Nominal Licensing in Urdu-Hindi Applicative Construction

Nominal licensing is the requirement of fully convergent derivation in syntax, however applicative construction exhibits, albeit to core arguments, additional arguments which bear benefactive, instrumental and locative thematic roles. The present study is an attempt to examine nominal licensing (abstract case-assignment) of Urdu-Hindi in applicative construction utilizing probe-goal agreement framework of Nie (2024) which stated that “abstract nominal licensing”, is not computed by “case” rather by “ɸ-feature checking”. The study adopts a qualitative research design and gathers naturalistic data from native speakers. This study analyzes beneficiary applicative, instrumental applicative construction and multiple applicative construction in Urdu-Hindi. The findings of this study reveal that In Urdu-Hindi, each nominal argument is [-ф-] marked by clitic---ke –and –se.-ke occurs with third person nominals and while –se occurs independently and it did not take additional preposition but –ke takes additional preposition to create and establish relation. In multiple applicative construction, Urdu-Hindi takes the last conjunct agreement in paralleled merge structure in a single derivation. The nominal licensing in Urdu-Hindi is marked with heads (T0, v0, Asp0, and V). The study implies dependent nominal agreement in Urdu-Hindi.