Head (linguistics) - Basic Examples

Basic Examples

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. 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 bird. The birdsong is a kind of song, not a kind of bird. The heads of phrases like the ones here can often be identified by way of constituency tests. For instance, substituting a single word in for the phrase big red dog requires the substitute to be a noun (or pronoun), not an adjective.