Language and Regional Variation

These slides are based on a chapter of The Study of Language by George Yule. The topics covered are Dialect, Dialectology, Isogloss and Dialect boundaries, Standard Language, Bilingualism, Diglossia, Language Codification and Standardization, Pidgins and Creoles.

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.

Behaviourism and Chomsky's Critique on Behaviourism

These slides give a very brief account of the behaviourist theory of psychology, the application of this theory to linguistics, and the critique/ criticism of Chomsky on Behaviourism as a mentalist. Various online sources are consulted to prepare this lecture.

Historical Linguistics and Philology

This lectures contains introductory material on philology, historical linguistics, proto-languages. The short history of English language is also included. The book used is The Study of Language by George Yule.

Semantics Theoris or Theories of Meaning

There are various theories / schools of thought / points of view to see the phenomenon called 'meaning'. These slides try to cover some of these theories of meaning. Mainly Referential Theory of Meaning, Functional Approach / Theory of Meaning, Componential Analysis Approach, and Semantic Field Theory etc. are discussed. Some traits, assumptions and weak points for each theory are also described. This is a less than perfect attempt to produce a lecture on this topic, as semantics has always been a less interesting area for me. But, even then I am hoping it can benefit a lot of people.

Semantics

These slides have been prepared mainly using The Study of Language by George Yule. They cover basic of semantics and theories of semantics i.e. componential analysis theory etc. Another lecture on Theories of Semantics and Meaning would be published afterwards.

Urdu to English Dictionary

Translators are not super humans or machines which take input in one language and provide output in another. They are like ordinary people, but a bit clever in using a dictionary. So it is the dictionary which makes a translator 'actual' translator. As there is always a women behind a successful man, there is a good dictionary behind a successful translator, in this case I must say a bunch of dictionaries. :-) As I work as a translator English <-> Urdu and Punjabi. En <> Ur combination is mostly demanded and for this purpose I am in a continuous need of dictionary. I had a dictionary for English to Urdu, as I mentioned here my adventure to integrate dictionary word list to OmegaT. 

This dictionary solved half of my problem i.e. En > Ur. But the revrse was still a headache. I always had to refer to UrduEnglishDictionary.org for searching English equivalents of Urdu words. But then, as I always sometimes do, I woke up and decided to do something on my own. So what I've done is changed the English > Urdu wordlist to work for Urdu > English purposes. It is a dirty solution, there are still lots of problem in the word list, and ideally there should have been a word list typed specifically for Urdu > English purposes. But this quick dirty solution works in most cases for me. And I am sharing it here online, so people struggling for Urdu > English equivalents may get some relief. There are lots of good dictionaries out there, but this is yet another dictionary in already available variety. And hopefully it will benefit other translators and users.

Urdu to English Dictionary in C#

There is nothing fancy, no help, no license and no xml type system to store word list. The word list is simply a text file with entries on new line and Urdu words are separated from English counterparts using a tab. The dictionary loads this file and then searches for appropriate word. The search pattern in very simple. By default it will search for exact match (which is dictionary look up method of c#) and additionally it will iterate through all dictionary key value pairs and add the entries which start with search query. The second radio button, if checked, will only give exact match, or if nothing found there won't be any result. This much is sufficient for me in most cases. I am hoping it would be for most people as well. It is compiled on Windows 7 64 bit. So I am not sure whether it would work on every system (including Windows 7 32 bit). But I am attaching source project as well as compiled dictionary. The project can be compiled using Sharp Develop 4. The dictionary assumes that you have installed Jameel Noori Nastaleeq. Please get it if you don't have.

Dictionary
Source Code (Sharp Develop Project) 

Update: Another dictionary was added afterwards, a 27000 words dictionary provided from Alqlm.org.

Dictionary
Source Code