Concluding Remarks

Abstract

In the preceding chapters I have analysed two types of wh constructions in Hindi, namely questions and relative clauses. Each of these constructions raises interesting issues about the relation between syntactic structure and semantic interpretation. In each case, I have tried to show that seemingly unusual properties of these constructions are, in fact, amenable to principled explanations which rely on well-motivated applications and extensions of current syntactic and semantic theories. While the idea that surface syntactic structure maps fairly directly onto meaning is the common theme that ties together the investigations of the two topics, the analyses have, to a large extent, been developed independently. In this chapter I will first try to make explicit some connections between Hindi questions and Hindi relative clauses, touching briefly upon the main points of the discussion in each part. I will then draw out what I take to be the most significant theoretical contribution of this study.