On Agreement in Urdu Internally Headed and Externally Headed Relative Clauses

Abstract

Agreement in Urdu relative clauses remained scholarly consideration, particularly whether the structures of internally headed relative clauses (IHRCs) and externally headed relative clauses (EHRCs) differ with respect to number, gender, person, and case. As Aldridge’s (2017) Raising Model predicts uniformity of agreement across clause types and agreement is constrained by the syntactic raising of the nominal head (No). For this, the study employed a mixed-methods and gathered 40 Urdu relative clauses (n=20 IHRCs, n=20 EHRCs) and analyzed statistically using JASP and Raising Model (Aldridge, 2017) which predicts different agreement features—number, gender, person, and case encoded agreement. The analysis reveals the mean agreement scores are moderate (M = 2.50, SD = 1.13). Outcomes of independent samples t tests show no significant differences between IHRCs and EHRCs across any feature (p > .05). Effect sizes were negligible, confirming the absence of meaningful variation. The findings also exhibit that agreement in Urdu relative clauses is stable across clause types, supporting Aldridge’s Raising Model (2017). This suggests that agreement is secured through syntactic raising rather than conditioned by clause head position, contributing empirical evidence to theoretical accounts of South Asian syntax.