Wh -in-situ languages have a special role to play in investigating the relation between the wh -syntax of a language and the availability of sluicing-like constructions (SLCs). Van Craenenbroeck and Lipták (2013) propose that whether a language exhibits genuine sluicing should be predictable from the syntax of the language’s wh -questions in nonelliptical contexts. We refine this formulation by considering SLCs in two contrasting wh -in-situ languages, Hindi-Urdu and Uzbek. Hindi-Urdu wh -movement occurs in the narrow syntax, but is obscured by PF processes; in Uzbek, no narrow syntax dependency is involved. Correspondingly, only Hindi-Urdu SLCs involve genuine sluicing; Uzbek SLCs are derived from reduced copular clauses. Thus, narrow syntax wh -movement may be obscured by lower-copy pronunciation in nonelliptical environments; the head of the wh -chain is then pronounced in combination with ellipsis, but not otherwise. Here, we demonstrate that the availability of genuine sluicing in Hindi-Urdu and Uzbek corresponds directly to the specific properties of their wh -systems, but not necessarily to the surface position of wh -material in a typical constituent question.

In the most recent account of rightward displacement in Hindi-Urdu, Bhatt and Dayal (2007) claim that all postverbal constituents are derived via rightward movement of a remnant VP. In this article, I argue that the remnant-VP approach does not allow us to make distinctions between the positioning requirements of DPs and CPs. I propose an account of rightward scrambling (following Mahajan 1988 ) that captures the correlation in Hindi-Urdu between scope and linear order, and I claim that finite complement CPs do not undergo scrambling, but are instead obligatorily aligned to the right edge of their containing clause at the level of PF.

This article addresses wh -displacement and wh -expletive constructions in Hindi-Urdu, accounting for parametric variation in terms of the properties of the phase-defining heads C and v. This analysis provides an understanding of a systematic set of contrasts between Kashmiri and Hindi-Urdu that suggests that crosslinguistic variation may follow from properties of specifically the phase-defining functional heads. It is then possible to construct a unified account of the various strategies of forming long-distance wh -dependencies in the two languages.