LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 23:10 October 2023
ISSN 1930-2940

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         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
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Attraction Effects on Closest Conjunct Agreement in Hindi-Urdu

Nupur Asher

1. Abstract

Hindi-Urdu is a split ergative language, and a verb seeking agreement can agree with either the subject or the object, whichever is the highest nominative argument. When no argument is available, the verb resorts to default agreement, which morphologically is identical to Masculine Singular. Object agreement and default agreement usually take place in the perfective aspect. Another interesting thing about agreement in Hindi-Urdu is that when the agreement goal is a conjoined NP in the object position, the probe can optionally agree with the conjunct that is linearly close to the probe. This phenomenon has been called Closest Conjunct Agreement, or CCA. In this article, detailed analysis of Closest Conjunct Agreement in Hindi-Urdu is presented.

Keywords: Hindi-Urdu, Closest Conjunct Agreement, Attraction Effects.

2. Introduction

Hindi-Urdu is a split ergative language, and a verb seeking agreement can agree with either the subject or the object, whichever is the highest nominative argument. When no argument is available, the verb resorts to default agreement, which morphologically is identical to Masculine Singular. Object agreement and default agreement usually take place in the perfective aspect. Another interesting thing about agreement in Hindi-Urdu is that when the agreement goal is a conjoined NP in the object position, the probe can optionally agree with the conjunct that is linearly close to the probe. This phenomenon has been called Closest Conjunct Agreement, or CCA.

(1) a. Subject Agreement
b. Object Agreement

This phenomenon that has been observed in a number of languages such as Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, Moroccan as well as Lebanese Arabic, Tsez, and Hindi-Urdu. However, they vary in small but non-trivial ways. In Moroccan Arabic, it can take place only in VS word order (Bhatia 2011:190), in Tsez, strict adjacency is required between the probe and goal (Benmamoun, Bhatia & Polinsky 2009), Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian number agreement is resolved, ...

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Nupur Asher
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Nupurasher@gmail.com
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