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Could Be Stronger: Raising and Resolving Questions with Hindi = to

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Ashwini Deo
Ashwini Deo*
Affiliation:
The University of Texas at Austin
*
Department of Linguistics, The University of Texas at Austin, 305 E. 23rd Street, Mail Code B5100, Austin, TX 78712, [ashwini.deo@austin.utexas.edu]
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Abstract

Hindi and several other Indo-Aryan languages contain a discourse marker that has been described as having a wide range of functions, including topic marking, intensive, emphatic, contrastive, and assertive. In Hindi, this function is realized by the enclitic =to. Possible translational equivalents for =to include expressions like in fact, sure, you know, well, as for, at least, finally, and but. This article investigates the diverse uses of =to and argues that the full range can be uniformly accounted for only if =to is taken to be a particle that signals that the question resolved by its prejacent is weak. The analysis treats =to as a generalized downtoner that comments on the strength of the question the prejacent addresses, relative to the speaker's information state, prior discourse moves, and assumptions about the common ground.

Keywords

discourse particlesformal pragmaticscurrent questionIndo-Aryan

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 98 , Issue 4 , December 2022 , pp. 716 - 748
Copyright
Copyright © 2022 Linguistic Society of America

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Footnotes

*

This research was developed mostly in isolation during the pandemic, fully guided by a need to make sense of a different Indo-Aryan particle, which proved to be a harder nut to crack—Marathi =ʦ/Hindi =hi. I am deeply grateful for the existence of both particles. I thank audiences at OSU's Synners group and NYU (colloquium) for stimulating comments on early versions of this project. I thank Miriam Butt and Itamar Francez for constructive feedback, and the editors and referees at Language for helping to sharpen the analysis as well as make the empirical claims more precise. I am especially grateful to David Beaver for helpful conversations, both about =to and about the analysis's implications for a more nuanced understanding of non-alignment between interlocutors at a context.

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