Hindi-Urdu wh-scope markers license sluices: A new argument for indirect dependency

Abstract

In Hindi-Urdu, there are two strategies for asking a question about a constituent in an embedded clause: wh-movement of the constituent into the matrix clause, or ‘wh- scope marking’: adding a morphologically independent wh-word kyaa ‘what’ in the embedding clause, to indicate interrogation of the wh-XP in an embedded clause. I introduce novel data from ellipsis that suggests these constructions are semantically distinct: wh-scope marking constructions are able to antecede sluices that wh-movement constructions cannot. This suggests both wh-words are semantically interpreted (as in Dayal 1996; Lahiri 2002).