A head-marking language is one where the grammatical marks showing relations between different constituents of a phrase tend to be placed on the heads (or nuclei) of the phrase in question, rather than the modifiers or dependents. In a noun phrase, the head is the main noun and the dependents are the adjectives, the possessives, and the relative clauses. In a verb phrase the head is the verb and the dependents are its arguments (subject, object, etc.). An example of such a language is Nahuatl. The concept was proposed by Johanna Nichols in 1986, and has come to be widely used as a basic category in linguistic typology.
| Phrase type | Head | Dependents | Global distribution map (WALS) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Noun phrase | Main noun | adjectives, possessives, relative clause | Marking in Possessive Noun Phrases |
| Verb phrase | Verb | verb arguments | Marking in the Clause |
Languages may be head-marking in verb phrases and dependent-marking in noun phrases—such as most Bantu languages—or vice versa, and it has been argued that the subject rather than the verb is the head of a clause, so "head-marking" is not necessarily a coherent typology. Nonetheless, languages which are head-marking in both noun and verb phrases are common enough to make the term useful for typological description.
Read more about Head-marking Language: Geographical Distribution
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words.... Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)