Head (linguistics)

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In linguistics, the head or nucleus of a phrase is the word that determines

the syntactic category of that phrase. For example, the head of the noun phrase boiling
hot water is the noun water. Analogously, the head of a compound is the stem that
determines the semantic category of that compound. For example, the head of the
compound noun handbag is bag, since a handbag is a bag, not a hand. The other
elements of the phrase or compound modify the head, and are therefore the
head's dependents.[1] Headed phrases and compounds are called endocentric,
whereas exocentric ("headless") phrases and compounds (if they exist) lack a clear
head. Heads are crucial to establishing the direction of branching. Head-initial phrases
are right-branching, head-final phrases are left-branching, and head-medial phrases
combine left- and right-branching.

Contents

 1Basic examples
 2Representing heads
o 2.1Trees
o 2.2More trees
o 2.3X-bar trees
 3Head-initial vs. head-final languages
 4Head-marking vs. dependent-marking
 5Prosodic head
 6See also
 7Notes
 8References

Basic examples[edit]
Examine the following expressions:
big red dog
birdsong
The word dog is the head of big red dog since it determines that the phrase is
a noun phrase, not an adjective phrase. Because the adjectives big and red modify
this head noun, they are its dependents.[2] Similarly, in the compound
noun birdsong, the stem song is the head since it determines the basic meaning of
the compound. The stem bird modifies this meaning and is therefore dependent
on song. Birdsong is a kind of song, not a kind of bird. Conversely, a songbird is a
type of bird since the stem bird is the head in this compound. The heads of phrases
can often be identified by way of constituency tests. For instance, substituting a
single word in place of the phrase big red dog requires the substitute to be a noun
(or pronoun), not an adjective.

Representing heads[edit]
Trees[edit]
Many theories of syntax represent heads by means of tree structures. These trees
tend to be organized in terms of one of two relations: either in terms of
the constituency relation of phrase structure grammars or the dependency relation
of dependency grammars. Both relations are illustrated with the following trees: [3]

The constituency relation is shown on the left and the dependency relation on
the right. The a-trees identify heads by way of category labels, whereas the b-
trees use the words themselves as the labels.[4] The noun stories (N) is the head
over the adjective funny (A). In the constituency trees on the left, the noun
projects its category status up to the mother node, so that the entire phrase is
identified as a noun phrase (NP). In the dependency trees on the right, the noun
projects only a single node, whereby this node dominates the one node that the
adjective projects, a situation that also identifies the entirety as an NP. The
constituency trees are structurally the same as their dependency counterparts,
the only difference being that a different convention is used for marking heads
and dependents. The conventions illustrated with these trees are just a couple of
the various tools that grammarians employ to identify heads and dependents.
While other conventions abound, they are usually similar to the ones illustrated
here.
More trees[edit]
The four trees above show a head-final structure. The following trees illustrate
head-final structures further as well as head-initial and head-medial structures.
The constituency trees (= a-trees) appear on the left, and dependency trees (=
b-trees) on the right. Henceforth the convention is employed where the words
appear as the labels on the nodes. The next four trees are additional examples
of head-final phrases:
The following six trees illustrate head-initial phrases:

And the following six trees are examples of head-medial phrases:

The head-medial constituency trees here assume a more traditional
n-ary branching analysis. Since some prominent phrase structure
grammars (e.g. most work in Government and binding theory and
the Minimalist Program) take all branching to be binary, these head-
medial a-trees may be controversial.
X-bar trees[edit]
Trees that are based on the X-bar schema also acknowledge head-
initial, head-final, and head-medial phrases, although the depiction of
heads is less direct. The standard X-bar schema for English is as
follows:

This structure is both head-initial and head-final, which makes it

head-medial in a sense. It is head-initial insofar as the head
X0 precedes its complement, but it is head-final insofar as the
projection X' of the head follows its specifier.

Head-initial vs. head-final languages[edit]

Some language typologists classify language syntax according to
a head directionality parameter in word order, that is, whether a
phrase is head-initial (= right-branching) or head-final (= left-
branching), assuming that it has a fixed word order at all. English
is more head-initial than head-final, as illustrated with the following
dependency tree of the first sentence of Franz Kafka's The
Metamorphosis:

The tree shows the extent to which English is primarily a head-

initial language. Structure is descending as speech and
processing move from left to right. Most dependencies have
the head preceding its dependent(s), although there are also
head-final dependencies in the tree. For instance, the
determiner-noun and adjective-noun dependencies are head-
final as well as the subject-verb dependencies. Most other
dependencies in English are, however, head-initial as the tree
shows. The mixed nature of head-initial and head-final
structures is common across languages. In fact purely head-
initial or purely head-final languages probably do not exist,
although there are some languages that approach purity in this
respect, for instance Japanese.
The following tree is of the same sentence from Kafka's story.
The glossing conventions are those established by Lehmann.
One can easily see the extent to which Japanese is head-final: