Reconsidering Rightward Scrambling: Postverbal Constituents in Hindi-Urdu

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.