What fluent speakers leave out
I can understand rapid speech where much is left unsaid
Look at these examples. Can you spot the grammar pattern?
Where are you going? — The market.
Looks like we'll be late.
If it rains we won't go.
Pay attention to the highlighted parts. What do they have in common?
तो in a conditional, the postposition on a noun, and the second half of a correlative pair. Dropping any of these leaves the sentence sounding broken rather than economical.
Because the verb is final and carries person, gender and number, a listener can usually reconstruct the subject from it alone. This is why Hindi tolerates so much omission.
Apply this grammar in C1 course exercises
Practice ExercisesDropping to or a postposition along with the pronoun.
to dropped from a conditional
The conditional pair survives every other omission.
Postposition dropped with the pronoun
The postposition stays even when the noun is understood.
Where are you going? — The market.
The whole verb phrase drops in the answer.
Looks like we'll be late.
ki dropped, as Russian drops chto in speech only rarely - here Hindi goes further.
If it rains we won't go.
The subject drops, but to cannot.
Practice in course
Apply this grammar in C1 course exercises
Yamuna Kachru's reference grammar; the descriptive account relied on for aspect, valency and clause structure.
R. S. McGregor's outline, the standard concise academic description of Hindi morphology.