Wh-Quesions in Hindi

Growing up speaking both Hindi and English, I have observed that these languages have many different syntactic properties. For instance, Hindi is a head-final language and exhibits scrambling, neither of which is true of English. The aim of this paper is to examine the syntactic properties of wh-questions in Hindi. The data provided in this paper show that wh-words in Hindi questions can engage in the same kind of scrambling that their corresponding constituents do in declarative sentences. These properties extend to embedded clause questions as well. In addition, I show the presence of overt successive cyclice wh-movement in Hindi, which provides evidence for the hypothesis that even Hindi questions that seem to remain in-situ may undergo covert movement.

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When I was growing up, I learned to speak both Hindi and English. Because of this, I have observed that Hindi grammar and syntax sometimes behaves quite differently than English grammar and syntax. For instance, while English is a head-initial language, Hindi is head-final. Additionally, I noticed that Hindi questions do not seem to be formed the same way as English questions. Due to this observation, I was curious how Hindi syntax properties compared to the English syntax properties we studied in 24.902. As a result, I chose to explore wh-questions in Hindi in order to determine how these Hindi wh-questions compare to English wh-questions in order to see if I could discover some of the properties we learned about in class. The judgments on the grammaticality of the Hindi sentences provided as examples and data throughout this squib were made by consulting my own intuition as well as my parents’ to get more accurate judgements.

Simple Wh-Questions and Scrambling
gello Like Japanese, Hindi sentences can undergo scrambling and have a relatively free word order. Consider the simple sentence “Mary saw John.” The Hindi equivalent to this sentence is:
(1) Mary-ne John-ko dekh-aa
Mary-ERG John-DAT see-PAST
However, there are many possible linear orderings of these three words, some of which are shown below:
(2) a. Mary-ne John-ko dekh-aa
Mary-ERG John-DAT see-PAST
b. John-ko Mary-ne dekh-aa
John-DAT Mary-ERG see-PAST
c. Mary-ne dekh-aa John-ko
Mary-ERG see-PAST John-DAT
...read more.