21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Valuable Contribution to the Literature, December 10, 2003
This book fills and important hole in the literature: a solid, up-to-date, in-print grammar of the Urdu language. I have used it to supplement my study of other Urdu texts.
I have a few minor quibbles with the book:
1) The Urdu transcription system is not given explicitly. Reference is made to R. S. McGregor's Urdu Study Materials, an out-of-print book published in India. While it may be readily available in major centers of learning or through interlibrary loan, I think that reference to an out-of print book for something as significant as the transcription system should be avoided. Perhaps in future editions the system should be included in the text.
2) Sections appear where reference is made to 'ko' marking objects and 'ko' marking subjects. I'm not sure that this is the best way to address the use of 'ko', since it is more a comment on peculiarities of English grammar than any feature of Urdu. In Russian there are similar impersonal structures that use dative objects for what we would consider subjects in the English translations. A simpler approach to the issue of 'ko' might be to say that it marks dative objects, which may, however, be translated into English by words having different grammatical roles in the corresponding English sentence.
Incidentally, I also have the "Teach Yourself Urdu" book and have found it of value, though not for its grammatical descriptions, which don't seem to me to be a distinguishing strength. I have collected the Urdu texts of the dialogues into a notebook that I find useful for rapid reading practice.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Useful but limited, August 20, 2006
This is a reference grammar of a traditional informal type. It provides much information about how different things are said, including such specialized constructions as dates and times, with numerous examples. It has a detailed index and a fair amount of cross-referencing. Examples are provided both in Arabic script and in romanization.
A small complaint is that the romanization is not explained. Instead, a reference is given to another book, one that can hardly be expected to be on every student's shelf.
The main problem with this book is that it is weak on analysis and generalization. It is appropriate that a book intended for non-linguists learning Urdu should avoid excessive use of technical terminology and formalization, but the author's descriptions of grammatical constructions are so vague that one often cannot tell what is possible and what is not, or when exactly the contruction or form is used. For example, in native Urdu noun phrases, most modifiers of the noun precede the noun. In particular, genitive phrases precede the noun, so that "Rahim's daughter" is "Rahim kii beTii" that is: Rahim GEN daughter. Urdu also has another construction, the izaafat construction, which is borrowed from Persian. In this construction, the order is reversed. The izaafat equivalent of the above would be: "beTii e Rahim": daughter of Rahim. So, is the izaafat construction simply a variant of the Noun Phrase in which the order of possessor and possessed is switched, otherwise like other, native, Urdu Noun Phrases? This book never answers that question. In fact, the answer is no. izaafats cannot have any other internal modifiers, such as adjectives or relative clauses. This is but one example of many. You get a general idea of what a construction looks like, but all too often you don't get enough information to be able to use the construction with any confidence or to have a good idea of what to expect.
Similarly, I found the explanation of when the different tenses and aspects of the verb are used to be excessively vague. Some technical terms, such as "habitual" and "punctual" are used, but rather sloppily, not in their established technical senses.
The book does not justify the analysis given, even where the reader may wonder about it. For example, "experiencer" subjects typically take the postposition ko. Schmidt refers to these as "dative subjects". Some readers will wonder if these are really subjects. There is evidence that they are, for example the fact that they can be antecedants of apnaa "self", but this is not discussed.
All in all, there is a good deal of useful information in this book, but it is not the sort of detailed, comprehensive, reference grammar that answers all, or at least most, of the questions one has about a language.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
good!, November 12, 2003
A great book. It does what it says. Clear, easy to understand. It says that this book is not for complete beginners, but it could be, given only that said beginners are not complete idiots. I bought another book, a 'teach yourself' book, which I needn't have, given that this book suffices.
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