2.1 Surface position of the negative marker

The presence of negation is marked by nahĩ:, which appears in almost all environments.⁵ The marker nahĩ: appears as part of the verb sequence. The most normal position for it is the immediately pre-verbal one but post-verbal negation is also possible:

In the unmarked ‘nahĩ: V’ order, adjacency is required between nahĩ: and V (Kumar 2006: 92 makes the same point):

There can be only one negation in a simplex clause. For example the following ‘nahĩ: V nahĩ: Aux’ order is out or quite odd:

2.2 Sentential negation

There are at least two hallmarks of sentential negation in Hindi-Urdu, auxiliary deletion and subject NPI licensing. The former can be used specifically to detect a clausemate negation (while subject NPIs can be licensed by a superordinate negation, and are thus not a direct test for clausemate negation).

2.3 The position of sentential negation

3.1 Finite clauses

Somewhat unsurprisingly, a negation in an embedded finite clause cannot license NPIs in the matrix clause. It also cannot license auxiliary deletion in the matrix clause:

The behavior in the other direction is a bit more surprising. A matrix negation can license an NPI in an embedded clause but it cannot license auxiliary deletion in the embedded clause.

Auxiliary deletion is thus a test of clausemate negation. NPI licensing is not such a test, but it still requires a negation that is higher than the NPI.

3.2 Infinitival clauses: Restructuring vs. non-restructuring

Some infinitival clauses present a paradox, which we already introduced at the beginning of this article: a negation which seems to be inside an infinitival complement has effects typical of a matrix negation.

4.1 The exceptional behavior requires cluster formation

To confirm that when negation behaves exceptionally, it is in the matrix clause and consequently, cluster formation is needed, the predicate shuruu kar ‘start do’ (‘start’) will be our test case, because it is a restructuring verb but unlike caah, it is not a neg-raising predicate, and thus allows us to use the scope of negation as an indicator of its position (with caah, neg-raising creates a confound because, whether negation is the embedded or in the matrix, it ends up being interpreted with narrow scope w.r.t. the embedding attitude; on neg-raising, see Fillmore 1963; Bartsch 1973; Horn 1989; Gajewski 2007; Collins & Postal 2017 a.o. and the Appendix to this article).

The above example, where nahĩ: appears adjacent to the matrix verb (that is, where matrix negation is expected to be realized) can only be interpreted with the scope ¬≫START, showing that the predicate is not a neg-raiser.²³ With start the ‘nahĩ: V₁ V₂’ order permits two construals (START≫¬ and ¬≫START), which can clearly be distinguished by the scope of negation: this verb thus offers useful controls. In the following example, we force the START≫¬ interpretation by putting a compound verb in the matrix clause which is independently incompatible with a clausemate negation (on compound verbs being Positive Polarity Items, see Hook 1974 and Homer & Bhatt 2019):

In the absence of such a compound verb, a nahĩ: that appears adjacent to the embedded verb can still yield the ¬≫START interpretation; this scopal relation requires a matrix negation:

Now, we can proceed to the second step: it is possible to show that the exceptional behavior only occurs with the ¬≫START reading of the ‘nahĩ: V₁ V₂’ order, that is, with a matrix negation. In (54), a subject NPI is licensed, and the only scopal relation between negation and the main verb is ¬≫START:

When we force the negation to take scope under start (and thus be in the embedded clause) using a compound verb in the matrix, the negation is unable to license matrix NPIs (55a) or auxiliary deletion (55b):

We have thus confirmed that with the word order ‘nahĩ: V₁ V₂’, the exceptional licensing effects require the presence of negation in the matrix, despite appearances. It follows from our assumption that nahĩ: is sentential negation (19) that moving the embedded verb is required to derive the ‘nahĩ: V₁ V₂’ order: the embedded verb piggy-backs on the matrix verb, which rightward-moves to nahĩ:, as normally happens in simplex clauses (see (22) on p. 14):

We submit that the two verbal heads form a complex head: this is what we call ‘cluster formation’ (after Keine & Bhatt 2016).

As a control, we show that when verb cluster formation is unequivocally absent (and negation is unequivocally embedded), then the matrix licensing effects become impossible (thus verifying the contraposition of (58)). Even though the infinitival verb is typically adjacent to the matrix verb, this adjacency can be disrupted, precluding verb cluster formation:

We see that a nahĩ: adjacent to the infinitival verb is unable to license matrix NPIs or matrix auxiliary deletion if we disrupt adjacency:

Because the exceptional behavior of negation requires restructuring (Sect. 3.2), we can conclude that verb clustering, as diagnosed by the placement of the marker nahĩ: (i.e., the ‘nahĩ: V₁ V₂’ order) under a wide scope construal of negation, only happens if the embedded clause is a restructuring infinitive.

We don’t observe the exceptional behavior with non-restructuring predicates, as shown by (38)–(39). We showed lack of licensing effects in the matrix under the order ‘nahĩ: V₁ V₂’; we now add to this the obligatory narrow scope of negation under the same order:

In the next subsection, we show that shuruu kar ‘start’ differs from other restructuring embedding verbs, e.g., sak ‘can’, with which the ‘nahĩ: V₁ V₂’ order is not scopally ambiguous, i.e., is only compatible with a high negation interpretation. We argue that under the low negation construal of the ‘nahĩ: V₁ start’ order, shuruu kar ‘start’ is not restructuring. Therefore some verbs are part-time restructuring verbs.

4.2 Differences among restructuring complements

With the verb sak ‘can’, another restructuring verb, the order ‘nahĩ: V₁ can’ only delivers one reading, ¬≫CAN:

This suggests that the complement of sak cannot host a negation, which in turns suggests that it is too small for that (in Sect. 4.4 we propose that it is vP):²⁴ then for nahĩ: to precede V₁, V₁ has to form a cluster with can, which moves further along (the ‘nahĩ: V₁ can’ order cannot result from movement of V₁ to an embedded nahĩ:). Furthermore, the order ‘V₁ nahĩ: can’ is also possible, and it again only has the ¬≫CAN reading:

By itself, the availability of two word orders doesn’t tell us that cluster formation is optional. We submit that it is obligatory when possible, and that the configuration that allows it is sometimes missing, for example when the infinitival clause is moved as in (59). Phrasal movement happens before V movement and can thus bleed it. Danish offers examples of bleeding of V movement: VP topicalization and VP ellipsis result in do-support, not in ungrammaticality (Houser et al. 2011; Gribanova & Mikkelsen 2018).²⁵ The failure to form a complex head doesn’t lead to ungrammaticality, since neither V is a bound morpheme (morphology-driven V movement on the other hand, e.g., V-to-Asp, cannot fail to happen without causing a crash). To account for the ‘V₁ nahĩ: can’ order, we thus propose that the infinitival complement of can can move string-vacuously; when it does, verb clustering becomes impossible, resulting in that order (more on this in Sect. 4.4). Similarly, string-vacuous movement of AspP can explain the marked order ‘V nahĩ: Aux’ (2b) in simplex clauses.²⁶

The complement of want also seems to be too small to host a negation. This is shown by the degradation of sentences like (32): the second negation is unequivocally in the matrix and the first one, by virtue of the ban on multiple clausemate negations (5), must be in the embedded clause:²⁷

We can rule out the possibility that (65) is odd because caah ‘want’ is a neg-raising predicate. This is because double negation is acceptable when caah takes a finite clause complement, as in (66), which allows for a neg-raised interpretation where Ram is against Mina’s not going to Delhi, as opposed to just being indifferent.

Turning to start, its complement can obviously contain a negation (52). And double negation is possible:

We propose that its infinitival complement can be larger than the infinitival complement of can. We distinguish two main analytical options. (i) Each restructuring verb has an infinitival complement with a fixed size, but restructuring verb complements are not equal among themselves; not all restructuring complements are large enough to encompass the position of negation (in Hindi-Urdu, the complement of start, unlike that of can or want, is large enough to contain negation). Or (ii) whether they vary in size or not, restructuring complements are all too small to host negation; and start in Hindi-Urdu is only optionally restructuring (qua restructuring verb, its complement is small; it is not restructuring when its complement contains a negation²⁸).

It seems more economical to state, in agreement with the second horn of the alternative, that all restructuring complements are too small to host negation; and that the cases where the order ‘nahĩ: V₁ start’ has a narrow scope reading of negation are cases where the complement is not restructuring. Our claim that negation is unavailable in restructuring complements (option (ii)) leads to a prediction: in accordance with (61), in the presence of an embedded negation, verb cluster formation is blocked (and the subsequent movement of the complex head to matrix nahĩ: is too). For concreteness’ sake, the order ‘nahĩ: nahĩ: V₁ start’ (derived as in (68)) is predicted to be impossible:

This is indeed what we find (compare with (67)):

In the next subsection, we add evidence in favor of the claim that start in Hindi-Urdu is not restructuring when its complement contains a negation. The overarching idea is that restructuring infinitives are too small to contain negation. Another diagnostic that has been argued to be associated with restructuring in Hindi-Urdu, namely Long Distance Agreement (LDA), helps us substantiate this claim.

4.3 LDA, negation and restructuring

There is one environment where we find an interaction between Long Distance Agreement and the size of the infinitival complement. Recall that we have argued that restructuring infinitives cannot host negation, i.e., negation cannot take scope inside them. So if we have an infinitival clause that includes negation which takes scope inside it, then we can reason that we do not have a restructuring infinitive. And in this case, Long Distance Agreement should be blocked, since LDA requires restructuring. This is indeed a correct prediction. In environments where negation stays downstairs, we don’t get Long Distance Agreement; or at least it’s degraded:

When negation displays the exceptional behavior, both Long Distance Agreement and default agreement are possible:

Our claim that negation in the infinitival complement is incompatible with restructuring has now been successfully tested twice. With (68)–(69) (Sect. 4.2), we showed that the presence of negation in the infinitival complement blocks verb clustering (a plausible explanation is that restructuring, a necessary condition for verb clustering per Implication (61), is missing). We have now verified the prediction that a downstairs negation also blocks LDA, which requires restructuring as well.

4.4 The independence of verb clustering and Long Distance Agreement

In this article, we have considered two restructuring diagnostics for Hindi-Urdu: verb clustering and Long Distance Agreement. We want to highlight here that these two diagnostics are independent. You can have one without the other.

First we have cases where the exceptional behavior of negation tells us that verb movement has taken place, and both Long Distance Agreement and default agreement are possible:

Verb clustering is possible, even when LDA doesn’t take place (75).

Second, we can consider environments where the non-adjacency of the embedded verb and the matrix verb tells us that verb movement has not taken place. LDA is still possible:

Note that we can also find cases where neither verb clustering nor LDA obtains:

When the embedded infinitive is scrambled—the configuration for verb clustering is no longer available and V movement is bled—LDA is not disrupted. A way to derive this is to assume that agreement takes place before VP movement, in line with current conceptions in which a probe agrees as soon as it is merged with its complement (Béjar & Rezac 2009).

(78) is more surprising as it shows us that even in an underlying configuration ‘V₁] V₂] nahĩ:’, without scrambling, the embedded verb doesn’t always move to the matrix verb: we propose that string-vacuous movement of the infinitival complement bleeds cluster formation (cf. Sect. 4.2).

We see again that LDA is possible even when clustering doesn’t take place. Note that default agreement is also possible:

Summing up, Long Distance Agreement and verb clustering are independent of each other. This independence raises an analytical challenge for approaches to Long Distance Agreement such as Bhatt 2005 and Keine 2016, which relate the optionality of Long Distance Agreement (see also Mahajan 1989 and Butt 1995) with caah ‘want’ to the idea that caah is optionally restructuring. Following Wurmbrand (2001), Keine’s (2016) implementation of this optionality involves complements of varying sizes. For him, caah ‘want’ can embed either a vP (a restructuring complement), where LDA is obligatory (80), or a TP (a non-restructuring complement), where LDA is impossible (81) (examples from Mahajan 1989):

This line of reasoning leads one to expect that when verb clustering, which requires restructuring as shown in this article, happens, LDA should obligatorily obtain. But as we have seen, this prediction is not borne out. While Long Distance Agreement is indeed possible when the placement of negation (together with matrix licensing) signals verb movement, default agreement is also possible (see (75)).

The seeming challenge we believe comes from a simplistic on/off view of restructuring. Based on an examination of 23 typologically unrelated languages, Wurmbrand (2014; 2015) argues against such a view. She focuses on three restructuring diagnostics: long object movement, clitic climbing and scrambling, showing that these do not always travel together. In particular, she shows that in Chamorro, Czech, German, and Kannada a.o., [+Future] infinitives permit clitic climbing and scrambling but not long object movement. In other words, [+Future] infinitives are ‘restructuring’ or not depending upon which diagnostic we use. She contrasts [+Future] infinitives with [–Tense] infinitives, which in these languages permit all three movements. One component of her explanation is size-based restructuring. Suppressing a number of details, Wurmbrand proposes that infinitival complements may be of varying sizes: vP, TP or CP. Certain verbs will only combine with a specific size, others might combine with more than one size.

We use her insight to model the independence of Long Distance Agreement within Keine’s system. To Keine’s vP and TP, we add an intermediate projection, AspP.²⁹ vP is transparent to both Long Distance Agreement and verb clustering while AspP is transparent to verb clustering but opaque for LDA. TP is opaque to both. TP can include negation while AspP and vP are too small to host negation. There is one independent difference between Long Distance Agreement and verb clustering that is relevant here: Long Distance Agreement is not bled by movement of the infinitival complement while verb clustering is. We take this to be a matter of timing: agreement takes place before phrasal movement while V movement (hence cluster formation) happens after phrasal movement. Both operations are obligatory if possible but the difference in their timing means that phrasal movement can destroy the configuration for verb cluster formation but not for agreement. Moreover the possibility of string-vacuous verb projection movement means that even when we have a projection that in principle allows for verb cluster formation, vacuous movement of the verb projection can destroy the environment for this movement and make it in effect optional.³⁰

Let us consider the full set of cases that we used to demonstrate the independence of Long Distance Agreement and verb clustering with the verb want (Table 3). Contra Keine, we argue that want in Hindi-Urdu does not combine with a full TP complement as we take TP to allow for negation, and the complement of want doesn’t (65). We do have a predicate, start, which we believe allows for all three options: vP, AspP, and TP. The TP option allows for embedded negation and we have shown in (71) that embedded negation blocks LDA. Finally we believe we also have predicates that only allow for vP complements, e.g., the modal verbs, sak ‘can’, caahiye ‘should’ and the Hindi-Urdu equivalent of have to—LDA is obligatory with these.

The cut we find here (Table 4) is reminiscent of the cut between functional restructuring and lexical restructuring discussed in Wurmbrand 2001.

4.5 Comparison with Mahajan 1990

Mahajan (1990) argues that negation in Hindi-Urdu (identified with nahĩ:) is at the right of vP on the surface (V rightward-moves past it on its way to Agr),³¹ lower than the canonical position of subjects. It raises covertly at LF to a position where it c-commands and thus licenses subject NPIs (it adjoins to IP). Mahajan notices the paradox that we analyze in this article, namely the fact that a negation that precedes an infinitival verb can license an NPI subject in the matrix (p. 341). He claims that the ‘nahĩ: V_embed V_matrix’ order indicates that negation is in the infinitival complement: it raises covertly out of it and can thus license matrix NPIs. This cross-clausal movement is only possible out of restructuring complements: other long-distance dependencies, he claims, are also restricted to restructuring complements, namely wide scope of in situ wh-words, long distance reflexives,³² and LDA. The proposal is not fully articulated, but we can examine how an extension of it could handle the wider range of facts that we describe in this article. Note that we do not agree with the contention that the ‘nahĩ: V_embed V_matrix’ order entails that nahĩ: is in the embedded clause; but the two proposals, ours and our extension of Mahajan’s, are similar in that they invoke a certain movement, restricted to certain environments (overt V movement vs. covert raising of negation).

The extension of Mahajan 1990 could put down the impossibility to interpret negation in the complement of certain restructuring verbs (see the evidence for sak ‘can’ in (63)–(64), and for caah ‘want’ in (65)) to the size of the complement: if the movement of negation targets a particular position in the tree, which is absent from truncated infinitival complements, then it is expected that it should proceed into the matrix to reach the closest available landing site. Regarding the lack of matrix licensing effects when the adjacency between V-Inf and matrix V is disrupted (60), the proposal could say that covert raising of negation out of a moved constituent is impossible (cf. Read every book some boy did, which only has a SOME≫EVERY reading).

Be it as it may, covert movement of negation is, in and of itself, a costly hypothesis. Outside of Hindi-Urdu, we don’t see that negation shows the scope flexibility that the hypothesis predicts. Just considering English, the position of not is not free and there is no evidence that it can raise covertly: consider the following sentences (the same case can easily be made about other languages):

(82a) and (82b) do not have any reading in common, although the complement of the modal is permeable to QR. Able is a control predicate, so the inverse scope reading requires QR of the lower QP in (83):

In case one wonders whether not in (82b) is a different kind of negation, viz. constituent negation, we replicate the test in French, where the presence of the clitic ne is an indicator of a clausemate sentential negation: again, the two sentences have no reading in common:³³

In Hindi-Urdu, there is no independently attested example of the kind of scope reversing operation invoked by Mahajan. According to his hypothesis, covert raising of negation only takes place clause-internally or out of restructuring environments. One operation which is widely taken to involve covert movement in Hindi-Urdu, that is, wide scope of in situ wh-words, is not limited to restructuring environments (fn. 32). It is also expected that if negation can raise past the position of subjects covertly, then quantifiers should be able to do so too. (85) shows that this is not the case:

According to us, an infinitival V can piggy-back on a matrix V that raises to negation. Our account exploits V movement, a mechanism that was argued for by Kumar (2006) on independent grounds (and is compatible with Mahajan’s account).³⁴ We show that a coherent picture can be built where negation is sufficiently high on the surface to c-command the canonical position of subjects (Spec,AspP): therefore, given the hypothesis shared by Mahajan and us that nahĩ: is right-attached, covert raising of negation is not strongly motivated in simplex clauses in the first place.

Another argument against a Mahajan inspired account comes from Joshi (2019), who discusses the behavior of negation in Surati Gujarati. In this language, the environments where we find auxiliary deletion in the presence of negation in Hindi-Urdu display negated auxiliaries. And we find that the exceptionally scope-taking negation before infinitive verbs that has been the subject of discussion in this paper is realized by the appropriate negated auxiliary in auxiliary deletion environments. In other words, the form of the negation putatively inside the infinitival clause is determined by the matrix tense. This pattern is precisely what is predicted by our proposal—the seemingly embedded negation in our proposal is in the matrix and so we expect it to surface as a negated auxiliary if that is what the matrix environment demands. But it is not at all obvious that this pattern could be handled by a Mahajan inspired account. The negation under that proposal is only in the matrix clause at LF and it would be odd if the tail of a covert movement chain displayed features of a distinct element in the matrix clause.

5.1 Left-attachment in the embedded clause

Suppose first that in complex sentences, when NEG is in the matrix, the nahĩ: that signals its presence need not be in the same clause, but can be in an embedded clause, provided that certain locality conditions, i.e., presumably, restructuring, are met. The idea here would be: the abstract NEG requires nahĩ: in its scope, and nahĩ: has to be predicate adjacent; but it need not be adjacent to the closest predicate.

The placement of kyaa ‘what’ w.r.t. nahĩ: lends some plausibility to this idea. Wh-words in Hindi-Urdu have a strong tendency to be immediately pre-verbal. This tendency is particularly pronounced in the case of kyaa ‘what’, with which scrambling leads to deviance:

Let us assume that this is because kyaa ‘what’ cannot be scrambled. If so, then the following example, where the matrix Aux can be deleted, shows a case where scrambling cannot be used to achieve the exceptional behavior of negation and nahĩ: (if left-attached) is thus in the embedded:

If nahĩ: was attached to the matrix clause, then kyaa would have to scramble over it. Given that scrambling of kyaa leads to deviance, the non-deviance of (91) tells us that there is no scrambling involved: therefore if nahĩ: is left-attached in (91), it is not in the matrix but in the embedded clause. Note that the exceptional behavior of negation doesn’t require verb clustering under such assumptions: while NEG has matrix licensing effects, its associate nahĩ: precedes the embedded V on the surface.

It appears then that if nahĩ: is not negative it can be left-attached in an embedded clause.

5.2 Left-attachment in the matrix clause

We expect that we can left-attach non-negative nahĩ: to the matrix VP as well. We would have to scramble material from the infinitival clause to nahĩ: in order to achieve the ‘nahĩ: V1 V2’ order under the exceptional behavior of negation:

Left-adjoining nahĩ: is potentially problematic as nahĩ: is in general not discontinuous from the verbal complex (in simplex clauses, the strict adjacency between nahĩ: and V in the ‘nahĩ: V’ order would be mysterious). The following is an additional argument against this possibility.

We know that when nahĩ: is (or appears to be) inside a non-restructuring infinitive matrix NPIs and matrix auxiliary deletion are not licensed ((35)–(36), (38)–(39)). And yet scrambling out of non-restructuring infinitives is possible in Hindi-Urdu:

Since scrambling is in fact possible quite generally, we presume that it could, in concert with the left-attached non-negative nahĩ: hypothesis, derive exceptional behavior of negation out of non-restructuring complements, contrary to fact. It must then be that left-adjunction to matrix VP is unavailable, as it would overgenerate.

The hypothesis that nahĩ: is non-negative and left-attached predicts that two options are possible in complex sentences: left-attachment in the embedded clause and left-attachment in the matrix clause:

Left-attachment in the embedded clause might seem to be a viable option (Sect. 5.1), but we have shown that the more likely option, left-attachment in the matrix clause, is ruled out (Sect. 5.2): one of the conjuncts in (94) (the more likely one) is false. Therefore the left-attachment hypothesis is disproved or highly implausible.

5.3 Right-attachment of ‘nahĩ:’?

Under the non-negative nahĩ: hypothesis, the remaining options are, for complex sentences: attachment of nahĩ: to the right of the embedded VP or to the right of the matrix VP (the reasoning holds whether it is a head or not). If the former option is indeed available, then it is possible to explain matrix licensing effects under the ‘nahĩ: V₁ V₂’ word order, i.e., the ‘exceptional behavior’, without verb clustering: the exceptional behavior obtains if NEG is in the matrix (it has matrix licensing effects), nahĩ: is in the embedded clause and the embedded V moves to the embedded nahĩ:. This doesn’t mean that verb clustering is impossible under such assumptions; it simply means that, if it is real (V_embed and V_matrix form a cluster that raises to a matrix nahĩ:), it cannot be ascertained.

However an argument against the non-negative nahĩ: hypothesis (in both of its versions, i.e., left or right-attachment) can be made by noting that, when nahĩ: is inside a scrambled infinitive (which we know can be restructuring, cf. (76)), matrix licensing effects are blocked (60): it is unclear why displacing nahĩ:, the associate of the abstract negation, by moving the complement of the verb, should lead to deviance.