Relational grammar, ergativity, and Hindi-Urdu

Pandharipande, Rajeshwari V.; Kachru, Yamuna

doi:10.1016/0024-3841(77)90080-8

Cited by 26 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Hindi has a mixed agreement system -verb agreement morphology can index the features of the subject or the object or no argument depending on the sentence structure. The verb agrees with the subject if the subject lacks overt case-marking; failing that the verb agrees with the object if the object lacks overt case-marking; failing that the verb exhibits default agreement morphology (Kachru, 2006;Pandharipande & Kachru, 1977). In order to probe the hypothesis that agreement constitutes a necessary condition for local coherence to arise we manipulated agreement morphology on the post-RC verb for transitive sentences.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preverbal syntactic complexity leads to local coherence effects in Hindi

Bhatia¹,

Husain²

2020

Preprint

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The effective use of preverbal linguistic cues to make successful clause-final verbal prediction as well as robust prediction maintenance has been argued to be a cross-linguistic generalization for SOV languages such as German and Japanese. In this paper, we show that native speakers of Hindi (an SOV language) falter in maintaining clause-final verbal predictions in the presence of a center-embedded relative clause with a non-canonical word order. The fallibility of the parser is illustrated by the formation of a grammatically illicit locally coherent parse as well as by poor comprehension accuracy. Our investigations suggest that while plausibility is essential, presence of overt agreement features might not be necessary for forming a locally coherent parse in Hindi. The work highlights how top-down processing and bottom-up information interact during sentence comprehension in SOV languages – comprehension suffers with increased complexity of the preverbal linguistic environment.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preverbal syntactic complexity leads to local coherence effects in Hindi

Bhatia¹,

Husain²

2020

Preprint

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“…A general property of verbal agreement in Hindi is that it targets the hierarchically highest nonovertly case-marked nominal in the domain of the verb (Pandharipande and Kachru 1977). As a consequence, nominals may not agree if they carry an overt case marker like the ergative marker -ne or the accusative/dative marker -ko.…”

Section: Some Background On Hindi Ldamentioning

confidence: 99%

Selective Opacity

Keine

2019

Linguistic Inquiry

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This article develops a general theory of selective opacity effects, configurations in which the same constituent is opaque for some operations but transparent for others. Classical observations of selective opacity lie in the realm of movement. Finite clauses, for instance, are opaque for A-movement but transparent for Ā-extraction, a pattern that generalizes beyond the A/Ā distinction. Using novel evidence from movement-agreement interactions in Hindi-Urdu, I argue that selective opacity also encompasses ϕ-agreement and I propose that the underlying constraint applies, not to movement itself, but to Agree. I develop the novel concept of horizons, which delimit search spaces in probe specific ways by terminating search. They thereby prevent particular probes from searching into them, inducing selective opacity. The horizons account derives an otherwise surprising property of selective opacity effects noted previously: the higher the structural position of a probe in the clausal spine, the more structures are transparent to it. The analysis proposed here unifies improper movement and related selective opacity restrictions, mismatches in the locality of movement and agreement, and intricate interactions between movement types and agreement.

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“…In a split-ergative language such as Hindi (Indo-European, spoken mainly in Northern India), agents of transitive actions do not receive uniform morphological marking (see Pandharipande & Kachru, 1977, and references cited therein). 2 In non-perfective contexts, A role arguments do not receive any overt marking (' nominative case'), whereas in perfective contexts, they are marked with the clitic ne (' ergative case') (examples (5), (6)) ; barring some lexical exceptions, S role arguments are typically null-marked (7) : 3 [2] The term ' split-ergative' is somewhat of a misnomer in Hindi since case-alternations on the subject are conditioned by perfectivity, case-alternations on the object are conditioned by animacy, definiteness, and specificity, and the two types of marking alternate (partly) independently of each other (Mohanan, 1994 The bifurcation of the notion of transitive agent on the basis of perfectivity in Hindi makes it a good case to test the hypothesis that the notion AGENT OF TRANSITIVE ACTION is innate and used to acquire case-marking.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Splitting the notion of ‘agent’: case-marking in early child Hindi

Narasimhan

2005

J. Child Lang.

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Two construals of agency are evaluated as possible innate biases guiding case-marking in children. A BROAD construal treats agentive arguments of multi-participant and single-participant events as being similar. A NARROWER construal is restricted to agents of multi-participant events. In Hindi, ergative case-marking is associated with agentive participants of multi-participant, perfective actions. Children relying on a broad or narrow construal of agent are predicted to overextend ergative case-marking to agentive participants of transitive imperfective actions and/or intransitive actions. Longitudinal data from three children acquiring Hindi (1;7 to 3;9) reveal no overextension errors, suggesting early sensitivity to distributional patterns in the input.

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Relational grammar, ergativity, and Hindi-Urdu

Cited by 26 publications

References 2 publications

Preverbal syntactic complexity leads to local coherence effects in Hindi

Preverbal syntactic complexity leads to local coherence effects in Hindi

Selective Opacity

Splitting the notion of ‘agent’: case-marking in early child Hindi

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