Asking a Polar Question While Invoking a Wh-question: Hybrid Interrogatives in Hindi-Urdu

Speaker
Ashwini Deo
Affiliation
University of Texas, Austin
Date
Thu May 4th 2023, 2:30 - 4:00pm
Location
Margaret Jacks Hall, Greenberg Room (Room 126)

In this talk, I identify and analyze a new class of interrogatives in Hindi-Urdu – hybrid interrogatives – and show that they bear resemblance to the more well-studied class of Hindi-Urdu polar interrogatives, those containing the particle kya (lit. what) in medial position. Hybrid interrogative clauses are characterized by the obligatory final rising intonation of polar questions and a narrowly focused constituent immediately preceded by a reduced, deaccented wh-expression of an appropriate type. The sentences below exemplify this strategy. 

  1. Anu kab [somvar=ko]_F aegi?                     LIT: Anu when MONDAY will come? 
  2. Anu mandir kaise [paidal]_F gayi?               LIT: Anu temple how BY-FOOT went?
  3. Anu=ne kitne [tin]_F am khaye?                 LIT: Anu how-many THREE mangoes ate?

This strategy would be best expressible in English by two successive discourse moves: a wh-question, followed by a polar question. For example, (a) would idiomatically translate to something like: When will Anu come? Monday?  

Comparing Hindi-Urdu hybrid interrogatives with the particle kya (studied in Bhatt and Dayal 2020; Biezma et al 2022) reveals that these strategies have a similar function – that of indicating the presence of a contextually salient super-question determined by focus-generated alternatives. I briefly discuss the flexible surface positions available to kya (in contrast to more specific wh-expressions) as a function of the type and size of focused constituents that it can combine with.

Research Subfield