Sunday 17 May 2015

Language Change


Assignment no. 2
Topic: Language changes from old to present day Urdu
Submitted by : Fizza Batool
Submitted to: Sir Akhtar Aziz

Introduction:
Language is always changing. Generation by generation, pronunciations evolve, new words are borrowed or invented, the meaning of old words drifts, and morphology develops or decays. The rate of change varies, but whether the changes are faster or slower, they build up until the "mother tongue" becomes arbitrarily distant and different. In isolated subpopulations speaking the same language, most changes will not be shared. As a result, such subgroups will drift apart linguistically, and eventually will not be able to understand one another.
In the modern world, language change is often socially problematic. Long before divergent dialects lose mutual intelligibility completely, they begin to show difficulties and inefficiencies in communication, especially under noisy or stressful conditions. Also, as people observe language change, they usually react negatively, feeling that the language has "gone down hill". You never seem to hear older people commenting that the language of their children or grandchildren's generation has improved compared to the language of their own youth. There are many different routes to language change. Changes can take originate in language learning, or through language contactsocial differentiation, and natural processes in usage.
Coin brassy words at will, debase the coinage;
We're in an if-you-cannot-lick-them-join age,
A slovenliness provides its own excuse age,
Where usage overnight condones misusage,
Farewell, farewell to my beloved language,
Once English, now a vile orangutanguage.
(Ogden Nash,
Laments for a Dying Language, 1962)
The Research Sample:
Chhaap Tilak Sab Chheeni (Hindi: छाप तिलक सब छीनी) (Urdu: چھاپ تلک سب چھینی ) is a Qawwali song composed by Amir Khusro, a 14th-century Indian mystic. It is written in popular country tongue, Braj Bhasha. This single is very popular in Qawwali concerts. The song's poetry as well as music are highly appreciated by the Qawwali listeners of the Indian subcontinent. Due to the immense popularity of this song it forms an integral part of any Sufi concert in the Indian Subcontinent. This Qawwali has been sung by many notable Qawwals such as Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Naheed Akhtar, Mehnaz Begum, Abida Parveen and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan.
Text:

                       


Chhāp tilak sab chīnī re mose nainā milāike
Prem bhakṭī kā madvā pilāike
Matvālī kar līnhī re mose nainā milāike
Gorī gorī baīyān, harī harī chuṛiyān
baīyān pakaṛ har līnhī re mose nainā milāike
Bal bal jāūn main tore rang rajvā
Apnī sī kar līnhī re mose nainā milāike
Khusro nijaam ke bal bal jaiye
Mohe suhāgan kīnhī re mose nainā milāike
Chhāp tilak sab chīnī re mose nainā milāike
You've taken away my looks, my identity, by just a glance.
By making me drink the wine of love-potion,
You've intoxicated me by just a glance;
My fair, delicate wrists with green bangles in them,
Have been held tightly by you with just a glance.
I give my life to you, Oh my cloth-dyer,
You've dyed me in yourself, by just a glance.
I give my whole life to you Oh, Nijam,
You've made me your bride, by just a glance.


Semantic & Lexical Changes:
They that dally [= converse idly] nicely [= foolishly] with words may quickly make them wanton [= unmanageable].
                                                                             (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night III, 1)
Changes in meaning and vocabulary excite people. Semantic change is mostly concerned with the meaning of individual lexical items. Different aspects of semantic and lexical changes in the sample include:
  • Synecdoche

Synecdoche (from Greek sunekdokhe 'inclusion'), often considered a kind of metonymy, that is, a part (or quality) is used to refer to the whole, or the whole is used to refer to part. In the sample, the word ‘nainaan’ refers to the beloved of the speaker of the poem.
  • Metaphor

Metaphor involves understanding or experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another kind of thing thought somehow to be similar in some way. Metaphor in semantic change involves extensions in the meaning of a word that suggest a semantic similarity or connection between the new sense and the original one. In the text, the taste of love is metaphorically exemplified by the words ‘prem bhatti ka madhwa pilai key’ which refer to the wine of love.Bhatti’ stands for the potion of love which is a magical potion believed to arouse love or sexual passion towards a specific person and ‘madhwa’(wine) illustrates the intoxication of love.
  • Metonymy

Metonymy (from Greek metonomia 'transformation of the name') is a change in the meaning of a word so that it comes to include additional senses which were not originally present but which are closely associated with the word's original meaning. For example, the word ‘chaap’ meant ‘identity’ in the sample but now, it includes the additional meanings of impact, reflection, copy and imitation.
  • Degeneration

In degeneration (often called pejoration), the sense of a word takes on a less positive, more negative evaluation in the minds of the users of the language - an increasingly negative value judgement. The repetitive phrase ‘mosey nainaan milaikey’ has got a negative connotation nowadays and it is always perceived as a gesture between the lover and the beloved.
  • Elevation (amelioration)

Semantic changes of elevation involve shifts in the sense of a word in the direction towards a more positive value in the minds of the users of the language - an increasingly positive value judgement. The words ‘prem’ and ‘gori gori bayyan’ are now casually used, although they had negative value initially.
  • Hyperbole

Hyperbole (exaggeration, from Greek hyperbole 'excess') involves shifts in meaning due to exaggeration by overstatement. ‘Chaap tilak sab cheeni’, ‘Prem bhatti ka madhwa pilaikey’, ‘khusroo nijaam k bal bal jayyey’ are clear examples of hyperbolic expressions to enhance the impact of poetry.
  • Amalgamation

Amalgamations are forms which formerly were composed of more than one free-standing word (which occurred together in some phrase), which as a result of the change get bound together in a single word. For example, ‘moosey’, ‘milaikey’ and ‘pilaikey’ are a combination of two words here. ‘Moosey’ means mujh sey, ‘milaikey’ means mila key and ‘pilaikey’ means pilaa key. In the text, they are written as single words.
  • Clipping (compression, shortening, ellipsis)

Often, new words or new forms of old words come from 'clipping', that is, from shortening longer words. For example, ‘maiy’ is a short form of ‘madhwa’ and both of these words have the same meaning of wine.
  • Obsolescence and loss of vocabulary

Those who work on lexical change are interested not only in the adoption of new vocabulary, but also in the question of why vocabulary items become archaic and sometimes disappear altogether from a language. The use of particular words has faded for a number of social and stylistic reasons. For example, the words ‘bal bal’ and ‘rang rajwa’ are not used nowadays in Urdu language.
Syntactic Changes:
Our speech hath its infinnities and defects, as all things else have. Most of the occasions of the world's troubles are grammatical.
                                                                                                               (Montaigne, Essays II, xii)
Syntactic change is the evolution of the syntactic structure of a natural language. Over time, syntactic change is the greatest modifier of a particular language. Massive changes - attributable either to creolization or to relexification - may occur both in syntax and in vocabulary. Syntactic change is seen as part of what happens in the transition of grammars from one generation to the next. The sentence structure of Urdu language follows S + O + V pattern but the poets, writers and artists have the poetic license to bring innovation and creativity in language. In the text written by Ameer Khusro, no particular syntactic format is followed. There is a frequent switch between O + S + V and O + V + S pattern throughout the work.
An archaism (also often called relic) is something characteristic of the language of the past, a vestige, which survives chiefly in specialised uses. Archaisms are in some way exceptional or marginal to the language in which they are found. They are most commonly preserved in certain kinds of language such as in proverbs, folk poetry, folk ballads, legal documents, prayers and religious texts, very formal genres or stylistic variants, and so on. The language of the text has also become archaic nowadays.



Friday 15 May 2015

Language Change: Exploring Phonological features of Old Urdu

By Maham Said
Language description and Preservation
Instructor: Sir Akhter Aziz
 
1.      Introduction

Languages change and evolve with the passage of time. Several key properties of language such as arbitrariness, systematicity, structure-dependence, displacement, specialization, and cultural transmission are defined as observable properties of language. Duality and productivity can be added to this list. As language demonstrates the key property of duality this enables productivity. In the late 1970s, Lyons defined productivity as:

“…that property of the language-system which enables native speakers to construct and understand an indefinitely large number of utterances, including utterances that they have never previously encountered.” (Lyons, 1977)

This means that language can be used to produce an infinite set of new and meaningful utterances. We can say things that no one has ever said before or state previous ideas in new ways. Such novel utterances are meaningful and readily interpretable by others. All the languages undergo change in certain linguistic ways. Change may occur on lexical, phonological or syntactic level. Modern languages are said to have evolved due to different socio-political/socio-economic reasons. Hudson quotes Trask for his claim that modern languages started out as dialects of much earlier languages, while some came about comparatively recently by the process of pidginization and creolization’. (2005 p.52) According to Trask (1994), living languages have a tendency to change over time. This change may be explained in phonetic, lexical, syntactic and semantic terms. New words, novel meanings, different pronunciations, deviant grammatical forms are continuously coming into use replacing the older ones. Certain causes of language change can be stated in term of:

  • Economy:  In order to reach communicative goals, speakers often use utterances that are efficient and effective. Trade-off of cost and benefits must be inculcated in purposeful speaking.
    • the principle of least effort: Phonetics reduction of speech forms occur due to speakers economy in articulation. vowel reduction, cluster reduction, lenition, and elision. A change may be accepted widely after some time (it becomes a regular sound change) and may end up treated as a standard. For instance: going to [ˈɡoʊ.ɪŋ.tʊ]gonna [ˈɡɔnə] or [ˈɡʌnə], with examples of both vowel reduction [ʊ] → [ə] and elision [nt] → [n], [oʊ.ɪ] → [ʌ].
  • Analogy: reducing word forms by likening different forms of the word to the root.
  • Language contact: borrowing of words and constructions from foreign languages.
  • The medium of communication.
  • Cultural environment: Groups of speakers will reflect new places, situations, and objects in their language, whether they encounter different people there or not.
  • Migration/Movement: Speakers will change and create languages, such as pidgins and creoles.

1.1.             Urdu Language:

Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language widely spoken in Pakistan, the northern parts of India and in Jammu & Kashmir. The language family tree of Urdu is described as: Indo-European>Indo-Iranian>Indo-Aryan>Urdu. Urdu, Hindi, Hindustani and Hindi-Urdu are some terms that are used interchangeably by linguists depending on the geographical region, context and situation. Urdu and Hindi are similar in their grammatical structure and semantics but are different in script, phonology and some of the vocabulary.

Urdu has a strong Perso-Arabic influence in its vocabulary and is written in a Perso-Arabic script from right to left; whereas Hindi has a strong influence of Sanskrit and the other native languages of India and is written in Devangari script from left to right.

1.2.            Urdu Orthography:

Urdu has a derivative Persian script which is itself a derivative of Arabic script with some addition of new letters under influence of the native languages of the region. Urdu is mostly written in Nastaleeq script which is cursive, context-sensitive and complex system of writing for Perso-Arabic scripts. Urdu is written from right to left.


1.3.            Urdu Morphology:

Urdu is an Amalgamative language (blend of root words) (Siddiqi, 1971). Despite Urdu is an Indo-European languages, its grammar is very complex and is different in many ways from the other Indo-European languages. In follows SOV order (Subject-object-verb) having relatively free word order. It shows mixed ergativity (verb that can be either transitive or intransitive, and whose subject when intransitive, corresponds to its direct object when transitive) therefore in some cases verb agrees with the object rather than subject.

1.4.            Nouns:

Urdu is a weak inflected language. The function of noun in a sentence is usually shown by postpositions. In Urdu, noun can be inflected in number and case. A noun can be singular or plural. For example:

Singular: Lerka, Kitab

Plural: Lerkey, Kitabain

1.5.            Purpose and Limitations:

The present paper aims at identifying briefly, the phonological variations between old and new Urdu. Due to time restriction and unavailability of older books, authentic old Urdu scripts could not be found for orthographic and lexical study of the terms, thus only differences in pronunciation patterns has been observed. The script chosen for the analysis is a ghazal by 16th c.  Poet Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, who wrote in Dakhini Urdu. The second poem chosen for analysis is by Khvaja Mir Dard, 18thc.  poet who was famous for great expression and mystical writings.

2.     Analysis of Old Urdu Literary text

 

2.1.            Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah              

Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah (1580–1612 CE) was the fifth sultan of the Qutb Shahi dynasty of Golkonda and founded the city of Hyderabad, in South-central India and built its architectural centerpiece, the Charminar. He was an able administrator and his reign is considered one of the high points of the Qutb Shahi dynasty. He ascended to the throne in 1580 at the age of 15 and ruled for 31 years.

Quli Qutb Shah was a scholar of Arabic, Persian and Telugu languages. He wrote poetry in Dakhini Urdu, Persian, and Telugu. His poetry has been compiled into a volume entitled ‘Kulliyat-e-Quli Qutub Shah’. Quli Qutub Shah had the distinction of being the first Saheb-e-dewan Urdu poet and is credited with introducing a new sensibility into prevailing genres of Persian/Urdu poetry.

Dakhini Urdu:

Dakhini ( دکنی‎) arose as a Muslim court language of the Deccan Plateau ca. 1300 AD in ways similar to Urdu. It is similar to Urdu in its influence from Persian with a Hindi base, but differs because of the strong influence of Arabic, Persian, Marathi, Konkani, Telugu and Kannada spoken in the states of Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Dakhini, though built on a base of Khadi Boli, influenced the development of Urdu. This was achieved primarily through the continual interaction of Sufi poets, courtesans and public between the Deccan and the Mughal Courts and the Khadi Boli heartland. Noteworthy are the contributions of Wali Dakhni, a famous poet of Dakhni, who visited Delhi in 1700.

piya tuj ishq kun deti hun

en_piyaa-tuj-ishq-kuun-detii-huun-sud-bud-haur-jiyo-dil-men-quli-qutub-shah-ghazals.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deviation from Modern Urdu

Old Urdu
Pronounced as
In modern Urdu the word refer to
English Translation
Tuj
Aspirated  form as in ‘tujh’
Tujhey, tumhey
You
Kuun
Nasalised vowel sound produced with ‘oo’ after /k/ sound
Kioon –diphthong with /i/ and /u:/ sound produced
Why
haur
Pronounced with a /w/ sound as in ‘hawr’
Haar with gliding /a:/ sound produced
Failed
Tuu
Nasalized vowel /u:/ sound produced
Tum
You
Juun
Nasalized sound produced with /u:/ as in kuun and tuu
Jab
When

 


 


2.2.        Khvaja Mir Dard  (1720-1784)                                                                            


Khwaja Mir Dard, a Sufi poet and theologian of eighteenth-century Delhi, is one of the three major poets of the Delhi School - the other two being Mir Taqi Mir and Mirza Sauda - who could be called the pillars of the classical Urdu ghazal. Dard is recognised as the first mystic, who regards the phenomenal world as a veil of the eternal reality, and this life as a term of exile from our real home. He is a renowned poet in Persian and is ranked also among the “four pillars” (foundational poets) of the Urdu poetical tradition. Not only did he substantially influence Urdu poetical forms and vocabulary, he is also acknowledged as the greatest mystical poet in the language.

Dard believes the power of expression to be one of the finest gifts granted to mankind—and only to mankind—and he posits equality between possessing humanity and mastering the art of speech. Understanding this concept well and expressing it to others in a beautiful manner is, he believes, the mark of “manhood” (Adam yat).

 Tujhi ko jo yan jalwa farma na dekha


tujhi ko jo yan jalwa farma na dekha 
barabar hai duniya ko dekha na dekha
 

mera guncha-e-dil hai woh dil-girifta
 
k jis ko kaso ne kabhi wa na dekha
 
kiya mujh ko dagon sarw-e-chiragan
kabho tu ne akar tamasha na dekha
 

shab-o-roz aye "Dard" darapai hun us ke
 

kaso ne jise yan samjha na dekha

Deviation from Modern Urdu

Old Urdu
Pronounced as
In modern Urdu the words refer to
English Translation
yan
Nasalized long vowel /a:/ sound is produced after/y/
Yahan. /h/ sound is produced followed by long nasalized /a:/ sound.
Here
Kaso ne
Sounds /k/ /a/ /s/ /o/ are all produced.
The word refers to modern day ‘kese ne’.
/e/ sound is produced instead of /a/ /o/ sound in kaso
Anyone, anybody
Wa na
Long vowel sound ‘aa’ produced after ‘w’ sound
Sounds ‘na’ produced as it is
Refers to modern ‘wahan’
Not there
Kabho
Voiced aspirated ‘bho’ sound is produced. Vowels sounds /a/ and /o/ are produced as it is. Like in ‘kaso’.
Refers to modern ‘kabhe.
 
Whenever
Tu ne
Contrasts with nasalized ‘tuun’ sound in the previous poem.
Long vowel /u:/ sound is produced after /t/.
Refers to modern ‘tum ne’
You

 

 References:

Lyons, J. (1977). Semantics.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Trask, L. (2005). Language Change. Ed. by Hudson, R. Taylor and Francis e-Library. Retrieved

             on April 25th,2015 from https://books.google.com.pk/books

Ziad, H. The Nature and Art of Discourse in the Religious Writings of Khvaja Mir Dard.

            Retrieved  on  April 25th,2015 from http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/20/10Ziad.pdf

Zahid, S. et.al. (2012). Semantic Change in Urdu: A Case Study of ‘Mashkoor’. Government

            College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan. doi:10.5539/ass.v8n2p164

             URL:  http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ass.v8n2p164