TOWARDS
AN ALTERNATIVE
THEORY OF BINDING |
Abhilasha
Jain
and
B.N. Patnaik |
| (12) |
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ravna (ram dwara) mara gaya
ravan
ram CM kill+passive PAST
(Ravan
was killed (by Ram).)
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The
main problem with the criteria (a) -
(c) above is that taken together they
do not always identify a single consitituent
as the subject. Consider (13) below: |
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| (13) |
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ram ne mohan ko PRO apne sath
i j
j
i
ram
CM mohan CM PRO self together
khana khane ke liye bulaya
food eat+Nom CM call+PAST
(Ram asked Mohan to eat with him.)
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According
to (c) above, PRO is in the subject position
of the embedded S. Now, according to (a),
PRO should have been the antecedent of the
reflexive apna but it is not. Therefore, either
(a) or (c) is not a reliable criterion for
determining the subject of the sentence. Consider
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(15)
is the causative counterpart of (14) which
is a passive sentence. But this fact is of
no consequence to the present argument because
the passive sentence does have a subject as
already pointed out. In terms of earlier discussion,
kitab, the NP without an overt CM, is the
subject of (14). Going by (b), the kitab-phrase
should have undergone the required morphological
change with the sentence being changed to
its corresponding causative version. But the
phrase which really undergoes change is a
different one, namely, mohan dwara, which
changes to mohan se. Thus, the criterion (b)
and the observation that the NP without an
overt CM is the subject do not identify the
same constituent as the subject of the sentence.
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In
view of the above, it is not clear on what
principled basis the subject of the sentence
in Hindi can be determined.4 This
being so, one may not be unjustified in speculating
as to whether the notion of subject is really
relevant at all to the grammar of Hindi. Such
a stand may look misguided and may really
turn out to be so, but, under the circumstances,
it does not seem to be totally without merit.
It must be noted in this text "Subject"
is used as a convenient descriptive term to
refer to that CP in a sentence which is directly
dominated by S at the level of D-structure/Initial
level of Representation in the grammar. |
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Turning
now to the first part of our claim that subject
is not really the antecedent in all sentences
of Hindi, we provide instances of the following
types to substantiate our claim: |
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