Licensing the correlative construction via the semantics of the demonstrative

While its syntactic features are well established, it is still unclear what it is about the demonstrative correlate that licenses the correlative construction in languages like Hindi. Previous research has argued that the correlative clause is adjoined to the main clause, either at the IP (Dayal 1996) or at the demonstrative phrase itself (Bhatt 2003). Following the work of Nunberg (1993) and Elbourne (2008) on the semantic contribution of indexicals, I propose that it is the indexical nature of the demonstrative itself which allows the correlative clause to enter the syntax; the correlative clause is an overt pronunciation of the index, and therefore an argument, of the demonstrative