THE DEMONSTRATIVE NATURE OF THE HINDI/MARWARI CORRELATIVE

Abstract

One of the main features of the correlative construction is the necessity of an appropriate correlate (either a demonstrative or a pronoun) in the main clause. While the syntactic features of the correlative construction are well established, the relationship between the correlative clause and its correlate remains unclear. In this dissertation, I propose that the correlative clause is the overt pronunciation of the index of the demonstrative. The correlative, therefore, does not adjoin to IP (Dayal 1996) or the demonstrative (Bhatt 2003) but enters the syntax as the indexical argument of the demonstrative phrase (Nunberg 1993; Elbourne 2008). I then turn to the adverbial correlative clause, which involves an adverbial relative phrase, and show that it is also the overt pronunciation of the index and, further, that it is interpreted as a definite description and contributes an individual of type e. Having established the relationship between the correlative clause and its correlate, I develop a new analysis of the semantic contribution of both the single headed correlative, involving one relative phrase, and the multi-headed correlative which involves multiple relative phrases. I propose that the correlative gets its interpretation through a Q particle, QCOR, which raises from the relative phrase to Spec-CP. It is QCOR which allows both adverbial and nominal correlatives to have a definite interpretation. I present new data from Hindi and Marwari which shows that the multi-headed correlative is basegenerated inside of the main clause, at the highest demonstrative or below, and denotes an ordered pair. Each member of that set is then an argument of one of the demonstratives in the main clause. Finally, if the proposed analysis is correct, then it should be follow that other types of phrases can occur in the same position. Not only is this possible in Hindi and Marwari, but sign languages and Mandarin Chinese allow overt indices as well.