The study of linguistics in Pakistan has largely been limited to the field of Applied Linguistics, specifically English Language Teaching, and Sociolinguistics. Very little work has been done within descriptive and theoretical linguistics and there is an equally limited capacity in this area in Pakistan.

The current Essential Urdu Linguistic Resources project aims to collaboratively advance research in Pakistani linguistics, focusing on developing essential Urdu linguistic resources by building research capacity in grammatical and semantics analyses. This collaboration will help train researchers, mature the field of linguistics in Pakistan and develop a sustainable relationship between Pakistani and German universities.

Specific objectives are:

1. Develop the capacity to do grammatical and semantic analyses of languages
2. Develop critical linguistic resources for Urdu to concretely represent such analyses for further use in linguistics psycholinguistic and computational work
3. Develop a formal relationship between German and Pakistani universities for collaborative research
4. Develop a course curriculum in linguistics based on work in Urdu