A Comparative Stylistic Analysis of English and Urdu Newspaper Headlines

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.

Learning German

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.

What is Grammar and Its Kinds

These slides cover some very basic concepts regarding grammar: Misconceptions about Grammar, What is Grammar, Traditional Grammar, Weaknesses of Traditional Grammar, The Structuralists and Structuralism, Strengths and Assumptions of Structuralism and Weaknesses of Structuralism with reference to criticism of  Chomsky and TGG grammarians on structuralism.

Syntax and Generative Grammar

These slides present a very brief introduction of generative grammar and sentence analysis using phrase structure grammar. The basic concepts of Transformation Generative Grammar (TGG) e.g. Deep Structure, Surface Structure, Generation, Unlimited Sentence and Limited Rules etc. are discussed. Additionally an introduction on Transformational Rules is provided in last 2 or 3 slides. These slides may be a good idea for a new comer to linguistics. Study of Language by George Yule is mainly used for the preparation of these slides.

IC Analysis

These slides contain a brief introduction of IC Analysis, basic assumptions of IC Analysis, different techniques to show IC Analysis, and some advantages and disadvantages of this approach.

Grammar and basic Approaches to Grammar

These slides cover topics like Grammar, Traditional Approach towards Grammar or Traditional Grammar, Descriptive Approach towards Grammar or Descriptive Grammar and some of their traits.
The Study of Language by George Yule is used mainly.

Rank Shifting in Systemics Functional Grammar

Rank Shifting is a major concept in sentence analysis in Systemic Functional Linguistics and Grammar. The concept of Rank Shifting helped us a lot to learn how a unit of different level can be brought down to create interesting linguistics structures. The concept of Rank Shifting does not exist in traditional grammar of English. Although it exists in all modern grammars of English in their own particular way. e.g. Phrase Structure Grammar labels a rank shifting clause as a sentence. This model does not recognise or label the concept as Rank Shifting but it acknowledges the existence of bigger units within/ at the places of smaller units.

Rank Shifting can be at various levels. It can be at word level, at phrase level, at clause level. The best example of Rank Shifting can be seen at qualifier position in a noun phrase. e.g.

The candidate of the minority won the election.

The candidate who was living in that city for long lost the election.

The italicized parts show rank shifting at word level from two different levels. Example 1 shows that a phrase is being used as a qualifier. At this place there should have been a single word but a group of words was used.

The second example shows how a clause can be rank shifted at qualifier level. This is also an example of rank shifting at word level.

Rank Shifting shows us how the grammar of language works with minimal possible labour to produce unlimited number of sentences. The concept of systems within systems can be seen while analysing a Rank Shifted Unit, when a whole system has been brought down to create density in language. It can be seen that Rank Shifting can be used to create complexity in structure of one's language. This concept can be useful while studying the style of an author. Rank Shifting can be a very good tool for an author to use creatively in his/her piece of literature.

Teaching Grammar

The presentation was a part of a group presentation on Teaching Grammar. Hopefully it can be useful for someone seeking for help on Grammar Teaching.

 

Grammar Presentation

More PowerPoint presentations from Pa G

Grammatical Development of Child

The presentation was intended for 1st semester poster presentation on grammar at MSc Applied Linguistics. The presentation explains how a child develops grammatical knowledge of his language.
 

Grammatical Development of Child

More PowerPoint presentations from Pa G

Stylistic Analysis: Grammar Level

Stylistics involve various levels of analysis, grammar is one of them. The presentation explains in detail this level and its features.
 

Grammatical Level in Stylistics

More PowerPoint presentations from Pa G

Sentence Analysis through Systemic Functional Grammar

Systemic Functional Grammar is based on Michal Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics. It addresses lots of basic issues regarding grammar and sentence analysis which cannot be tackled by traditional grammar. It has a very systematic way to analyse sentences and understand their constituents.

• At clause level it has simple structures of α and β.
• At group level it provides constituents of Subject, Predicate, Complement, and Adjunct (which is the default category for any non-sense word or group)
• At word level it has structures like modifier, head, qualifier; before verb, auxiliary, verb, extension; preposition and completive.
• While at morpheme level it provides various labels to address the issues related to word construction: infix, suffix, prefix, ending, base, addition.

We are having a course titled Advance English Grammars in which we are studying Systemic Functional Grammar as a component. We are being taught the model of Margret Berry. Using the model I have tried to analyse a sentence from a Pakistani news paper (The News). Below is the image having the tree diagram.

From My Thoughts in Remote Language

I have spent 3 hours to create this diagram. :-) It doesn't mean I do not know the grammar but it indicates the limitation of computer based tools. It was not of more than 15 minutes by hand but by doing it with OpenOffice.org Draw application, it took me 3 hours to complete it.And still it may not look very smooth. Anyhow, that was not the point to post this diagram here. The aim was to highlight the deficiencies in systemic grammar. This model is very well organised and have a clear cut straight forward style to analyse sentences. But as the sentence is complexified, this model goes on failing to address the issues. And it becomes really difficult to handle larger chunks having complex relations with each other.

In this sentence I had to add two qualifiers after the head noun because I did not know where to put the extra relative clause. The extra long prepositional phrase the crucial issue of immediate hosing down of the crime scene of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination made me think and think again: from where should I dissect it so to put which led to the destruction of all critical evidence (the relative clause) in a parallel alpha-alpha construction. It was really difficult to decide because the apparent function of this clause is a sentence (or at least a phrase level) modifier. But in Systemic we have no such mechanism so I have to put it down as a qualifier.

Systemic does not ends here. The same sentence can be analysed in a different way. Would you like to add something?