Urdu: A Density Measure of its Etymological Components

This book is composed of a series of articles published individually in scientific journals during the year 2014, on the topic of the etymological components of the basic vocabulary of Urdu, as well as their density within the language. Each of the articles was aimed to calculating the density of a particular etymological element. After the identification phase of this project it was revealed that Urdu derived from Sanskrit into Prakrit and received influence from Persian, Arabic and English through language contact. The research is significant since it is the first corpus-based survey of the density of the etymological elements in the basic vocabulary of Urdu. The calculation is conducted utilizing a corpus of one thousand words of the basic vocabulary of Urdu and extracting the origin of each word through an etymological analysis. The words are then classified by language of origin and the precise percentage of each language element obtained. This study is intended towards a readership of linguists, historians or anyone who is interested in the history, origins and evolution of Urdu.