This thesis examines a selection of verses taken from the Urdu divan of Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib. Ghalib is considered by many to be the preeminent writer of the classical Urdu ghazal (circa 1750-1850). Although the examination is restricted to Ghalib's verse, the problem it investigates is broader in nature and involves questions which some aspects of the ghazal raise with respect to the reader's involvement. An essential feature of the ghazal form is the fact that, although the ghazal poem consists of a set of couplets, each couplet of a ghazal is itself a complete text with respect to its content The question, then, is "how does the reader become involved in a form limited to two lines of text?" This thesis discusses the question from a narratological perspective: the couplet involves the reader by telling a story. The narrative of the couplet differs from what one normally thinks of as narrative in that the significance of its plot is derived, not from a series of episodes arranged in chronological order, but from a thematic continuity which links couplet to couplet within the tradition as a whole. The world of the ghazal is inhabited by a few characters, the principal being the lover and the beloved, whose behaviour and attitudes are determined largely by a set of well-defined conventions. The characters who appear in the individual couplet are already familiar from the dramas to which these characters have been subjected in previous readings of other couplets. However, unlike the characters in a traditional novel whose histories connect a great variety of events within a chronological framework, the couplet is extremely limited in term of the number of chronological connections it can establish. The depiction of time in the ghazal is radically different from the often elaborate histories presented in forms such as the novel. The world of the ghazal is merely suggested. Consequently, the reader's role in reconstructing the world of the text is of particular importance in compact forms such as that of the ghazal. The contention of this thesis is that the restrictions imposed by the couplet on plot structure has been compensated for by the cultivation of a narrative style in the ghazal text which often forces the reader to become aware of the process of discovering the drama of the text. The first chapter begins with an introduction to the thesis, and is followed by an introduction to the formal features of the ghazal text and some of the important themes of the tradition. The second chapter presents a review of critical writings in English on the Urdu ghazal. The third chapter presents a discussion of methodology. In this chapter I use Peter Rabinowitz' analysis of the reader's beliefs in my attempt to define what I mean by the reader's involvement in the world of the text. According to Rabinowitz, a fictional work invites its reader to pretend that its plot is a historical account, even though the reader knows that the world of the text is imaginary. To account for the reader's dual role, Rabinowitz divides the reader's beliefs into what he calls the "authorial audience" and the narrative audience." Briefly, the authorial audience can be viewed as the competent reader, the one who possesses the required knowledge to understand the text, to decipher its allusions, but who knows the world of the text is a fiction. The narrative audience sees the fictional text as a description of events that "really" happened. My investigation of the reader's attempt to discover the world of the text is from the point of view of the narrative audience. The third chapter attempts to apply Rabinowitz' views to some general features of the plot structure in the ghazal text. The fourth and final chapter examines the ways in which the ghazal text forces the reader to become aware of the process of discovering the world of the text. / Arts, Faculty of / Asian Studies, Department of / Graduate

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This dissertation explores the interaction of syntax and morphology in the morpholog- ical realization of AGREE-relations. I present two case studies of derivational interactions of AGREE-processes where the morphological realization of the later processes are affected by the earlier ones. The two cases studied differ in the way probes and goals interact. The first part of the dissertation explores restrictions on clitic combinations where two goals vie for the features of one probe. The second part discusses the reverse situation, where two probes are agreeing with the same goal. The first configuration arises in restrictions on clitic combinations where v can AGREE with an indirect object and a direct object one at a time (Anagnostopoulou 2003, 2005b, Béjar and Rezác 2003). These configurations give rise to a form of competition: the sec- ond argument will fail to AGREE in any features that it shares with the first. I show that this form of competition extends from restrictions involving local person arguments, where it has been used so far, to restrictions involving third person and plural, which have so far been treated as morphological. Whereas the restrictions on local person lead to ungrammaticality, those on third person and plural result in impoverished morphological realization. I argue that this difference indicates a different role of AGREE for local person vs. third person and plural. Recent work as shown that local person has special syntactic licensing needs (e.g. Béjar and Rezác 2003, Baker 2008, Preminger 2011b). Third person and plural on the other hand, I argue, are syntactically wellformed on their own, but require AGREE to be visible to lexical insertion at PF. Failure to AGREE will lead to absence of morphological realization or ungrammaticality as a function of the features involved. Once restrictions on third person arguments are treated as syntactic, much of the variation across languages in their morphological realization follows from differences in the PF-inventory. The second situation, two probes AGREEING with the same goal, arises in agreement with objects in Hindi-Urdu. The second part of the dissertation discusses two asymmetries in agreement of T with subjects and objects in conjunction structures. While T-agreement with objects shows sensitivity to linear order (i.a. closest conjunct agreement), T-agreement with subjects does not. I argue that the differences follow from the activity of the goal at the time of agreement. While subjects are syntactically active at the time T probes them, objects are not, because they have already been assigned case by v. As a consequence, the syntactic relation between T and an object cannot value the T's probe in the syntax. Non- syntactic effects like the relevance of linear order affect agreement exactly when valuation cannot be achieved in the syntax. Both case studies lead to the proposal that syntactically wellformed derivations can be ruled out at PF by failure of lexical insertion. This can happen in two ways. The discus- sion of restrictions on clitic combinations will lead to the conclusion that some languages allow the syntax to generate wellformed structures that contain nodes with so few features that PF cannot insert an exponent for them. The discussion of agreement in Hindi-Urdu will lead to the proposal that the grammar can generate feature bundles with inconsistent features that cannot be spelled out in one form. Overall, PF does both less and more than is often assumed. The restrictions on third person and plural discussed in the first part are traditionally considered to be the result of morphological operations that change the feature content of clitics (Bonet 1991, 1993, 1995, Grimshaw 1997, Noyer 1997). The proposal here reduces the role of PF in these restrictions to spelling out syntactic structures that have reduced feature content as the result of syntactic interactions. Similarly, the proposal about Hindi-Urdu tightly delimits the space where non-syntactic effects on agreement arise. At the same time, PF can rule out syntactically wellformed structures, which is not typically assumed to be possible.

This thesis’ original contribution to knowledge is to indicate the unique contribution of qasbah­‐based Urdu newspapers to the emergence of an Urdu public sphere in early 20^th century South Asia, using as a primary lens the Urdu newspaper Madīnah. In doing so, this thesis will shed light on debates relating to Muslim religious identity, urban life, social status, and gender reform. Madīnah newspaper was published in Bijnor qasbah in Bijnor district, UP, from 1912 onwards. By the early 20^th century, elite, literate qasbah dwellers increased their attachment to their ashrāf identity, even as the definition of that social status group was being transformed. The nature of ashrāf conceptions of the qasbah in the Urdu newspaper conversation sheds light onto the nature of the Urdu public sphere, complicating existing narrative explanations of UP Muslim identity transformations. In the 12 years that constitute the span of the study, international developments such as the Italo-­‐Turkish War, the Balkan Wars, and World War I, with domestic transformations in municipal policies and the activism of some Hindu groups motivated Muslims to redefine their place in early 20^th century society. At the same time, the early 20^th century saw the rising prominence of the qasbah as a centre of spiritual and cultural life among ashrāf Muslims. World War I and the non-­‐cooperation movement threatened the British Empire’s hold on South Asia. In the midst of these shifting sands stood the city of Bijnor, a backwoods qasbah in the district of the same name. Bijnor’s publication Madīnah provided a regional platform for scholars, laymen, and poets to discuss their place in the new order. As part of a network of literary publications exchanged between qasbahs in the first half of the twentieth century, Madīnah shaped and complicated gender boundaries, religious identity, social status, and political alliance, all in the service of the Muslim ummah, or community. This thesis places Madīnah in the context of the broader Urdu newspaper market and the incipient newspaper culture of qasbahs, which both reflected the broadened geographic horizon of the qasbatī ashrāf and placed a premium on the qasbah as a place set apart from the city. After laying this foundation, the thesis turns to the place of Islam in qasbah newspapers and Madīnah. Newspapers reflected a division among ashrāf regarding the centrality of Islam in elite culture, revealing an ideological division between the qasbah and major urban centres Delhi, Lucknow, and Calcutta. Madīnah and other newspapers sought to establish an indelible link between Islam and ashrāf identity, in contrast to some urban newspapers, which sought to lay the groundwork instead for a secular, nationalized Muslim identity. This thesis then turns to the expanding geographic horizons of Madīnah newspaper, both enabled by novel technology and neutralized as a threat by careful framing of international and trans-‐regional content. The subsequent chapter deals with Madīnah's Women’s Newspaper, which demonstrated a trend toward gender ventriloquism in reformist approaches to gender. Many articles penned ostensibly by women had male authors; Madīnah's articles expressed a complex set of reactions to intimate female experiences, including curiosity, fascination, and anxiety. Qasbah newspapers offer new avenues for insight into the tensions that characterized the Urdu public of the early 20^th century. This thesis highlights the character of qasbatī ashrāf's engagement with the broader literary conversation via newspapers during a time of dramatic social transformation, in the process contributing to the form of the Urdu public sphere.

Scholarship has tended to focus exclusively on connections of Qawwali, a north Indian devotional practice and musical genre, to religious practice. A focus on the religious degree of the occasion inadequately represents the participant’s active experience and has hindered the discussion of Qawwali in modern practice. Through the examples of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s music and an insightful BBC radio article on gender inequality this thesis explores the fluid musical exchanges of information with other styles of Qawwali performances, and the unchanging nature of an oral tradition that maintains sociopolitical hierarchies and gender relations in Sufi shrine culture. Perceptions of history within shrine culture blend together with social and theological developments, long-standing interactions with society outside of the shrine environment, and an exclusion of the female body in rituals. To better address Qawwali performances and their meanings, I foreground the perspectives of shrine social actors and how their thoughts reflect their community, its music, and gendered spaces. / text

Hissaar is a noun and a verb, it is the periphery and the extremities, and the walls and the fortress. And it is to encircle, to wrap and to contain. This paper is an inexhaustive account of thoughts, experiences and lessons learned, of varying forms that influence my aesthetic sensibilities, my art-value system, and my art- ethical concerns. They provide for my art the impetus for its perpetual (and perhaps circular) journey. It is about finding connections between the fraying ends of free floating ideas. The following fragments explores how words make ideas, ideas make images, images make memory; memory sets into architecture, architecture moves the body, the body needs pain and pain needs words.

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between reading habits (in English, in L1 and overall) and English reading performance among Sindhi and Urdu students at the University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Pakistan, and also to explore the factors that might have influenced these aspects. The main motivation for the selection of this study was the participants’ poor English reading proficiency. An explanatory sequential mixed methods research design was adopted, which allowed collecting and analysing quantitative data first to gain a general understanding of the phenomenon followed by an in-depth qualitative interview with a smaller sample to further explore and explain the phenomena in question. After a pilot study, firstly the quantitative study was conducted with 220 students from Sindhi speaking (n=133) and Urdu speaking (n=87) groups using a reading habits questionnaire and an English reading test. The data was analysed in detail. Following analysis, six students, three from each Sindhi and Urdu group were selected for in-depth interviews and the data was analysed using Thematic Analysis. Finally, both quantitative and qualitative findings were synthesised to reach the outcome of the study. The findings of this study suggested that there was a lack of leisure reading habit among the participants other than textbook reading, and their reading frequency of academic articles was relatively low (Sindhi and Urdu as one group). The participants showed similar reading habits in English and in L1 and there were no significant differences between Sindhi and Urdu students’ reading habits in English, in L1 and overall. However, Urdu students scored significantly (p=.000) higher than Sindhi students on English reading performance. There was very little, if any, correlation between reading habits (in English, in L1 and overall) and English reading performance of all students (as one group) and between Sindhi and Urdu students respectively. However, this study strongly suggested that home background, educational background, English language learning environment in the past, and socio-cultural background greatly influence reading habits and English reading performance of Sindhi and Urdu students in the Pakistani university context. Additionally, this study suggested that Urdu students come from backgrounds that are more supportive of reading, which may be a probable cause of their English reading performance being higher than Sindhi students in this study.

This dissertation contributes to an ongoing debate on the types of linguistic features which can be acquired in a second language by looking at the multiple learning challenges related to the ergative case system (the appearance of –ne with the subject) in Hindi-Urdu by classroom learners. Some hypotheses in second language research hold that interpretable features (features which contribute semantic information) can be acquired in a second language, whereas uninterpretable features (features which express grammatical information) cannot be easily acquired, if ever. Additionally, hypotheses in second language processing hold that the second language learners are able to process semantic information but not grammatical information. This dissertation investigates at the acquisition process of second language learners of Hindi-Urdu acquiring the uninterpretable ergative case. In Hindi-Urdu, the subject of a sentence appears with the ergative case marker –ne, when the verb is transitive and in the perfective aspect. In my dissertation, I test the validity of the aforementioned hypotheses and investigate the acquisition and acquisitional process of ergative case in L2 Hindi-Urdu by L1 English speakers by analyzing data collected by using an acceptability/grammaticality judgement task, a self-paced reading task and a production task from Hindi-Urdu learners and native speakers.

Previous research has shown that language differences can cause cognitive differences, and that. the availability of certain lexical terms can predispose individuals to certain ways of thinking. The fundamental attribution error (FAE), or the tendency to favor dispositional over situational explanations, is more common in Western, individualistic cultures than in Eastern, collectivist ones. In this study, bilingual South Asian-Americans read scenarios, in English and in Urdu, and rated the extent to which target individuals and situational variables were responsible for the events. It was hypothesized that the availability of a dispositional word in the language of presentation would predispose participants to commit the FAE. Results did not support that hypothesis. However, there was some indication that familiarity with a language increases the tendency to commit the FAE. Possible reasons for the findings are discussed. / Department of Psychological Science

The thesis deals with the historical development of the grammatical tradition of Hindi languages, focusing mainly on selected specifics of Hindi grammar - ergative constructions, absolutive, and verbo-verbal expressions. The aim of this thesis is to compare and clarify the development of understanding of the above mentioned language phenomena and to find out what was the approach of individual authors to Hindi, what terminology they used, and what role their education and the background conditions played. At the same time, the thesis deals with the very reason of the origin of individual grammars in the context of historical development of the Indian subcontinent.