current projects
Urdu light verbs:
Variation in the properties and structural position of Hindi-Urdu light verbs is well-established. Similar accounts across the literature agree on three positions within the verbal spine: a lower \textit{v}/V position, an intermediate position, and a high external-argument-introducing head (Butt & Ramchand, 2005; Suleiman, 2015; Sobolak, 2023). In this work, we add light verb jaa to this discussion. Specifically, we show that jaa occupies an external-argument-introducing Voice head, using evidence from instrumental causers in jaa-constructions. We also show that, within the Voice head typology, Voice-jaa is distinct from the canonical active and passive Voice heads, and is, in fact, akin to Voice in marked anticausatives. We also compare jaa to LVs de 'give', le 'take', and paR '(be) fallen', showing that jaa has a unique functionality in Hindi-Urdu.
We presented a preliminary version of this work at (F)ASAL-13, and will be publishing a more polished version in the upcoming proceedings.
Other vague ideas: (ideas that have not fully taken shape but which I would love to discuss)
• How a split-KP hypothesis might be able to formally capture discourse-related functions of case markers in some languages.
• Whether paradigm gaps in auxiliary forms in Hindi-Urdu (e.g. past be inflects for gender and number, present and future be for person and number) reveal something about relevant functional heads.
• Why Urdu has repurposed instrumental case for by-phrases but Hindi has not (or has to a much more limited degree).
papers
| 2022c | A Survey of Urdu Subjects and their Properties. In E. Banerjee, A. Cairncross, S. Kidwai & C. Triantafyllidou (Eds.), The Cambridge Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 14(2). 27-70. [pdf] |
| 2022b | A Case for Bare Accusatives in Hindi-Urdu. In I. Guha, S. Kidwai, & M. Schwarz (Eds.), Proceedings of (Formal) Approaches to South Asian Languages 10. [link] |
| 2022a | The Urdu Active Impersonal. In S. Alam, Y. Sinha, & S. Srinivas (Eds.), Proceedings of (Formal) Approaches to South Asian Languages 11. [link] |
| 2021 | Nguyen, L., Bryant, C., Kidwai, S. & Biberauer, T. Automatic language identification in code-switched Hindi-English social media text. Journal of Open Humanities Data, 7, 7. [link] |
| 2020 | Case-Mismatching in Urdu Sluicing. In A. Cairncross, & S. Kidwai (Eds.), The Cambridge Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 12, 47-78. [pdf] |
talks and posters
Disclaimer: These are all works in progress. Many of these ideas have changed significantly since the time of presentation. Please contact me for a more updated version of these ideas.
| Jun 2023 | Investigating the v-related phase in Hindi-Urdu. Invited talk given at Workshop on Verbal Domains, Newcastle University. [handout] |
| Apr 2023 | Urdu light verbs reveal Voice head variation with Frances Sobolak. Talk given at (Formal) Approaches to South Asian Languages 13 ((F)ASAL-13), University of Michigan. [abstract; handout] |
| Feb 2023 | DOM and related issues in Urdu. Talk given at SyntaxLab, University of Cambridge. [handout] |
| Oct 2022 | Intervention in Accusative Case Assignment in Urdu. Talk given at Syntax and Morphology Circle (SMircle), Stanford University. [handout] |
| Sep 2022 | Marked Anticausatives in Urdu. Talk given at Syntax and Semantics Circle (SSCircle), University of California, Berkeley. [handout] |
| Jun 2022 | What is a Subject? A Survey of Urdu Subjects. Poster presented at Linguistics and English Language Postgraduate Conference 22 (LELPGC-22), University of Edinburgh. [poster; handout] |
| May 2022 | What is a Subject? A Survey of Urdu Subjects. Talk given at SyntaxLab, University of Cambridge. [handout] |
| Mar 2021 | The Urdu Active Impersonal. Poster presented at (Formal) Approaches to South Asian Languages 11 ((F)ASAL-11), online. [poster; handout] |
| Feb 2021 | The Urdu Active Impersonal. Poster presented at 46° Incontro di Grammatica Generativa, online. [poster] |
| Feb 2021 | The Urdu Active Impersonal. Talk given at SyntaxLab, University of Cambridge. [handout] |
| Jun 2020 | Accusative case and the verbal domain in Hindi-Urdu. Talk given at SyntaxLab, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. [handout] |
| Mar 2020 | A case for bare accusatives in Hindi-Urdu. Poster presented at (Formal) Approaches to South Asian Languages 10 ((F)ASAL-10), online. [poster; handout] |
| Feb 2020 | Using Case as a Diagnostic in Urdu Sluicing. Poster presented at The Cambridge Occasional Papers in Linguistics (COPiL) Poster Event 2020, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. [poster] |
| Nov 2019 | Automatic Language Identification in Code-Switched Hindi-English Social Media Texts with Bryant, C., Nguyen, L., and Biberauer, T. Poster presented at Cambridge Language Sciences Symposium, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. [poster] |
| May 2019 | Resolving -ko in Urdu. Talk given at SyntaxLab, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. [handout 1; handout 2] |
theses
| 2019 | Double Agents in Urdu Case: -ko and ∅. (MPhil thesis) University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. [pdf] Supervisor: Theresa Biberauer |
| 2018 | Case-(Mis)Matching in Urdu Sluicing. (BA thesis) University College London, London, UK. [pdf] Supervisor: Klaus Abels Awarded: LAGB Outstanding Undergraduate Dissertation in Linguistics |
funding awards
For the full list, see my CV.
| 2023 | Theoretical and Applied Linguistics Research Area Workshop Funding For When linguistic theory meets computational practice (LiTComP) As lead organiser, with Li Nguyen and Rami Aly. |
| 2020 | Linguistics Association of Great Britain Student Conference Sponsorship For The Cambridge Occasional Papers in Linguistics Poster Event 2020 As co-lead organiser, with Alexander Cairncross. |
| 2019 - 2023 | Harding Distinguished Postgraduate Scholarship Fully funded PhD grant. |
| 2019 | Cambridge Language Sciences Incubator Fund As research assistant, with Li Nguyen (co-PI), Theresa Biberauer (co-PI), and Christopher Bryant. |
| 2018 - 2019 | Cambridge Trust Scholarship Full tuition fees for MPhil. |
research assistantships
| 2019 | Automatic Language Identification in Code-Switched Hindi-English Social Media Primary Investigators: Li Nguyen, Theresa Biberauer. Funded by Cambridge Language Sciences Incubator Fund. |
| 2017 | Building Urdu numbers corpus for automatic speech recognition banking system Supervisors: Sahar Rauf, Sana Shams. Center for Language Engineering, University of Technology and Engineering, Pakistan. |
| 2017 | EVOTION: Towards a holistic management of hearing loss Supervisors: Stuart Rosen, Tim Green. Department of Speech, Hearing and Phonetic Sciences, UCL, UK. |