Syntactic alternations of Hindi verbs with reference to the morphological paradigm

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show the alternation pattern of verbs in Hindi. The work is guided by Beth Levin's (1993) work on English verb classes and alternations where English verbs are classified semantically according to their argument structure. There is a strong belief that the semantic nature of verbs is largely dependent on its argument structure. The nature of the Hindi verbs shows that along with the argument structure, attention should also be paid to the phonological changes which influence the morphological paradigms. Preliminary attempts have been made to class the simple verbs of Hindi into different morphological paradigms along with the phonological changes. At present, the work is limited only to the syntactic structure. Semantic characteristics have not been dealt with. Focus is mainly given on nominal, transitive-causative, and intransitive-causative variants.