268:(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.
433:
writing) 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.
432:
The tree shows the extent to which
English is primarily a head-initial language. On the broadest level, the verb phrase "discovered that he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug" begins with the verb headword "discovered". Structure is descending as speech and processing move (visually in
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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
537:, the head is the part that extends from the first stressed syllable up to (but not including) the tonic syllable. A high head is the stressed syllable that begins the head and is high in pitch, usually higher than the beginning pitch of the tone on the tonic syllable. For example:
450:
A large majority of head-dependent orderings in
Japanese are head-final. This fact is obvious in this tree, since structure is strongly ascending as speech and processing move from left to right. Thus the word order of Japanese is in a sense the opposite of English.
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Discerning heads from dependents is not always easy. The exact criteria that one employs to identify the head of a phrase vary, and definitions of "head" have been debated in detail. See the exchange between Zwicky (1985, 1993) and Hudson (1987) in this
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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 X precedes its complement, but it is head-final insofar as the projection X' of the head follows its specifier.
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471:. A given dependency is head-marking, if something about the dependent influences the form of the head, and a given dependency is dependent-marking, if something about the head influences the form of the dependent.
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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. The noun
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406:(= 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
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For a good general discussion of heads, see Miller (2011:41ff.). However, take note Miller miscites Hudson's (1990) listing of Zwicky's criteria of headhood as if these were
Matthews'.
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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:
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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
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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
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A low head is the syllable that begins the head and is low in pitch, usually lower than the beginning pitch of the tone on the tonic syllable.
109:. Head-initial phrases are right-branching, head-final phrases are left-branching, and head-medial phrases combine left- and right-branching.
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employed where the words appear as the labels on the nodes. The next four trees are additional examples of head-final phrases:
571:
629:
Dependency grammar trees similar to the ones produced in this article can be found, for instance, in Ágel et al. (2003/6).
105:("headless") phrases and compounds (if they exist) lack a clear head. Heads are crucial to establishing the direction of
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The following tree is of the same sentence from Kafka's story. The glossing conventions are those established by
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Corbett, G., N. Fraser, and S. McGlashan (eds). 1993. Heads in
Grammatical Theory. Cambridge University Press.
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Using the words themselves as the labels on the nodes in trees is a convention that is consistent with
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that determines the semantic category of that compound. For example, the head of the compound noun
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Zwicky, A. 1993. Heads, bases and functors. In G. Corbett, et al. (eds) 1993, 292–315.
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is the head in this compound. The heads of phrases can often be identified by way of
85:, since a handbag is a bag, not a hand. The other elements of the phrase or compound
345:) take all branching to be binary, these head-medial a-trees may be controversial.
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Nichols, J. 1986. Head-marking and dependent-marking grammar. Language 62, 56-119.
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Chomsky, N. 1995. The
Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
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is the head since it determines the basic meaning of the compound. The stem
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407:
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Hudson, R. A. 1987. Zwicky on heads. Journal of
Linguistics 23, 109–132.
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101:
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requires the substitute to be a noun (or pronoun), not an adjective.
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206:. For instance, substituting a single word in place of the phrase
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Zwicky, A. 1985. Heads. Journal of
Linguistics 21, pp. 1–29.
440:. One can easily see the extent to which Japanese is head-final:
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And the following six trees are examples of head-medial phrases:
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239:. Both relations are illustrated with the following trees:
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The following six trees illustrate head-initial phrases:
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485:) appears on the dependent (the possessor), whereas in
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category of that phrase. For example, the head of the
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is a kind of song, not a kind of bird. Conversely, a
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modifies this meaning and is therefore dependent on
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489:possessive marking appears on the head noun:
386:Some language typologists classify language
95:. Headed phrases and compounds are called
154:since it determines that the phrase is a
459:It is also common to classify language
89:the head, and are therefore the head's
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382:Head-initial vs. head-final languages
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572:Head-driven phrase structure grammar
170:modify this head noun, they are its
27:Primary part of a grammatical phrase
264:(N) is the head over the adjective
117:Examine the following expressions:
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455:Head-marking vs. dependent-marking
174:. Similarly, in the compound noun
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675:A critical introduction to syntax
463:according to whether a phrase is
198:is a type of bird since the stem
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577:Head directionality parameter
474:For instance, in the English
392:head directionality parameter
339:Government and binding theory
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69:. Analogously, the head of a
353:Trees that are based on the
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522:(the man house-POSSESSIVE)
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642:(BPS). See Chomsky (1995).
229:phrase structure grammars
162:. Because the adjectives
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592:Phrase structure grammar
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402:(= right-branching) or
478:, possessive marking (
640:bare phrase structure
582:Head-marking language
677:. London: Continuum.
651:See Nichols (1986).
237:dependency grammars
701:Syntactic entities
567:Dependency grammar
546:The bus was late.
540:The bus was late.
343:Minimalist Program
214:Representing heads
204:constituency tests
673:Miller, J. 2011.
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413:The Metamorphosis
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562:Constituent
408:Franz Kafka
349:X-bar trees
208:big red dog
156:noun phrase
152:big red dog
97:endocentric
52:noun phrase
32:linguistics
658:References
513:Hungarian:
461:morphology
404:head-final
396:word order
272:More trees
233:dependency
172:dependents
102:exocentric
99:, whereas
92:dependents
557:Branching
487:Hungarian
178:the stem
176:birdsong,
158:, not an
142:The word
107:branching
63:head noun
48:syntactic
18:Head noun
695:Category
550:See also
497:English:
341:and the
196:songbird
192:Birdsong
125:big red
71:compound
620:regard.
501:the man
438:Lehmann
262:stories
231:or the
146:is the
79:handbag
73:is the
57:is the
40:nucleus
587:Phrase
388:syntax
87:modify
44:phrase
34:, the
599:Notes
533:In a
505:house
481:'
266:funny
219:Trees
67:water
42:of a
200:bird
188:song
184:bird
180:song
166:and
148:head
133:song
131:bird
75:stem
59:noun
36:head
467:or
410:'s
394:in
168:red
164:big
150:of
144:dog
127:dog
83:bag
81:is
38:or
30:In
697::
519:-a
503:'s
416::
190:.
65:)
483:s
61:(
20:)
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