THE CRITERIA FOR IDENTIFYING URDU COMPOUNDS: A MORPHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Compounds constitute a core part in any lexicon of language.  Until the mid of 20th century, the compounds were a neglected area in language teaching.  But, in the last few decades, these word combinations have attracted the linguists and language teachers across the globe. Their significance has increased manifold after the fact that meaning is present in the longer stretches of utterances rather than in individual words. Their complexity of construction has also been one of the reasons that they have been neglected across the linguistic resources, especially by teachers and lexicographers. The undertaken study focuses on the criteria of identifying Urdu compounds, applying the framework of Plag (2002).  It tries to establish the criteria to highlight the Urdu compounds in comparison with phrases, conversion, and derivation. The defining of criteria for Urdu compounds is supposed to be useful especially for language teachers and generally for Urdu bilingual lexicographers.