Head-marking language
Encyclopedia
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 adjective
s, the possessive
s, and the relative clause
s. In a verb phrase
the head is the verb and the dependents are its argument
s (subject, object, etc.). An example of such a language is Nahuatl
.
), in the Himalayas, and along the Pacific coast of North America. Zero-marked possession is also uncommon with instances mostly found near the equator
, but does not form any true clusters.
The head-marked clause
is common in the Americas, Australia, and New Guinea and very rare elsewhere. The dependent-marked clause is common in Eurasia and northern Africa, sparse in South America, and rare in North America. In New Guinea it clusters in the Eastern Highlands, and in Australia in the south, east, and interior, with the very old Pama-Nyungan
family. Double marking is moderately well attested in the Americas, Australia, and New Guinea, and the southern fringe of Eurasia (chiefly in the Caucasian
and Himalayan mountain enclaves), and particularly favored in Australia and the westernmost Americas. The zero-marked object is, unsurprisingly, common in Southeast Asia and western Africa, two centers of morphological
simplicity, but also very common in New Guinea and moderately common in eastern Africa and Central and South America, among languages of average or higher morphological complexity.
The Pacific Rim distribution of head marking may reflect population movements beginning tens of thousands of years ago
and founder effect
s. Traces in Himalayan
or Caucasian enclaves may be remnants of typology
preceding spreads of interior Eurasian language families
. The dependent-marking type is found everywhere but rare in the Americas, possibly another result of founder effects. In the Americas, all four types are found along the Pacific coast but in the East only head-marking is common. Whether the diversity of types along the Pacific coast reflects great age or overlay of more recent Eurasian colonizations on an earlier American stratum remains to be seen.
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
is one where the grammatical
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
marks showing relations between different constituents
Constituent (linguistics)
In syntactic analysis, a constituent is a word or a group of words that functions as a single unit within a hierarchical structure. The analysis of constituent structure is associated mainly with phrase structure grammars, although dependency grammars also allow sentence structure to be broken down...
of a phrase tend to be placed on the heads
Head (linguistics)
In linguistics, the head is the word that determines the syntactic type of the phrase of which it is a member, or analogously the stem that determines the semantic category of a compound of which it is a component. The other elements modify the head....
(or nuclei) of the phrase in question, rather than the modifiers or dependents. In a noun phrase
Noun phrase
In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase, or nominal group is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives....
, the head is the main noun and the dependents are the adjective
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s, the possessive
Possessive
Possessive may be:* Possessive case* Possessive adjective* Possessive pronoun* Possessive suffix* Possessive construction, pattern among words indicating possession * For possessive behavior in a relationship, see Attachment in adults...
s, and the relative clause
Relative clause
A relative clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a noun phrase, most commonly a noun. For example, the phrase "the man who wasn't there" contains the noun man, which is modified by the relative clause who wasn't there...
s. In a verb phrase
Verb phrase
In linguistics, a verb phrase or VP is a syntactic unit composed of at least one verb and the dependents of that verb. One can distinguish between two types of VPs, finite VPs and non-finite VPs . While phrase structure grammars acknowledge both, dependency grammars reject the existence of a...
the head is the verb and the dependents are its argument
Verb argument
In linguistics, a verb argument is a phrase that appears in a syntactic relationship with the verb in a clause. In English, for example, the two most important arguments are the subject and the direct object....
s (subject, object, etc.). An example of such a language is Nahuatl
Nahuatl
Nahuatl is thought to mean "a good, clear sound" This language name has several spellings, among them náhuatl , Naoatl, Nauatl, Nahuatl, Nawatl. In a back formation from the name of the language, the ethnic group of Nahuatl speakers are called Nahua...
.
| Phrase type | Head | Dependents | Global distribution map (WALS World Atlas of Language Structures The World Atlas of Language Structures is a database of structural properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials. It was first published by Oxford University Press as a book with CD-ROM in 2005, and was released as the second edition on the Internet in April 2008... ) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Noun phrase Noun phrase In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase, or nominal group is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives.... |
Main noun Noun In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of... |
adjective Adjective In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified.... s, possessive Possessive Possessive may be:* Possessive case* Possessive adjective* Possessive pronoun* Possessive suffix* Possessive construction, pattern among words indicating possession * For possessive behavior in a relationship, see Attachment in adults... s, relative clause Relative clause A relative clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a noun phrase, most commonly a noun. For example, the phrase "the man who wasn't there" contains the noun man, which is modified by the relative clause who wasn't there... |
Marking in Possessive Noun Phrases |
| Verb phrase Verb phrase In linguistics, a verb phrase or VP is a syntactic unit composed of at least one verb and the dependents of that verb. One can distinguish between two types of VPs, finite VPs and non-finite VPs . While phrase structure grammars acknowledge both, dependency grammars reject the existence of a... |
Verb Verb A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive... |
verb argument Verb argument In linguistics, a verb argument is a phrase that appears in a syntactic relationship with the verb in a clause. In English, for example, the two most important arguments are the subject and the direct object.... s |
Marking in the Clause |
Geographical distribution
Head-marked possessive noun phrases are common in the Americas and Melanesia and infrequent elsewhere. Dependent-marked noun phrases have a complementary distribution: frequent in Africa, Eurasia, Australia, and New Guinea, the only area where the two types overlap appreciably. Double-marked possession is rare but found around the Eurasian periphery (such as FinnishFinnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
), in the Himalayas, and along the Pacific coast of North America. Zero-marked possession is also uncommon with instances mostly found near the equator
Equator
An equator is the intersection of a sphere's surface with the plane perpendicular to the sphere's axis of rotation and containing the sphere's center of mass....
, but does not form any true clusters.
The head-marked clause
Clause
In grammar, a clause is the smallest grammatical unit that can express a complete proposition. In some languages it may be a pair or group of words that consists of a subject and a predicate, although in other languages in certain clauses the subject may not appear explicitly as a noun phrase,...
is common in the Americas, Australia, and New Guinea and very rare elsewhere. The dependent-marked clause is common in Eurasia and northern Africa, sparse in South America, and rare in North America. In New Guinea it clusters in the Eastern Highlands, and in Australia in the south, east, and interior, with the very old Pama-Nyungan
Pama-Nyungan
Pama–Nyungan may refer to:*Pama–Nyungan languages, an Australian language family*Proto-Pama–Nyungan language, their hypothetical ancestor...
family. Double marking is moderately well attested in the Americas, Australia, and New Guinea, and the southern fringe of Eurasia (chiefly in the Caucasian
Languages of the Caucasus
The languages of the Caucasus are a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea....
and Himalayan mountain enclaves), and particularly favored in Australia and the westernmost Americas. The zero-marked object is, unsurprisingly, common in Southeast Asia and western Africa, two centers of morphological
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
simplicity, but also very common in New Guinea and moderately common in eastern Africa and Central and South America, among languages of average or higher morphological complexity.
The Pacific Rim distribution of head marking may reflect population movements beginning tens of thousands of years ago
Models of migration to the New World
There have been several models for the human settlement of the Americas proposed by various academic communities. The question of how, when and why humans first entered the Americas is of intense interest to archaeologists and anthropologists, and has been a subject of heated debate for centuries...
and founder effect
Founder effect
In population genetics, the founder effect is the loss of genetic variation that occurs when a new population is established by a very small number of individuals from a larger population. It was first fully outlined by Ernst Mayr in 1942, using existing theoretical work by those such as Sewall...
s. Traces in Himalayan
Kusunda language
Kusunda is a language isolate spoken by a handful of people in western Nepal. It has only recently been described in any detail.For decades the Kusunda language was thought to be on the verge of extinction, with little hope of ever knowing it well...
or Caucasian enclaves may be remnants of typology
Linguistic typology
Linguistic typology is a subfield of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features. Its aim is to describe and explain the common properties and the structural diversity of the world's languages...
preceding spreads of interior Eurasian language families
Borean languages
Borean is a hypothetical linguistic macrofamily that traces the possible genetic relationships of the various languages of Eurasia and adjacent regions with languages spoken in the Upper Paleolithic in the millennia following the Last Glacial Maximum. The name "Borean", based on Greek βορέας,...
. The dependent-marking type is found everywhere but rare in the Americas, possibly another result of founder effects. In the Americas, all four types are found along the Pacific coast but in the East only head-marking is common. Whether the diversity of types along the Pacific coast reflects great age or overlay of more recent Eurasian colonizations on an earlier American stratum remains to be seen.
See also
- Dependent-marking languageDependent-marking languageA dependent-marking language is one where the grammatical marks showing relations between different constituents of a phrase tend to be placed on the dependents or modifiers, rather than the heads of the phrase in question. In a noun phrase, the head is the main noun and the dependents are the...
- Double-marking languageDouble-marking languageA double-marking language is one where the grammatical marks showing relations between different constituents of a phrase tend to be placed on both the heads of the phrase in question, and on the modifiers or dependents...
- Zero-marking languageZero-marking languageA zero-marking language is one where there tend to be no grammatical marks on either the dependents or modifiers or the heads or nuclei showing the relationship between different constituents of a phrase....