writer uses apparently flawed argumentation by including Dr. Qadri to common Pakistanis working abroad and putting them against the ‘politicians’. He ignores the fact the Dr. Qadri himself is a politician, thus he wrongly presupposes that Dr. Qadri is “not politician”, and “his intentions are good”.

The second argumentation uses logical arguments to prove the point. The writer provides a number of examples to support his case that ‘courts are partial’, a few of which are apparently over-extended (e.g. Senator Raza Abidi’s example, he was actually called in contempt of court case and wasn’t ignored at all, the NRO case in which government was given grace period to act upon it and afterwards court did take a strict action against elected PM in contempt case). The writer also ignores the background surrounding Dr. Qadri’s sudden arrival, the rumors of derailing the system and a ‘technocratic government’ which led Supreme Court to take immediate action. The writer also ignores the fact that Dr. Qadri orchestrated a sit strike in front of Parliament and a demonstration in Lahore at his arrival which consumed (according to some estimates) more than 1 billion rupees, which casts doubts on his intentions as a sincere ‘common Pakistani’ concerned about the political hegemony in the country.

Concluding the argumentation analysis, the writer though ignores certain facts, but provides a counter discourse with certain good arguments which legitimatize the actions of Dr. Qadri and insist that the courts to act in his favour.

3.7 Local meaning and coherence:

a) Level of specificity and degree of completeness: The writer over-generalizes the working class Pakistanis abroad and implicitly includes Dr. Qadri among them, though that’s is not the case. He is a politician, who took Canadian citizenship as a scholar and politician. The examples for his arguments are present in abundance but opposite arguments are ignored and only an acknowledgement sentence is provided (line 31) which in itself is highlighting the oncoming argument with traditional “Although xxx but yyy” structure.

b) Perspective: The writer’s perspective is clearly against the general opinion about Dr. Qadri, and he is against Supreme Court’s ruling about the matter as well.

c) Implicitness: As mentioned above the writes uses a number of presuppositions. He implicitly excludes Dr. Qadri from the group of ‘bad politicians’ even though he is a politician, he presupposes that ‘judges have personal grudges with all petitioners’ (line 29), ‘courts are selective’ (line 35). Thus he supports his argumentation and opinion.

3.8 Style: variations of syntax, lexicon and sound: The word choice is simple and do not indicate any particular register. There are emotion words e.g. ‘like, dislike, love, hate’ (line 10) which add to the argumentation strategy i.e. to draw upon readers’ feelings. The terms like ‘judicial activism’ are used in a negative and critical manner which is used here and adds to the opinion of the writer. Lastly, an interesting choice of words is adopted to point towards ‘foreign countries’. Simply, pronoun ‘other’ (line 6) is used to refer to ‘foreign countries’, similarly the word ‘home’ (line 4) is used to refer to Pakistan. This word choice is directly in accordance with writer’s opinion and strategy to invoke readers’ emotions.

The syntactic style is typical of newspaper discourse with long sentences, and one or two sentence long paragraphs. The start of text has topicalizations (line 3, 4) which introduce writer’s focus in the beginning. Similarly passive voices are used (e.g. line 4) to topicalize the theme as well as to reduce the negative opinion to surface at start, which gets stronger as the argument develops and ends at strong assertion using modal verb ‘should’ (line 35).

4. Conclusion

Overall, the text counters a dominant discourse in print and electronic media. It tries to shatter the authority of dominant media opinion, and resists to authoritative decision of highest court of the country. During this quest, the writer gets partial success but argumentative strategy appears to be flawed at more than one occasions, as the analysis reveals. The letter tries to introduce a counter discourse through ‘Letters to Editor’ section but apparently fails to do so as data collected from next 13 days (letter was published on 1st March, 2013) has no follow up or reaction on this issue.

References

Kapoor, S. and Botan, C. (1992). Studies Compare How Editors Use Letters. The Masthead 44(1), p. 5.

Richardson, J.E. (2007). Analysing Newspapers: An approach from Critical Discourse Analysis. Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan.

Van Dijk, T.A. (1993). Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse & Society, 4(2), 249-283.

Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2002). Understanding the Conditions for Public Discourse: four rules for selecting letters to the editor. Journalism Studies, 3(1), 69 –81.

Ad Free (Offline) English To Urdu Dictionary on Android

2013-03-25T13:48:00.000+05:00

I am an Android user for above a year and one of most needed things on Android for me is a dictionary. I need English to English and English to Urdu dictionaries for my day to day work, to get meaning while reading or watching movie. There are very good dictionaries available for English and I am very much happy with Miriam Webster dictionary app. The problem for Urdu is frustrating though, because dictionaries are hellishly filled with ads and sometimes they won't even open if you are offline. I hate all of English to Urdu dictionary developers, most of them have got the data from other online sources (EnglishUrdudictionary.com, مقتدرہ قومی زبان) and now use that content for their unfair profit making. So seeking all this, I decided to do something, which was kind of simple. As I have already created a glossary file of about 92000 words, English to Urdu, I asked an internet friend Muhammad Saad to convert that to QuickDic format using linux based java tool. He did it and bingo, I use offline android dictionary now. And here it is for you people as well. Follow these steps to have a free offline English<>Urdu dictionary for your routine use on any Android device.
1. Install QuickDic from Play store.
2. Download English > Urdu dictionary file.
3. Unzip the file and get whatever is inside.
4. Connect your Android device to PC.
5. Find quickDic file folder in your device's SDcard, and put the file there.
6. Start QuickDic and it will automatically find new dictionaries in the folder.
7. Use and Enjoy! (And you can use the dictionary both ways English to Urdu, Urdu to English. Just use button on the left side of search box labelled EN).
And here is how the app and dictionary looks on my Nexus 7.

Discovery Procedures and Evaluation Procedures

2013-02-21T19:57:00.001+05:00

Discovery Procedures

American structural linguistics (pre-Chomskiyan era) tradition studied exotic languages to preserve their culture and traditions. The linguists like Franz Boas and his followers had found that the notions and concepts of traditional grammar (of Latin, Greek and Sanskrit) were useless against totally new languages with no historical relation between them and the classical languages and/or Indo-European family of languages. The study of language to study indigenous cultures made them aware of the diversity in human languages. According to unlimited diversity principle, their beliefs emerged as almost opposite to traditional grammar’s somewhat universalist beliefs. The languages were different; each language had its own way of organizing concepts of grammar hence the grammar of each language was different. There was no guarantee that techniques, methods or tools developed for language will work on very next language. Thus to study the grammar of a language a linguist had to have a number of tools (for description and analysis). As Sampson (1980) notes, the theory of language for Descriptivists was that there was no theory at all. Instead they believed that they were developing ‘techniques’ of analysis without going into details of creating a theory of language. But, as Samson (1980) argues, “any analytical technique in any domain must depend on some assumptions about the nature of the things analysed”.

Apart from this contradiction of having a theory of language or not having a theory of language, they didn’t have any mechanism to select or reject the best technique or ‘discovery procedure’ to analyse a given chunk of language. “They approached alternative techniques of description in a more catholic way, seeing them as alternative tools to be pulled out of the toolbag when needed” (Sampson 1980, p.74). Thus there was no way to measure or weigh for a method to select the best method, often it was a matter of personal choice. As for Charles Hocket (1954 quoted in Sampson 1980) two different methods of analysis of same linguistic phenomenon were equal, none better than the other one, moreover he described a third method of analysis as well which, in his view, deserved equal attention.

In later years some linguists were compelled to devise explicit ‘discovery procedures’ which, when written as a computer program, would enable a computer to analyse linguistic data and derive the grammar of that language without human intervention. Harris (1951, quoted in Sampson 1980) wrote a complete account of discovery procedures to collect utterance and analyse them at phonemic, morphemic and (to a rather less extent) at syntactic level. There was a tension between the ‘unlimited diversity principle’ and ‘view that linguistics should consist of mechanical rules for processing data into grammars’. The methods of latter view couldn’t be successful without assuming some ‘universal features’ in all languages.

The apparent lack of a theory of language, the inability to select most efficient method of analysis (or ‘grammar’ of a language) and the over-emphasis on diversity led to the criticism from Chomsky (2002) and the development of ‘evaluation procedures’ in contrast of ‘discovery procedures’.

Evaluation Procedures

For Chomsky (2002), the grammar must meet certain external criteria of adequacy e.g. generated sentences should be acceptable by native speaker, and condition of generality by which a grammar of a language must be constructed out of a theory which defines terms like ‘phoneme’ and ‘phrase’ independent of a given language, thus opposite to the idea of ‘unlimited diversity principle’.

Chomsky (2002) outlines three requirements from a theory of language. The theory must provide “a practical and mechanical method for actually constructing the grammar, given a corpus of utterances” (p.57). He calls this requirement discovery procedure, which is the strongest demand from a theory of language.

A weaker demand is to require a decision procedure through which a theory of language may be able to decide whether the provided grammar is best grammar for the language from which the corpus was collected.

A third and weakest demand would be that theory must be able to tell us which grammar is better, if a corpus and two grammars G1 and G2 are given. He calls this requirement evaluation procedure. In Chosmky’s view, the descriptivists require the most strongest of these three procedures, which in his view is unreasonable to require from a theory of language i.e. to ask it more than a practical evaluation procedure for grammars.

In his view – by demanding ‘evaluation procedures’ instead of ‘discovery procedures’ from a theory – “a number certain problems that have been the subject of intense methodological controversy simply do not arise” (p.56), e.g. the problem of inter-dependence of levels. While working to create discovery procedures, the descriptivists assume that levels are interdependent and thus they cannot go beyond phonemic and morphemic levels due to unsolved problems which their discovery procedure cannot deal with at this current level. But by abandoning this higher level requirement, the inter-dependency problem can be ignored and syntactic theory can be advanced which was otherwise being ignored. As grammar of a language is a complex system of interconnections, and other linguists’ (descriptivists) beliefs about it “has been nurtured by a faulty analogy between the order of development of linguistic theory and the presumed order of operations in discovery of grammatical structure” (p.59).

Conclusion

Concluding the discussion, it can be safely said that Chomsky’s proposal was a major methodological advancement which led to a rather unified and universal theory of language. His ideas provided an independent status to syntax which was previously ignored by the descriptivists. Thus the advancement of a syntactic theory in turn could provide some ideas to solve the un-resolved problems at the phonemic and morphemic level.

References

Sampson, Geoffrey. 1980. Schools of Linguistics: Competition and evolution. Hutchinson: London, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Johannesburg.

Chomsky, Naom. 2002. Syntactic Structures. 2^nd Edition. Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin, New York.

Language and Ideology

2013-02-05T19:28:00.001+05:00

This presentation was created for Applied Linguistics class in our M Phil 2nd Semester. It covers two aspects regarding language and ideology: ideology about language or language attitudes; and language as a tool to project ideology, exercise social power and create hegemony.

Cooperative Principle and Implicature

2013-01-14T18:31:00.000+05:00

These slides explain Grice's Cooperative Principle, it's Maxims and how does Implicature arise by flouting a maxim or following it. They also discuss other theories for explaining implicature i.e. The Politeness Principle and The Relevance Theory.

What is Langauge

2012-10-11T10:41:00.003+05:00

Some definitions of language (including Sapir, Hall and Chomsky). A few points on nature of language and study of language.

Language Contact and the Formation of Pidgins and Creoles

2012-06-25T07:47:00.000+05:00

These slides were our group presentation in Bilingualism, which I am going to share here. Hopefully it'll clarify the concepts like Pidgin, Creole, Pidginization, Creolization, Pidgin to Creole Formation and some related researches on Pidgin and Creole Languages.

Bilingualism

2012-05-29T10:46:00.003+05:00

Bilingualism is a phenomenon in which a person can speak more than one languages. Sometimes Bilingualism is contrasted with Multilingualism. The former one is used to refer to 2 languages as 'bi-' means two, while the latter is used to refer to more than two languages. Another distinction which is granted to these two terms is that Bilingualism refers to individual phenomenon of speaking more than one languages, while Multilingualism is used for societal Bilingualism i.e. the situation in which whole societies are Bilingual examples are Pakistan, India and Canada etc. More recently, however, the term Multilingualism is being used less frequently as compared to Bilingualism which is now used to cover all situations in which more than one languages are being spoken whether that situation is at individual level or at society level.

The person who can speak more than one languages is referred to as a Bilingual or Multilingual. Bilinguals have different kinds. The most traditional kinds were given by Weinreich (1963). A brief introduction of each kind is provided below:

Co-ordinate Bilinguals are those people who have learnt both languages in different environments. The languages would most probably be used for different functions. If a person learns Urdu in Pakistan and English from the Britain, then he will be called a Co-ordinate Bilingual. Such people have separate systems for each language in their minds. So the words and concepts of each language will be kept in the mind separately.
Compound Bilinguals are those people who have learnt both languages from the same environment. The languages would not have separate system in the mind, but the they will have one system. The concepts would be kept in one box in their minds, while the words will be different for both languages. We can see Urdu and Punjabi as an example. Both are learnt in the same environment, and thus it can be said that we, the Punjabi speakers of Urdu, are Compound Bilinguals i.e. we have same system of concepts in our minds but the only thing which changes is the words or vocabulary items of two separate languages.
Subordinate Bilinguals are those people who have learnt a second language and cannot understand it without the help of their first language. Such people will translate the words of second language in their mother tongue, then they would be able to understand them. Thus we can say that the concepts in mind will remain in one system i.e. the system of mother tongue, but an additional language is attached to that system through mother tongue.

A visual representation of Weinreich's kinds of bilinguals.

Now a days only first two kinds i.e. Coordinate and Compound are endorsed by the researchers and experts in the field, while the third one is dropped.

Bilingualism is a social, psychological as well as linguistic phenomenon. Whenever there are more than one languages in a society, the issues of language identity, promotion or selection of a language and educating children in a particular language arise. All these issues are related to social aspect of Bilingualism. On the other hand, the researchers try to find out "how the two or more languages are stored in mind", "whether knowing more than one language is beneficial", "Bilinguals are different from monolinguals or not". All these issues are related to the psychological aspect of Bilingualism. And lastly, there are questions regarding code switching and code mixing (how the bilinguals are able to mix two different languages) which come under the heading of linguistic aspect of Bilingualism.

Sampling in Applied Linguistics

2012-05-22T10:06:00.000+05:00

These slides were created as a part of M Phil presentation. Probability and Non-probability Sampling techniques and issues like sample size are discussed in detail here.

Statistics in Research

2012-05-21T17:22:00.000+05:00

A brief presentation on basic statistical techniques used in research methodology.

Langue/Parole Versus Competence/Performance

2012-04-06T10:11:00.001+05:00

These slides cover basic Saussurian dichotomies i.e. Syntagmatic Vs. Paradigmatic Axis (Chain Choice Axis), Synchonic Vs. Diachronic and Langue Vs. Parole. The main part is the comparison of Langue Parole and Chomsky's idea of Competence Performance.