Agreement in noun-verb predicates

In a Hindi noun–verb predicate, the noun supplies the event type and the light verb carries tense, aspect, mood, and visible agreement: कोशिश करना “try,” सलाह देना “advise,” फ़ैसला लेना “decide,” and गलती होना “a mistake occur.” The difficult part is that the agreement controller can change with aspect and with the light verb's argument structure.

English offers little help here. English did, gave, and happened do not reveal the gender of attempt, advice, or mistake. Hindi can reveal exactly those features in कोशिश की, सलाह दी, गलती हुई. The safest method is to analyze the entire predicate, not translate the noun and verb separately.

First identify the light verb's frame

The final light verb is the inflectional head. Agentive करना, देना, लेना normally form transitive predicates; intransitive होना, आना, मिलना build different case and agreement frames. The noun is not merely an English-style object, however: it remains the semantic center of the predicate and may license its own complements.

In the habitual first sentence, unmarked feminine सोनल controls करती है. In the second, recipient कर्मचारियों को is marked and cannot control agreement; feminine राहत is the unmarked subject of मिलना, so the predicate is मिली.

Imperfective predicates normally agree with the subject

With habitual and progressive करना, देना, लेना, the unmarked agent controls gender and number. The event noun does not take over merely because it immediately precedes the verb.

Feminine रिपोर्ट does not cause करती in the first sentence; feminine subject अदिति does. Likewise, feminine बात does not make the progressive feminine when the subject is Rohit. This is the same subject-oriented pattern found with ordinary transitive verbs outside perfective aspect.

Future and subjunctive forms are also normally subject-oriented:

Here singular feminine टीम controls करेगी. The noun घोषणा is also feminine, so this particular form cannot diagnose the controller; change one feature when testing a rule rather than relying on a single ambiguous example.

Transitive perfectives redirect agreement to the event noun

In a canonical perfective with करना, देना, or लेना, the agent takes ने and cannot control ordinary agreement. An eligible unmarked event noun can then control the perfective light verb.

The endings follow masculine अनुरोध, feminine plural कोशिशें, and feminine चेतावनी, not the natural gender of the ने-marked agent. The recipient कर्मचारियों को is also ineligible.

This page applies the wider perfective agreement decision path to conjunct predicates. The special-looking forms are consequences of ordinary Hindi alignment plus the internal noun's grammatical role.

Intransitive light verbs keep the event noun central

With होना, मिलना, आना, there is normally no perfective ने. The event or stimulus noun is an unmarked subject and controls the light verb directly.

Feminine गलती, बात, अनुमति license हुई, आई, मिल गई. Dative मुझे and अतिथियों को express experiencer or recipient, but they do not control agreement. English reverses the perspective in “I remembered” and “the guests received,” which makes these especially common transfer errors.

An added vector can change the agreement head

A noun + करना predicate may expand into noun + bare कर- + vector: तैयारी कर लेना, घोषणा कर देना, व्यवस्था कर रखना. The vector now carries the visible perfective morphology, but an eligible unmarked noun can still control it if the resulting compound is transitive.

Feminine plural तैयारियाँ controls ली थीं; feminine तारीख़ controls दी. The vectors add a bounded, secured, or outwardly presented result rather than their dictionary actions “take” and “give.” They are not interchangeable decoration.

By contrast, modal सकना creates a subject-oriented, non-ने frame even after a transitive lexical predicate:

Feminine रीमा, not feminine जाँच, controls सकी. The surface result happens to be the same here, but replacing Reema with a masculine subject would expose the difference. Agreement follows the final grammatical head, not a permanent property of the noun + verb collocation.

Lexical gender is a real learning burden

There is no reliable semantic rule predicting the gender of every abstract noun. Compare masculine फ़ैसला, विचार, इंतज़ार with feminine कोशिश, मदद, बातचीत. Loanwords add variation: educated Standard Hindi strongly favors established chunks such as फ़ोन किया, मीटिंग की, and बुकिंग की, but community and register can affect newer loans.

Modifiers provide evidence: लंबा इंतज़ार, कड़ी मेहनत, गंभीर चर्चा. Corpus frequency and a trusted dictionary are better guides than the English word or its spelling. This is genuinely lexical information and must sometimes be memorized.

Negation does not cancel agreement:

The event did not occur, but feminine घोषणा still controls की. Polarity and agreement are separate grammatical dimensions.

A dialogue: watch the controller shift

The first two transitive perfectives have ने and agreement with feminine छुट्टी and प्रतिक्रिया. The final intransitive predicate presents feminine मंज़ूरी as the thing that may become available. The same situation is packaged through different argument structures.

Common Mistakes

1. Agreeing a perfective with the ने-marked agent

2. Letting the event noun control an imperfective form

3. Adding ने to an intransitive noun predicate

4. Copying English subject agreement with a dative recipient

Key Takeaways

• In imperfective and future transitive conjunct predicates, the unmarked agent normally controls agreement.
• In a canonical transitive perfective, ने blocks agent agreement and the unmarked event noun commonly controls the light verb.
• With intransitive होना, मिलना, आना, the event or stimulus noun stays unmarked and controls agreement; a dative experiencer does not.
• Added vectors or modals can change the final grammatical head, so recompute alignment rather than reusing a memorized ending.
• Negation does not erase gender and number agreement.