Head in Syntax

Head in Syntax

Head (kjerne (i en frase)): the most important word in a phrase; the word that carries the main meaning of the phrase and that cannot be taken away. The head of a noun phrase is a noun (or a pronoun); the head of a verb phrase is a verb; the head of an adjective phrase is an adjective; the head of an adverb phrase is an adverb. As regards prepositional phrases neither part of the phrase (preposition + noun phrase) is considered a head, since both parts have to be there in order for there to be a prepositional phrase. Thus no part of it can be said to be the more important one.

A noun phrase consists of a noun and all its modifiers - i.e. determinants, adjectives, and any clauses or prepositional phrases that modify the noun. (We will get to clauses in a bit.) Traditionally, the noun is called the head of the noun phrase,  because it determines the syntactic function of the phrase - that is, the phrase acts as if it were a noun.  Examples: "Bob", "the cat in the hat", "a whole other problem", "the man who came to dinner", etc.

The term “head of a construction” has been understood in various ways. The common ground is that the head of a construction is that constituent whose specifications are retained in the construction as a whole (cf. Williams 1981:247); exactly which specifications must be retained for headship to occur is the mooted question.Webster’s 8th, after limiting its definition to “an immediate constituent of a construction that has the same grammatical function as the whole” gives as examples man in “an old man” or “a very old man”. The head at least typically designates the same entity as does the whole construction: “a very old man” is in fact a man. Note as well that team and not football is uncontroversially the head of football team even though both components are nominal and thus would fit Webster’s definition.

Most English compounds are right-headed--e.g. bird is the head of black-bird, since it, and not black, is nominal, and since a black-bird is a bird: similarly ball is the head of soccer-ball, ripe of over-ripe, green of sea-green or blue-green (contrast green-blue), etc.

Head in syntax is traditionally understood as a constituent, which in some sense ‘characterizes’ or ‘dominates’ the whole syntactic construct. Jespersen’s “primary ranking” of words, defined in terms of semantic notion of definition, qualification, or modification; establishing primary, secondary, tertiary, etc. words well reflect this idea, however this does not seem to be the most effective approach.

The initial question is, that what notions must the theory of grammar supply. Three such notions are needed, if we contrast syntax with other components of grammar: semantics, the lexicon, and (inflectional) morphology. The first of these picks out the constituent acting as the semantic argument (as opposed to the semantic functor), the second picks out the subcategorisand (the constituent that is lexically subcategorized), and the third picks out the morphosyntactic locus (the constituent on which inflectional marks will be located). In addition government and concord must also be accounted for, by some constituent being ‘dominant’ - the constituent determining government or the constituent determining concord. These five notions can construct a theory of grammar, consequently granting the independent primitive notion of HEAD unnecessary.