Urdu Composition Book

[Trinh Livingston]

Twothings have inspired this post: 1) I have been practicing a famous chalan made popular by Thirakwa Khan Saheb and 2) I am studying lots of Hindi lately. Paired together, I have been thinking about the nature of tabla compositions in terms of genre (if we can really call it that). There are many different types of compositions in tabla, e.g., kaida, rela, laggi, tukra, chalan, etc., and each has its own characteristic, but a character that is sometimes very hard to define uniformly. Some call a particular composition a kaida while other call it a chalan. In fact, I have heard that Thirakwa Khan Saheb himself was not so strict on the names of different types of compositions.

Having said all that, I return to my initial inquiry, chalan. Coming from the word chalna, meaning to move, chalan in Hindi/Urdu means movement. In this description then, a chalan is different from a kaida insofar that it does not establish a rule for development, it is rather, a movement. In light of what I wrote above, it seems that chalan is just a way to linguistically describe the sequence of tabla sounds, and not a compositional genre that needs definition and rigid parameters to understand.

Finally, here is the beautiful chalan that inspired this post (performed here by Anindo Ji and his son Anubrata). The chalan actually starts at around minute 2:20, but is recited by Anindo Ji at 2:30.

Continuing our series on the use of multiple languages in khayal song-texts, we look at a few compositions that predominantly employ Urdu. Many traditional compositions use more than one language, pointing to the fact that composers seem to have been at ease with these languages and their dialects and that they did not mind blending them in a single composition. In other words, for them, each of these languages perhaps, did not exist in isolation.

The fact that vocalists in successive generations have chosen to sing these compositions, often despite the lack of association with these languages as is evident in the prevalence of curious pronunciations or varying interpretations of the text, is equally an indication that we do not after all live a cloistered existence.

The first composition in the third episode of this series is sung by prominent vocalist Vasantrao Deshpande. Composed in Puriya Dhanashree, a raag prescribed for twilight, this drut bandish or fast composition set to the 12-matra Ektaal has a predominance of Urdu, but it also incorporates some Punjabi words.

The composition is often attributed to Fateh Ali, one of the vocal duo Ali Baksh and Fateh Ali, who are considered the founders of what came to be known as the Patiala gharana. However, it is possible that this was composed by Alladiya Meherbaan, a disciple of Fateh Ali.

The second composition with a few Urdu words is also in the same raag. It is a prayer to Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti, the revered Sufi saint. Set to the 16-matra Sitarkhani or Addha taal, it is sung by popular vocalist Veena Sahasrabuddhe.

Alsina (1996) and Butt (1995) argue that complex predicate (CP)formation in Romance and Urdu, respectively, should take place in thesyntax. Their analysis assumed argument structure merger and arelation between thematic arguments and grammatical functions via(different) versions of LFG's mapping/linking theory. Eschewing theuse of a separate projection for a(rgument)-structure, Kaplan andWedekind (1993) proposed a solution in terms of a RestrictionOperator, which manipulates f-structure representations. A majordrawback of their solution, however, was that it required lexicalstipulation. This drawback has been overcome with Butt, King, andMaxwell's (2003) demonstration that it is possible to implement therestriction analysis of CPs for Urdu in such a way as to capturethe original observations by Alsina and Butt satisfactorily. Wedekindand Oersnes (2003) further show that this version of restriction canbe used to analyze analytic passive constructions in Danish. As withthe Urdu CP, this allows for the uniformly syntactic, productiveencoding of valency changing operations that affect the syntax of thelanguage.

These analyses have left open the issue of how to treatmorphologically triggered valency changing alternations. In thispaper, we argue that a finite-state compatible view of morphology incombination with the existing restriction analyses allows for astraight-forward analysis of Urdu causatives. The analysis issupported by the interaction of the causative with CPs andpassive.

Restriction allows f-structures and predicates to be manipulated in acontrolled and detailed fashion. Given an f-structure, therestriction operator `/' can be applied to the current f-structurewith respect to a certain feature in order to arrive at a restrictedf-structure which does not contain that feature. The analysis of CPs uses restriction as part of the f-structure annotations on phrasestructure rules. (2a) shows the f-structure of the main verb in(1b), while (2b) shows the final f-structure resulting frombuilding on the restriction of (2a): the SUBJ `Nadya' hasbeen restricted.

TheUrdu CP analysis outlined above and Wedekind and Oersnes's(2003) analysis of the Danish passive crucially rely on the syntactic,phrase-structure compositional aspects of these phenomena. Inparticular, there must be a c-structure node in which to put therestriction annotation that alters the valency of the verb, creatingthe final f-structure. However, in many languages, valency changingoperations are clearly morphological: classic examples areapplicatives and causatives in many languages (Alsina 1993). Thequestion then arises as to whether restriction can be extended toprovide a uniform analysis of valency changing operations.

The structures in (4) can be related via the same type ofrestriction rules used to analyze CPs. However, restrictionmust take place within the formation of the lexically causativizedverb. The integration of finite-state style morphologies into theLFG architecture provides a way to do this. The morphology usedin the Urdu analysis associates a surface form with a lemma and a setof morphological tags. This is shown in (5a) for a simpleinflected verb and in (5b) for its causative.

The lemma and morphological tags are then parsed by the c-structuresublexical rules (Kaplan et al. 2004); these sublexical rules areformally identical to standard c-structure rules. As a result, the+Cause morpheme provides a phrase-structure locus forthe restriction operator to apply to, similar to how it applied withthe syntactic CPs. The relevant annotated c-structure rule isshown in (6).

There are two major benefits to the integration of this finite-statemorphology plus restriction analysis of Urdu causatives. The first isthat the interaction of the causative with CP formation and withpassive can be directly accounted for. For example, the passive isformed periphrastically with an auxiliary based on the verb `go'.With respect to (3), the passive ``removes'' (demotes) thesubject `Anjum' and promotes the former object `spice' to the subjectof the clause. This periphrastically conditioned valency change canoperate straight-forwardly on the result (4b) of themorphologically conditioned causative restriction operation in(6).

The second advantage is that the finite-state morphologies used inthis analysis are compatible with other proposals for the integrationof morphology into the formal LFG architecture. For example,Karttunen (2003) shows that Realizational Morphology (Stump 2001)which has been extensively argued to be suitable for LFG (LFG02workshop on morphology) is finite-state equivalent.

We argue that morphologicalvalency changing operations such as causative can be analyzed usingthe restriction operator. This allows for the seamless integrationwith other valency changing operations in Urdu. The key to the formalintegration of this analysis is the interaction of the morphology withthe syntax, in particular in the domain of the annotatedphrase-structure rules.

Islamabad: In celebration of literary excellence, Federal Directorate of Education, in collaboration with Dynamic Advertising, organised a prestigious Urdu Poetry Composition Competition at Islamabad Model College for Girls (Post Graduate-Margala) F-7/4 here on Thursday.

The event was graced by the Director General of Federal Directorate of Education, Mr. Tanweer Ahmad, as Chief Guest, and other esteemed dignitaries including Mr. Irfan Illah Director Colleges, Ms. Riffat Jabeen Director Academics, Mr. Inam Jahangir Director P & D, and Mr. Nadeem Ahmad, Director Training, who were Guests of Honour.

The winners demonstrated exceptional talent in both categories, with distinctive compositions earning 1st, 2nd, and 3rd positions. Alongside the poetry competition, the event marked the ground-breaking ceremony of the new BS English block. Furthermore, scholarships were distributed among graduates of ADP, BS English and BS Mass Communication. In the spirit of inclusivity, gift money was also distributed among the Christian workers at the college, anticipating the upcoming Christmas celebrations.

I came to know about Urdu Wikipedia through links of other languages posted on the side-bar of the articles of the English Wikipedia. I was thrilled the enormous amount of information available in Urdu, although the common misconception is that Wikipedia is available in only in English.

While I strongly believe knowledge should be like the free flow of river water and everybody should have equal access to it. Hence I decided to contribute to it just as I contribute to the English Wikipedia and Wiki Commons. I would also place on record that I am a qualified journalist and I have contributed articles to several newspapers and magazines. I also contributed to some of the leading Urdu websites such as Urdustan.com - the oldest Urdu Website on the Internet, and Sherosokhan.com.

I edit all types of topics and subjects. However, since I contribute to the Wikipedia on a voluntary basis, I make it a point to ensure quality and edit only those article where I can trace and quote the sources easily.

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