ABSTRACT
This study examines syntactic dependencies between negation markers and negative polarity items in Hindi. In order to do so, it first outlines a working clause structure of Hindi and locates negation markers within the clause structure. In Hindi clause structure, a negation marker heads its own maximal projection NegP, which is dominated by TP. In addition to locating the position of negation markers in the clause structure, this study outlines the distribution of negative polarity items in Hindi and the structural constraints on their licensing. I argue that the negative markers c-command the NPIs, and that this is a sufficient condition for the licensing of NPIs in Hindi. I also argue that NPIs are licensed overtly prior to scrambling. This work shows that the licensing of NPIs in Hindi does not involve any covert syntactic operations, such as LF movement or reconstruction. Finally, it shows that there are two different types of NPIs in Hindi, namely strong NPIs and weak NPIs. Strong NPIs require a clause mate c-commanding negative licensor, whereas weak NPIs are quantifiers and similar to the free choice ‘any’ in English, interpreted as NPIs in the presence of a c-commanding negative licensor. The data used in this study have been gathered from native speakers of Hindi.
